You Know You Done Fucked Up, Right?

nakedcapitalism  |  “Jury Instructions & Charges” (PDF) [Judge Juan Merchan, New York State Unified Court System]. Merchan’s instructions are 55 pages long. Apparently, Merchan isn’t allowed to give the jury a copy (hence their request to have them read aloud to them again). In any case, Merchan’s instructions are not devoid of interest. Let me start with an epigraph:

“The Law is the true embodiment. Of everything that’s excellent. It has no kind of fault or flaw. And I, my Lords, embody the Law” –Gilbert and Sullivan, Iolanthe

I’m reminded of G&S by this passage from the transcript. Merchan before he launches his Instructions:

I am, however, not necessarily being fair to Merchan. He consistently uses the word “our law,” which could imply the majestic principle that the law applies to and is for the benefit of all of us, or should do so. On the other hand, Merchan could also be using “our law” exactly as liberal Democrats use “our democracy.” Given lawfare, the latter may be more likely.

Now let me move to some extracts, helpfully annotated. A technical matter, page 22:

[1] Merchan quotes from the Guide to New York Evidence, 6.10. I have to assume that with enough time, I could come up with similar boilerplate for all the instructions.

On “Accessorial Liability,” p. 25:

And:

[1] To this layperson, this notion of “unanimity” since strange (“I don’t care who broke the vase or who hid the pieces”), though I’m sure it comes from somewhere in the Guide. But certainly “acting in concert” maximizes the paths to conviction (not that I would expect a good, or at least an effective, prosecutor to do anything else).

On “Intent to Defraud,” p. 29 (as I understand it _{MR SUBLIMINAL Hollow laughter}, the “intent to defraud” applies to the business records, and not to the “other crime”):

[1] As, for example, a candidate’s misrepresentations in an election. Ideal for the Censorship Industrial Complex, when you think about it. Who would have thought five Pinocchios from Glenn Kessler could end up as a criminal offense?

[2] Underlining that “election interference” could theorized as fraud. (If true, this principle is certainly arbitrarily applied in the State of New York; RussiaGate, Clinton’s email server, and the suppression of Hunter Biden’s laptop could all be considered criminal.)

On “Intent to Commit or Conceal Another Crime” (this is the heart of the matter: the theory that bootstraps 34 business records misdemeanors into 34 felonies; the “other crime” (“object offense”) that the business records were falsified in aid of (if falsified they were), pp. 29 et seq.:

[1] Once again, the paths to conviction are maximized.

[1] As I showed here (early), the “object offense” did not appear in District Attorney Bragg’s charges, but evolved — with a great deal of puzzlement here and in the press generally — in the course of the trial, much assisted by Merchan in his pre-trial ruling (as I show here). To this layperson, it seems very much like the Defendant was not informed of the charges against him (SIxth Amendment: “to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation“). Now, Bragg might argue that the Defendant was informed; the “accusation” was the business records violation, and the “other crimes” were merely icing on the cake, as it were. Perhaps “our law” is ambiguous in that regard. If so, the matter of whether converting misdemeanors into felonies requires “notice of accusation” may be settled in an appeal.

[2] “Promote or prevent” is the election interference part (and nothing in this case is distinguishable from normal campaigning, to my simple mind, and this includes business records stuff like the Clinton campaign laundering payment for the Steele dossier through Marc Elias’s highly reputable law firm).

[3] So some member of the alleged conspiracy must act, but not necessarily the Defendant, once again maximizing the paths to conviction.

[4] One question why the Defendant was never charged with conspiracy. This is the charge of conspiracy.

[1] This “Merchan’s Chinese Menu: One from Column A, one from Column B… The concept of “unanimity” seems to take on strange forms in Merchan’s court.

[2] Turley argues: Suppose there are three “unlawful means” (the object offenses) A, B, and C. A verdict where 4 jurors voted for A, 4 for B, and 4 for C would be treated as “unanimous”; to this layperson, an absurd result. But I think this argument can be made more pointed: The jurors who vote for A must necessarily believe that the Defendant is not guilty beyond reasonably doubt of offenses B and C, and so with the remaining jurors. So we could have a verdict where 12 jurors do not believe in the Defendants guilt beyond a reasonable doubt of any one object offense. That strikes me as a very bad precedent and worthy of consideration on appeal. From Thomas P Gallanis, “Reasonable Doubt and the History of the Criminal Trial,” The University of Chicago Law Review: “Reasonable doubt was originally a protection not for criminal defendants, but rather for the ‘souls of the jurors’ (p 3). Reasonable doubt was “designed to make conviction easier” by reassuring anxious jurors that they would not be damned for voting to spill the defendant’s blood (p 4 (emphasis omitted)). Jurors could safely convict as long as their hesitations did not rise to the level of reasonable doubt.” So what is the state of the individual juror’s soul when the entire jury votes to convict, but without unamimity as to the cause of the conviction?

[3] These are the the three “unlawful means” proposed by the Prosecution. I presume that “other” business records does not include any of the 34 business records in the charge, so I don’t think that item (2) is necessarily circular, or “loops back on itself,” in an infinite regress, but without clarification, it could mean that records 1-17 would fall under the business records offense, and records 18-34 could be redeployed as object offenses…. One wonders what form of “unanimity” would be required to sort this, if so (but see on “Falsification of Other Business Records” below):

On the first of the three unlawful means, “The Federal Election Campaign Act,” p. 32:

[1] Leaving aside the question of whether Federal laws should be enforced at the state level, and leaving aside Merchan’s curious refusal to let the defense expert on FECA testify, the obvious agenda here is to urge that NMI’s “catch and kill scheme,” which suppressed news stories, was not a “legitimate press function.” However, suppressing news stories is obviously a legitimate press function, and only a child of six would think otherwise (one thinks at once of The New York Times suppressing James Risen’s story on warrantless surveillance until after Bush was safely elected).

On the second, “Falsification of Other Business Records,” p. 33:

This closes out my theorizing on infinite regression in other records, above. Too bad! I haven’t mastered the detail on these documents, but Merchan’s specificity makes me think that this “object offense”) is the most dangerous to the Defendant. (Of course, I don’t believe there are object offenses, because iff the initial counts 1-34 all pertain to the payments for Cohen that are allegedly not for legal services, they in fact were, because to my simple mind. a legal service is something you pay a lawyer to do, and thus there is no primary offense to begin with.)

On the third, “Violation of Tax Laws,” p. 34:

[1] If this is the only unlawful means, I can see at least one hold-out being unwilling to jacl up 34 misdemeanors to felonies based on it.

On “The Charged Crimes,” p 27:

“Verdict Sheet,” p. 53:

[1] These are the counts in Bragg’s indictment; each of the 34 counts is a separate business records offense.

[2] Notice the checkboxes that Merchan does not include:

Surely the voting public has an interest in knowing which object offense caused Trump’s misdemeanors (if any) to be converted into felonies. An absurdly minor tax violation? The much bruited and salacious catch-and-kill scheme? A campaign finance violation? Merchan, apparently, has no care for the voters. I would speculate that — with the possible assistance of the flex-net working the lawfare on this project — having maximized the paths to conviction with capacious definitions of unanimity, Merchan would prefer not to “show his work,” and reveal how those definitions worked out in reality. Whether this is grounds for appeal I don’t know, but I find it appalling. “Our law”! “Our democracy”!

The Rock Regrets His 2020 Endorsement Of Joe Biden

newsweek  |  Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was booed by members of the audience of The View after expressing regret for his endorsement of President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

Boos were heard on Friday morning after the airing of a short clip from a recent Fox News interview with the actor and professional wrestling star, who is set to return to the ring for the first time in eight years at this weekend's WWE WrestleMania event.

Johnson said that he was not "happy with the state of America" in the clip and revealed that he would not be endorsing Biden in this year's election because he feels his 2020 endorsement had caused "division."

"The endorsement that I made years ago with Biden was one that I thought was the best decision for me at that time," Johnson said. "Am I going to do that again this year? That answer's no, I'm not going to do that."

"I realized what that caused back then was something that tears me up in my guts—back then and now—which is division," he added.

The View crowd responded to Johnsons remarks by loudly booing, seemingly taking co-host Joy Behar and the show's other co-hosts by surprise with their overwhelmingly negative response.

"Should I pay any attention to someone who gives an interview on Fox where they lie every day?" Behar asked the crowd, before questioning whether celebrities should "endorse public figures" or "keep their politics to themselves."

Some in the audience could be heard responding "no" after Behar asked if celebrities should make endorsements. A short time later, the crowd made their opinions on former President Donald Trump's 2024 candidacy clear after co-host Sunny Hostin weighed in.

"I do think we're living in a time where we have someone [Trump] running for president that is an existential threat to democracy," Hostin said, prompting loud cheers and applause from the audience.

"Now is the time—if you have a platform—you must be active, you must speak out," she added, drawing additional applause.

While endorsing Biden in 2020, Johnson described himself as a "political independent and centrist" who was making his first public endorsement due to the outcome of the election being "critical."

 

 

 

When Zakharova Talks Men Of Culture Listen...,

mid.ru  |   White House spokesman John Kirby’s statement, made in Washington shortly after the attack, raised eyebrows even at home, not only outside the United States. At first, he said he needed “more time, and we need to learn more information” on the Crocus City Hall attack for the pieces of the puzzle to fall into place. Finally, one would think, someone sees reason – we need to wait for at least some preliminary examination results, for interrogations and investigative actions. But no, after just a couple of hours, the pieces must have clicked together. The White House and the State Department declared that Ukraine had no role in the attack. What grounds or what information did they have to draw this conclusion? This was absolutely unclear. One thing was clear though. They started finding excuses for the Kiev regime in order to get themselves off the hook. Everyone is perfectly aware that there is no independent Kiev regime without Western financial support or military aid.

When asked whether the United States knew about the attack in advance, Mr Kirby referred the reporter to the State Department. Think about it, this is important. To answer the question of who was behind the terrorist attack in Russia, it only took the State Department and the White House a couple hours. They immediately said who was responsible. But when the White House was asked whether the Biden administration or the US intelligence community had officially transferred relevant materials to Moscow, they couldn’t answer that question. They referred the journalists to other agencies. How can this be? This is their area of responsibility and competence. Why were they not ready to answer for their own actions, while being quick to write a “prescription” for a case they had absolutely no knowledge of, given that they had no facts on hand (at least, the United States never said they had any).

Let me remind you that on March 7, the US Embassy urged its citizens to avoid shopping malls. The embassies of other NATO countries did the same, which indicated that their intelligence services had some information about possible attacks.

The apparent synchronicity between the condolences extended by the Western governments and Washington’s statements has not gone unnoticed: US satellites published them (mostly on social media) only after getting a clear go-ahead from their Big Brother. A few NATO countries stood out though. Sweden, a newcomer to NATO, confined itself to a brief comment that they were “following the developments” in the first hours after the attack. Only when they caught on to the general tone of other comments did Stockholm express its condolences in a manner more befitting the situation. In the same vein, Moldovan officials managed to get out a few meager words only after harsh condemnation by opposition politicians and the Russian-speaking diaspora. Moldovan nationals could have been there – not only Moldovans by passport, but by ethnic origins or kinship. But the authorities in Chisinau could not find a few words of sympathy.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis published a totally outrageous post in response to the attack: “Let's not lose focus.” It isn’t “focus” that they can lose. They do not want to lose the aim. But then that should have been the way to say it. Ireland, Canada and New Zealand tried to remain silent, delaying their response as long as they could.

As I said, the Zelensky regime was the only one that accused Russia of involvement in the Crocus attack. Later they said they were misunderstood and they didn’t mean what they said. No, we got it perfectly right. We saw and we saved every video, audio, and screenshots of messages posted online or shown on television during those hours. We saw officials representing the Kiev regime, and others, who call themselves Ukrainian journalists (in fact, they are not even propagandists, but simply troubadours of terror), spend hours ranting about Russia’s guilt and the country’s leaders’ role in the terrorist attack, under headlines like “Moscow is killing its own citizens.”

As a reminder, American liberal Democrats have been financing the terrorist activities of the Kiev crime ring for a long time, not a year or two, or even five. It began under the Obama Administration, when Joe Biden, who is now President of the United States, was Vice President. In ten years, Ukraine has been transformed by the West into a centre for the spread of terrorism. However, ignoring this “dancing on the graves” organised by Ukrainian propagandists, people from all continents are extending their heartfelt condolences to the families and friends of the victims, wishing a speedy recovery to the injured and strongly condemning this terrible attack against innocent civilians.

We are thankful to everyone worldwide who responded with compassion to the tragic terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall. Heads of state and government, heads of government agencies, international organisations, non-profit organisations, religious groups, and concerned citizens have all shown their sympathy in the face of this terrible tragedy. In moments like these, the true nature of a person is revealed. However, we cannot overlook the monstrous and misanthropic remarks made by Ukrainian professional propagators of terrorism. The actions and statements of the Kiev regime adepts underscore their moral decline and ugly Nazi nature. Unfortunately, the mainstream Western media fail to shed light on this dark side of modern blatant neo-Nazism in Ukraine, which is rooted in hatred towards all things Russian. They are not ridiculed in caricatures, nor are they held accountable by international human rights organisations, or subjected to “cancel culture” for their reprehensible statements and actions. Instead, they are rewarded with even more financial support. But for what purpose? As George W. Bush once remarked, to enable them to kill even more Russians. It appears that the representatives of the White House and the current Biden administration have embraced this notion, deeming it a beneficial arrangement.

The Russian People Have Given The Kremlin Carte Blanche To Get Even

strategic culture |  Let’s start with the possible chain of events that may have led to the Crocus terror attack. This is as explosive as it gets. Intel sources in Moscow discreetly confirm this is one of the FSB’s prime lines of investigation.

December 4, 2023. Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Mark Milley, only 3 months after his retirement, tells CIA mouthpiece The Washington Post: “There should be no Russian who goes to sleep without wondering if they’re going to get their throat slit in the middle of the night (…) You gotta get back there and create a campaign behind the lines.”

January 4, 2024: In an interview with ABC News, “spy chief” Kyrylo Budanov lays down the road map: strikes “deeper and deeper” into Russia.

January 31: Victoria Nuland travels to Kiev and meets Budanov. Then, in a dodgy press conference at night in the middle of an empty street, she promises “nasty surprises” to Putin: code for asymmetric war.

February 22: Nuland shows up at a Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) event and doubles down on the “nasty surprises” and asymmetric war. That may be interpreted as the definitive signal for Budanov to start deploying dirty ops.

February 25: The New York Times publishes a story about CIA cells in Ukraine: nothing that Russian intel does not already know.

Then, a lull until March 5 – when crucial shadow play may have been in effect. Privileged scenario: Nuland was a key dirty ops plotter alongside the CIA and the Ukrainian GUR (Budanov). Rival Deep State factions got hold of it and maneuvered to “terminate” her one way or another – because Russian intel would have inevitably connected the dots.

Yet Nuland, in fact, is not “retired” yet; she’s still presented as Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs and showed up recently in Rome for a G7-related meeting, although her new job, in theory, seems to be at Columbia University (a Hillary Clinton maneuver).

Meanwhile, the assets for a major “nasty surprise” are already in place, in the dark, and totally off radar. The op cannot be called off.

March 5: Little Blinken formally announces Nuland’s “retirement”.

March 7: At least one Tajik among the four-member terror commando visits the Crocus venue and has his photo taken.

March 7-8 at night: U.S. and British embassies simultaneously announce a possible terror attack on Moscow, telling their nationals to avoid “concerts” and gatherings within the next two days.

March 9: Massively popular Russian patriotic singer Shaman performs at Crocus. That may have been the carefully chosen occasion targeted for the “nasty surprise” – as it falls only a few days before the presidential elections, from March 15 to 17. But security at Crocus was massive, so the op is postponed.

March 22: The Crocus City Hall terror attack.

ISIS-K: the ultimate can of worms

The Budanov connection is betrayed by the modus operandi – similar to previous Ukraine intel terror attacks against Daria Dugina and Vladimir Tatarsky: close reconnaissance for days, even weeks; the hit; and then a dash for the border.

And that brings us to the Tajik connection.

There seem to be holes aplenty in the narrative concocted by the ragged bunch turned mass killers: following an Islamist preacher on Telegram; offered what was later established as a puny 500 thousand rubles (roughly $4,500) for the four of them to shoot random people in a concert hall; sent half of the funds via Telegram; directed to a weapons cache where they find AK-12s and hand grenades.

The videos show that they used the machine guns like pros; shots were accurate, short bursts or single fire; no panic whatsoever; effective use of hand grenades; fleeing the scene in a flash, just melting away, almost in time to catch the “window” that would take them across the border to Ukraine.

All that takes training. And that also applies to facing nasty counter-interrogation. Still, the FSB seems to have broken them all – quite literally.

A potential handler has surfaced, named Abdullo Buriyev. Turkish intel had earlier identified him as a handler for ISIS-K, or Wilayat Khorasan in Afghanistan. One of the members of the Crocus commando told the FSB their “acquaintance” Abdullo helped them to buy the car for the op.

And that leads us to the massive can of worms to end them all: ISIS-K.

The alleged emir of ISIS-K, since 2020, is an Afghan Tajik, Sanaullah Ghafari. He was not killed in Afghanistan in June 2023, as the Americans were spinning: he may be currently holed up in Balochistan in Pakistan.

Yet the real person of interest here is not Tajik Ghafari but Chechen Abdul Hakim al-Shishani, the former leader of the jihadi outfit Ajnad al-Kavkaz (“Soldiers of the Caucasus”), who was fighting against the government in Damascus in Idlib and then escaped to Ukraine because of a crackdown by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – in another one of those classic inter-jihadi squabbles.

Shishani was spotted on the border near Belgorod during the recent attack concocted by Ukrainian intel inside Russia. Call it another vector of the “nasty surprises”.

Shishani had been in Ukraine for over two years and has acquired citizenship. He is in fact the sterling connection between the nasty motley crue Idlib gangs in Syria and GUR in Kiev – as his Chechens worked closely with Jabhat al-Nusra, which was virtually indistinguishable from ISIS.

Shishani, fiercely anti-Assad, anti-Putin and anti-Kadyrov, is the classic “moderate rebel” advertised for years as a “freedom fighter” by the CIA and the Pentagon.

Some of the four hapless Tajiks seem to have followed ideological/religious indoctrination on the internet dispensed by Wilayat Khorasan, or ISIS-K, in a chat room called Rahnamo ba Khuroson.

The indoctrination game happened to be supervised by a Tajik, Salmon Khurosoni. He’s the guy who made the first move to recruit the commando. Khurosoni is arguably a messenger between ISIS-K and the CIA.

The problem is the ISIS-K modus operandi for any attack never features a fistful of dollars: the promise is Paradise via martyrdom. Yet in this case it seems it’s Khurosoni himself who has approved the 500 thousand ruble reward.

After handler Buriyev relayed the instructions, the commando sent the bayat – the ISIS pledge of allegiance – to Khurosoni. Ukraine may not have been their final destination. Another foreign intel connection – not identified by FSB sources – would have sent them to Turkey, and then Afghanistan.

That’s exactly where Khurosoni is to be found. Khurosoni may have been the ideological mastermind of Crocus. But, crucially, he’s not the client.

The Ukrainian love affair with terror gangs

Ukrainian intel, SBU and GUR, have been using the “Islamic” terror galaxy as they please since the first Chechnya war in the mid-1990s. Milley and Nuland of course knew it, as there were serious rifts in the past, for instance, between GUR and the CIA.

Following the symbiosis of any Ukrainian government post-1991 with assorted terror/jihadi outfits, Kiev post-Maidan turbo-charged these connections especially with Idlib gangs, as well as north Caucasus outfits, from the Chechen Shishani to ISIS in Syria and then ISIS-K. GUR routinely aims to recruit ISIS and ISIS-K denizens via online chat rooms. Exactly the modus operandi that led to Crocus.

One “Azan” association, founded in 2017 by Anvar Derkach, a member of the Hizb ut-Tahrir, actually facilitates terrorist life in Ukraine, Tatars from Crimea included – from lodging to juridical assistance.

The FSB investigation is establishing a trail: Crocus was planned by pros – and certainly not by a bunch of low-IQ Tajik dregs. Not by ISIS-K, but by GUR. A classic false flag, with the clueless Tajiks under the impression that they were working for ISIS-K.

The FSB investigation is also unveiling the standard modus operandi of online terror, everywhere. A recruiter focuses on a specific profile; adapts himself to the candidate, especially his – low – IQ; provides him with the minimum necessary for a job; then the candidate/executor become disposable.

Everyone in Russia remembers that during the first attack on the Crimea bridge, the driver of the kamikaze truck was blissfully unaware of what he was carrying,

As for ISIS, everyone seriously following West Asia knows that’s a gigantic diversionist scam, complete with the Americans transferring ISIS operatives from the Al-Tanf base to the eastern Euphrates, and then to Afghanistan after the Hegemon’s humiliating “withdrawal”. Project ISIS-K actually started in 2021, after it became pointless to use ISIS goons imported from Syria to block the relentless progress of the Taliban.

Ace Russian war correspondent Marat Khairullin has added another juicy morsel to this funky salad: he convincingly unveils the MI6 angle in the Crocus City Hall terror attack (in English here, in two parts, posted by “S”).

The FSB is right in the middle of the painstaking process of cracking most, if not all ISIS-K-CIA/MI6 connections. Once it’s all established, there will be hell to pay.

But that won’t be the end of the story. Countless terror networks are not controlled by Western intel – although they will work with Western intel via middlemen, usually Salafist “preachers” who deal with Saudi/Gulf intel agencies.

The case of the CIA flying “black” helicopters to extract jihadists from Syria and drop them in Afghanistan is more like an exception – in terms of direct contact – than the norm. So the FSB and the Kremlin will be very careful when it comes to directly accusing the CIA and MI6 of managing these networks.

But even with plausible deniability, the Crocus investigation seems to be leading exactly to where Moscow wants it: uncovering the crucial middleman. And everything seems to be pointing to Budanov and his goons.

Ramzan Kadyrov dropped an extra clue. He said the Crocus “curators” chose on purpose to instrumentalize elements of an ethnic minority – Tajiks – who barely speak Russian to open up new wounds in a multinational nation where dozens of ethnicities live side by side for centuries.

In the end, it didn’t work. The Russian population has handed to the Kremlin total carte blanche to exercise brutal, maximum punishment – whatever and wherever it takes.

ISIS The Least Likely Suspect For The Crocus Massacre

TAE  |  From what I’ve read so far, ISIS is about the least likely suspect for the Crocus massacre. If only because the CIA fingered them within minutes of the event. Russia will need to do a very thorough investigation, and hard evidence, to keep its people calm. Andrew Korybko has more:

 

 Andrew Korybko:

 Speculation has swirled since Friday night’s terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall venue in Moscow over whether ISIS-K was really responsible like the group claimed or if Ukraine’s military-intelligence service GUR orchestrated everything under the cover of its agents posing as members of that group. The Mainstream Media is running with the first scenario while doing their utmost to discredit the second, but recalling the GUR’s terrorist history and ties with radical Islamists shows that it’s not above suspicion.

They were responsible for assassinating Darya Dugina in summer 2022, carrying out the Crimean Bridge truck bomb attack that fall, assassinating Vladlen Tatarsky in spring 2023, and the cross–border terrorist raids by the so-called “Russian Volunteer Corps” over the past year. They’re also tied to Crimean Tatar terrorists and ISIS-linked Chechen ones. The CIA is connected with these terrorist acts and groups too after the Washington Post reported last fall that they rebuilt the GUR from the ground-up after 2014.

The modern-day GUR is a product of the CIA, which certainly shared with its protégés everything that it learned while waging the ongoing Hybrid War on Syria, not to mention their terrorist contacts as well. It was through this meticulous cultivation that GUR chief Kirill Budanov obtained his bloodlust that was on full display last spring when he declared that “we’ve been killing Russians and we will keep killing Russians anywhere on the face of this world until the complete victory of Ukraine.”

For as lethal as the GUR has become over the past decade, it’s still a CIA knockoff, which is why it’s expected to make sloppy mistakes from time to time. This is relevant when it comes to the latest attack after ISIS-K claimed responsibility using an outdated news template, thus suggesting that someone else claimed credit in their name at first but then ISIS-K opportunistically ran with it for clout. Considering its terrorist history and ties with radical Islamists, that mysterious actor was arguably the GUR.  

What likely happened is that their agents posed as members of that terrorist group in order to retain plausible deniability in case the planned attack was foiled or the terrorists were caught afterwards. One of the Tajiks who was captured in the car that was racing towards the Ukrainian border claimed that they were recruited by the curators of a radical Telegram channel just a month ago to carry out the attack using already cached arms in exchange for a debit card payment of around $5000 each.

These nationals were probably chosen by the GUR since some of them are predisposed to religious radicalism due to the lingering legacy of Tajikistan’s Islamist-inspired civil war from the 1990s, their country abuts ISIS-K’s Afghan headquarters, and they have visa-free travel privileges to Russia. Accordingly, they were allegedly recruited via a radical Telegram channel, ISIS-K’s involvement doesn’t seem entirely implausible, and they were able to easily enter Russia with minimal scrutiny.

They weren’t radical enough to go out with guns blazing or in a suicide blast like ISIS-K is known for, however, but were still sufficiently sympathetic with that group’s ideology to carry out what they believed was its latest mission in exchange for money. This explains why they fled from the scene of the crime, which is contrary to what any affiliate of that group would ever do, after machine-gunning dozens of people and setting fire to the venue.

Had they reached Ukraine, where the FSB confirmed that they had contacts and President Putin said that “a window was prepared for them…to cross over”, then they’d likely have been killed by the GUR to cover everything up. It shouldn’t be forgotten that this group learned how to conduct terrorism from the CIA, which in turn perfected this practice in Syria over the past 13 years of the Hybrid War that it’s been waging there, but the GUR is still a knockoff and that’s why they made three sloppy mistakes.

In the order that they occurred, their first mistake was recruiting people who weren’t ready to fight to the death at the scene of their forthcoming terrorist attack. This led to the culprits being captured and spilling the beans about how they were recruited in exchange for money, which is one of the signs that ISIS-K wasn’t behind what happened since their members always expect to die as “martyrs”. Accordingly, the fact that this mistake was made suggests that the GUR was desperate to go through with their plans.

The second mistake was that they didn’t tell their proxies to flee to a safe house right after the attack to meet a contact that’ll then help them reach the border later on but who’d actually kill them once they meet in order to cover everything up. This led to them racing towards the Ukrainian border, thus showing everyone that they at the very least felt that they’d find sanctuary there, which made Russia’s claim of Ukrainian involvement much more believable for many skeptical Westerners.

And finally, the last mistake was that the GUR used an outdated news template to claim credit for the attack on behalf of ISIS-K, who they correctly predicted would opportunistically run with it for clout. By doing so, however, they signaled that the group itself didn’t play a role in organizing what happened otherwise their more modern template would have been used instead. Taken together, these three sloppy mistakes discredited the Mainstream Media’s narrative and drew attention to the GUR instead.

Coupled with its terrorist history and ties with radical Islamic groups, which respectively prove that it has the capabilities and intent to carry out the Crocus attack as well as the knowledge required to impersonate extremists online for recruiting purposes, all of this makes the GUR the prime suspect. It learned everything about terrorism from the CIA, but since it’s still a knockoff, it made a series of sloppy mistakes that resulted in incriminating Ukraine instead of lending false credence to the ISIS-K narrative.

Russia Put The Tajik Gunmen Out In The Cold And They Spilled Their Guts

Whoever was behind the terrorist attack in Russia yesterday, the operation was botched

They were not supposed to be captured

These Tajiks are giving up everything

3 weeks ago Victoria Nuland warned of 'nasty surprises' for Putin pic.twitter.com/aY7EDC1anZ

— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) March 23, 2024

strategic culture  |  Exhibit 1: Friday, March 22, 2024. It’s War. The Kremlin, via Peskov, finally admits it, on the record.

The money quote:

“Russia cannot allow the existence on its borders of a state that has a documented intention to use any methods to take Crimea away from it, not to mention the territory of new regions.”

Translation: the Hegemon-constructed Kiev mongrel is doomed, one way or another. The Kremlin signal: “We haven’t even started” starts now.

Exhibit 2: Friday afternoon, a few hours after Peskov. Confirmed by a serious European – not Russian – source. The first counter-signal.

Regular troops from France, Germany and Poland have arrived, by rail and air, to Cherkassy, south of Kiev. A substantial force. No numbers leaked. They are being housed in schools. For all practical purposes, this is a NATO force.

That signals, “Let the games begin”. From a Russian point of view, Mr. Khinzal’s business cards are set to be in great demand.

Exhibit 3: Friday evening. Terror attack on Crocus City, a music venue northwest of Moscow. A heavily trained commando shoots people on sight, point blank, in cold blood, then sets a concert hall on fire. The definitive counter-signal: with the battlefield collapsing, all that’s left is terrorism in Moscow.

And just as terror was striking Moscow, the US and the UK, in southwest Asia, was bombing Sana’a, the Yemeni capital, with at least five strikes.

Some nifty coordination. Yemen has just clinched a strategic deal in Oman with Russia-China for no-hassle navigation in the Red Sea, and is among the top candidates for BRICS+ expansion at the summit in Kazan next October.

Not only the Houthis are spectacularly defeating thalassocracy, they have the Russia-China strategic partnership on their side. Assuring China and Russia that their ships can sail through the Bab-al-Mandeb, Red Sea and Gulf of Aden with no problems is exchanged with total political support from Beijing and Moscow.

The sponsors remain the same

Deep in the night in Moscow, before dawn on Saturday 23. Virtually no one is sleeping. Rumors dance like dervishes on countless screens. Of course nothing has been confirmed – yet. Only the FSB will have answers. A massive investigation is in progress.

The timing of the Crocus massacre is quite intriguing. On a Friday during Ramadan. Real Muslims would not even think about perpetrating a mass murder of unarmed civilians under such a holy occasion. Compare it with the ISIS card being frantically branded by the usual suspects.

Let’s go pop. To quote Talking Heads: “This ain’t no party/ this ain’t no disco/ this ain’t no fooling around”. Oh no; it’s more like an all-American psy op. ISIS are cartoonish mercenaries/goons. Not real Muslims. And everyone knows who finances and weaponizes them.

That leads to the most possible scenario, before the FSB weighs in: ISIS goons imported from the Syria battleground – as it stands, probably Tajiks – trained by CIA and MI6, working on behalf of the Ukrainian SBU. Several witnesses at Crocus referred to “Wahhabis” – as in the commando killers did not look like Slavs.

It was up to Serbia’s Aleksandar Vucic to cut to the chase. He directly connected the “warnings” in early March from American and British embassies directed at their citizens not to visit public places in Moscow with CIA/MI6 intel having inside info about possible terrorism, and not disclosing it to Moscow.

The plot thickens when it is established that Crocus is owned by the Agalarovs: an Azeri-Russian billionaire family, very close friends of…

… Donald Trump.

Talk about a Deep State-pinpointed target.

MOSSAD Showed Varadkar His Balls-Deep Epstein Videos And That Was A Wrap....,

apnews  |  Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, who made history as his country’s first gay and first biracial leader, announced Wednesday that he is stepping down for reasons that he said were both personal and political.

Varadkar announced Wednesday he is quitting immediately as head of the center-right Fine Gael party, part of Ireland’s coalition government. He’ll be replaced as prime minister in April after a party leadership contest.

“My reasons for stepping down now are personal and political, but mainly political,” Varadkar said, without elaborating. He said he plans to remain in parliament as a backbench lawmaker and has “definite” future plans.

Varadkar, 45, has had two spells as taoiseach, or prime minister — between 2017 and 2020, and again since December 2022 as part of a job-share with Micheál Martin, head of coalition partner Fianna Fáil.

He was the country’s youngest-ever leader when first elected, as well as Ireland’s first openly gay prime minister. Varadkar, whose mother is Irish and father is Indian, was also Ireland’s first biracial taoiseach.

He played a leading role in campaigns to legalize same-sex marriage, approved in a 2015 referendum, and to repeal a ban on abortion, which passed in a vote in 2018.

“I’m proud that we have made the country a more equal and more modern place,” Varadkar said in a resignation statement in Dublin.

Varadkar was first elected to parliament in 2007, and once said he’d quit politics by the age of 50.

He led Ireland during the years after Britain’s 2016 decision to leave the European Union. Brexit had huge implications for Ireland, an EU member that shares a border with the U.K.’s Northern Ireland. U.K.-Ireland relations were strained while hardcore Brexit-backer Boris Johnson was U.K. leader, but have steadied since the arrival of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

Varadkar recently returned from Washington, where he met President Joe Biden and other political leaders as part of the Irish prime minister’s traditional St. Patrick’s Day visit to the United States.

 

 

 

Did Israel Just Admit That It Has Nuclear Weapons?!?!?!

thecradle  |  Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on 7 November said that recent remarks by Israeli Minister of Heritage Amihai Eliyahu, in which he said dropping a nuclear bomb in the Gaza Strip is “a possibility,” raised a multitude of questions.

"It raised a great number of questions. Question number one: Does this mean we are hearing an official statement acknowledging [Israel’s] possession of nuclear weapons? Accordingly, the next set of questions that everyone has is: Where are the international organizations, including the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency]; where are the inspectors?" Zakharova said during a televised interview.

Estimates of Israel's nuclear stockpile range between 80 and 400 warheads, which can be delivered via aircraft, submarine-launched cruise missiles, and the Jericho series of intermediate to intercontinental-range ballistic missiles.

Its first deliverable nuclear weapon is thought to have been completed in late 1966 or early 1967, making it the sixth country in the world to have developed them.

Israel has never openly tested its nuclear weapons nor signed the  Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), making it the world’s only unacknowledged atomic power. The country has also never been subjected to an inspection from the UN nuclear watchdog.

Asked in an interview with Radio Kol Berama last week whether an atomic bomb should be dropped on Gaza, Israeli minister Eliyahu answered: “This is one of the possibilities.”

Eliyahu, from the Jewish supremacist Religious Zionist party, stated further that “there is no such thing as uninvolved civilians in Gaza” and that, therefore, no humanitarian aid should be allowed into the besieged enclave.

He also expressed his support for depopulating Gaza and reconquering it to reestablish Jewish settlements there. Regarding the Palestinian population, he said: “They can go to Ireland or deserts; the monsters in Gaza should find a solution by themselves.”

Eliyahu added that anyone waving a Palestinian or Hamas flag “shouldn’t continue living on the face of the earth.”

In response, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suspended Eliyahu from participating in cabinet meetings and dismissed his statement, calling it "not based in reality."

Russia's UN envoy has previously stated that, as an occupying state, Israel has “no right" to self-defense.

The Empire Can't Spin The Murder Of Thousands Of Children

🇵🇸🇮🇱🚨‼️ “We wrote their names on the children’s bodies so that we would recognize them when they were torn into pieces.” pic.twitter.com/vQFG9njJwS

— Lord Bebo (@MyLordBebo) October 29, 2023

catyjohnstone |  Propagandists are used to having a lot more wiggle room to work with than this. They’re used to interfacing with a complex matrix of narrative and manipulating it to distort the public’s understanding of what’s going on. But raw video footage of a mother clutching the tattered remains of a child is not narrative. Satellite images of powdered city blocks are not narrative. It’s just reality. Right there in your face.

Western civilization is dominated by propaganda. The “freedom” and “democracy” we think we have is an illusion that has been carefully cultivated by those who manipulate the way we think, speak, act and vote by mass-scale psychological manipulation — as Chomsky says, propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state. A mind-controlled dystopia is not some dark future that awaits humanity if things go terribly wrong for us; it is already presently the case.

Propagandists are able to control civilization so effectively because they understand that humans are storytelling creatures whose lives are dominated by mental narrative, so if you can control the narratives the humans are telling each other, you can control the humans. A globe-spanning empire centralized around the United States depends heavily on its ability to indoctrinate us with subtle mass media messaging from a very early age.

The Gaza massacre throws a big fat monkey wrench in all that, because the raw data coming out of it is so transparently horrifying that no amount of narrative spin can make it look acceptable. The fact that the US and its allies are helping Israel murder children by the thousands is a giant glitch in the narrative matrix.

The longer this continues, the more people are going to wake up out of the propaganda-induced coma the empire has had them in all their lives. The more people are going to realize that their government is not what it has been pretending to be and the media have not been telling them the truth about the world. As the western empire backs the slaughter of thousands of children, the discrepancies between what the propaganda tells us about our society and what our society actually is are being brightly illuminated.

By murdering thousands of children in Gaza, the empire has exposed its true face in front of everyone. And the people aren’t liking what they see.

Eyes are opening everywhere. People are being radicalized in record numbers. The streets are being flooded with protesters. Very inconvenient questions are being asked. Rigorous scrutiny is being applied in places it was seldom applied before. Light is shining in through cracks that weren’t there before.

This is all so, so horrible and so, so painful to watch day in and day out. But something is moving underneath it all. Something big. The empire has done irreparable harm to its ability to keep everyone sleeping and complacent going forward. A healthy world may be in our future yet.

 

 

 

The Arab World Cancelled Meeting With Biden After Latest Israeli Atrocity

BBC  |  US President Joe Biden has said a deadly blast at a Gaza hospital appears to have been caused by Palestinian militants, backing Israel's account of the incident as he visits the country.

Mr Biden, who landed in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, said he was "deeply saddened and outraged" by the explosion.

Israel's military said it was caused by a failed Palestinian rocket launch.

But Palestinian officials said an Israeli air strike hit the hospital.

Health officials in Gaza have said almost 500 people were killed in the explosion, but no death toll has been confirmed.

Meanwhile, Mr Biden has announced that an agreement has been reached with Israel to allow humanitarian aid to move from Egypt into Gaza. However, Israel said it would not allow any aid to pass through its own territory until hostages being held by Hamas are released.

'Deeply saddened and outraged'

Mr Biden's high-stakes visit has been overshadowed by the blast at the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital on Tuesday evening, which has further inflamed tensions and sparked protests across the region.

He landed in Tel Aviv on Wednesday where he was greeted warmly by Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, before the pair hosted a joint news conference.

"I was deeply saddened and outraged by the explosion at the hospital in Gaza yesterday," Mr Biden said.

"Based on what I've seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you," he told Mr Netanyahu. "But there's a lot of people out there not sure so we have to overcome a lot of things."

Mr Biden was later asked by reporters what led him to conclude that Israel was not responsible, and said: "The data I was shown by my defence department."

In the news conference, he reiterated his support for Israel and condemned the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which launched an unprecedented attack on Israel from Gaza on 7 October that left 1,400 people dead.

At least 3,000 people have been killed in retaliatory Israeli strikes on Gaza, according to Palestinian health official.

Mr Biden had planned to travel from Israel to Jordan to meet King Abdullah, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, but that leg of the trip was cancelled after the hospital blast on Tuesday.

Jordan cancelled the meeting and condemned what it called "a great calamity and a heinous war crime". The White House, meanwhile, said the decision had been "made in a mutual way" and Mr Biden would call Mr Abbas and Mr Sisi on his return flight to the US.

Russia Has Reoriented Toward The Arab World

johnhelmer.net  |  In the first direct Russian warning to the  US Navy force in the Eastern Mediterranean,  Zakharova added: “So far we see that the situation is developing along the path of escalation. There is a great risk of involving third forces in this conflict. And this is fraught with long-term consequences for the region and for the world.”

Putin followed in the evening on the telephone with the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “The need for an immediate ceasefire by both sides and the resumption of the negotiation process was emphasised,” according to the Kremlin’s communiqué. “Mutual readiness to actively contribute to this was expressed…Separate issues of Russian-Turkish cooperation in various fields were also touched upon.”

Erdogan’s press release was more revealing. He and Putin had “touched upon what initiatives can be taken to meet humanitarian needs in the region, as the Turkish president told Putin that targeting civilian settlements is worrying and Türkiye does not welcome such move.”   Erdogan’s twitter announcement adds: “President Erdoğan and President Putin of Russia also exchanged views on potential initiatives to meet humanitarian needs in the region.”

This is a hint that Erdogan and Putin are contemplating a Turkish ship convoy of aid to Gaza, protected from Israeli attack by the Russian Navy from its Tartous base on the Syrian coast, and by the Russian Air Force from Hmeimim. This humanitarian operation by sea would aim at breaking the blockade of the coast by the Israelis, and running the gauntlet of the USS Gerald Ford and its squadron further offshore.  If this operation, a reminder of the Gaza Flotilla of 2010,   is in planning now – the open signals are warning Washington and the US Navy to expect it – then the confrontation, and the risk to the US and Israel of strategic defeat at sea, are unprecedented.

The planning of Russian military protection of seaborne humanitarian aid convoys to the Gaza also extends to Egypt.

This was touched on in the conversation which Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry had with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.  That was followed by Egyptian press disclosure of Israeli warnings, following by bombings, to stop Egyptian trucks delivering aid into Gaza across the Rafah land bridge at the southern end of Gaza.

An alternative Egyptian option is a naval convoy. If this will be coordinated through the Kremlin and the Russian Defense Ministry with an Erdogan-Putin plan of a Turkish convoy sailing from the north, the escalation to regional and superpower level will have materialised before the Israeli invasion of Gaza can preempt it.

The Russian Defense Ministry has not been silent towards Israel in the past. Since the ambush by the Israel Air Force of the Russian Il-20 surveillance aircraft, and the killing of its 15-man crew in September 2018, the General Staff has said it has been reserving its moves against the Israelis while identifying them as the enemy.

Vzglyad, the Moscow platform for Russian military and security thinking, editorialised on April 17, 2023, that in siding with the Ukraine during the Special Military Operation, the Israeli government had become Russia’s adversary: “The time has come to take a new position on the Palestinian issue. To take the celebration of Al-Quds Day to a new level, as well as to take a more pro-Palestinian position in the Middle East conflict. To stand on the side of those who help Russia within the framework of their own interests (Iran, Saudi Arabia) against those who help our enemies. And thereby to send a very clear signal to the world – a signal that Russia will treat its partners exactly as they treat it. To help supporters – and not to act in the interests of opponents.”

The creation of a humanitarian corridor was explicitly mentioned in the Foreign Ministry briefing on Tuesday.   “Tensions are rising in the West Bank of the Jordan River. There are high risks of the conflict spreading to the area of the Lebanese-Israeli border and drawing new parties into it. A large-scale humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding before our eyes. The main thing now is to cease fire and stop the bloodshed. We support the efforts of interested parties aimed at solving this priority task. This would make it possible to avoid new victims, end the suffering of the civilian population, ensure its evacuation through humanitarian corridors and prevent the situation from sliding into a region-wide humanitarian catastrophe. This is not just a crisis or an emergency. We are talking about the fate of millions of people.”

Spokesman Zakharova also struck at the CIA and the Pentagon for their surprise defeat by Hamas. “How did it happen that in a year; that’s how much time the operation was being prepared for, then carried out now in a few days, the United States as Israel’s closest ally did not warn about this? They have satellites everywhere, appropriate tracking devices, military bases, including in the region. There are all the possibilities to carry out, not just monitoring, but surveillance — the facts speak for themselves — of all information circulating on American-made equipment (hardware and software). For the whole year of preparing such a large-scale operation, the United States with all the power of its special services did not transmit anything to Israel as intelligence…How did it happen that during the whole year of preparation of the corresponding operation in the Middle East, the United States did not transmit any information to its partners in Israel?”

By contrast, the Foreign Ministry spokesman said, “for two months at the end of 2021 and two months at the beginning of 2022, the United States at all levels told how Russia would  ‘attack’ Ukraine. This was done specifically to create an information backdrop in order to divert the eyes of the whole world from how, for all these years, the United States and their NATO colleagues (primarily the United Kingdom) have been pumping Ukraine with weapons and creating the anti-Russia project, an anti-Russian springboard…After the corresponding instruction from Washington, a multiple increase in the shelling of Donbass by the regime of V.A. Zelensky followed.  Then, in late 2021-early 2022, the US ‘knew everything’ and told everyone. But in the area of their direct responsibility — the Middle East has always been one of them — in relation to the closest ally over which the American protectorate is carried out, the US special services, the State Department and the White House did not transmit any information necessary for self-defence.”

Even The Moustache Of Understanding Is Telling Israel "To Be Smart!!!"

Israel Has Never Needed to Be Smarter Than in This Moment

the cradle  |  Hamas did not coordinate its military operation with any of its Resistance Axis allies. It also did not plan to achieve the stunning results that were soon to follow. The Qassam Brigades' immediate goal was only to destroy Israeli army positions around the Gaza Strip and capture as many soldiers as possible, which they could later exchange for the thousands of Palestinian captives in Israeli prisons. 

But the Palestinian resistance forces were taken by surprise at the laxity of the occupation army. Contrary to expectations, they stumbled upon security vacuums and poorly guarded military sites in which a large number of enemy soldiers and officers were fast asleep. It was this unexpected opportunity that prodded the Palestinian fighters to reach for bigger gains.

Hamas' military leadership planned to carry out this operation in complete secrecy. Just weeks earlier, their fighters had conducted military maneuvers/exercises that were observed by the Israelis. But Tel Aviv's rather complacent intelligence assessment had been that "Hamas is training for what it does not dare to do." The Israelis, in short, thought that Hamas was merely flexing in order to gain financial concessions for Gaza. No actual operation was ever expected by Israel's military brass.

The veil of secrecy over the operation also extended to the Hamas fighters who carried out the attack. Sources close to Hamas say that their cadres believed, until the morning of the operation, that they were assembling for a training exercise, not for the real thing. 

Very few knew details of the comprehensive attack plan. Even Hamas' allies in Lebanon and Iran learned of the operation at zero o'clock and not a moment before, according to well-informed sources in the Resistance Axis. 

Even for this axis, the Hamas operation went beyond all possible expectations. Although true that many of the Hamas tactics employed are shared among the Axis' fighters in Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, and Yemen, the innovation in the Al-Aqsa Flood operation was the signature of the Al-Qassam Brigades, and particularly its brilliant leader Muhammad Deif.

The operation was coordinated with remarkable professionalism: accurate and detailed intelligence was amassed, high-level training exercises organized, secrecy was paramount, and superior coordination was established between the myriad drones, paratroopers, and vast majority of Hamas fighters who crossed into the occupation state, through tunnels and above ground. 

Al Qassam also planned to target Israeli communications towers and all military sites surrounding Gaza. From a military perspective, this was a near-perfect operation that led to the destruction of all the facilities of the Israeli army's “Gaza Division" and the annihilation of entire Israeli brigades. For Israel, this was a total humiliation - something it had never experienced before, even in the devastating 1973 Arab-Israeli war. 

A zero-sum game

With the support of the collective west, Israel is now assembling a plan to restore its deterrence. Operation Al-Aqsa Flood didn't only affect the Israelis - it has also endangered western deterrence throughout West Asia and the Arab world. The decline in Israel's deterrent capacity correlates directly with the weakening of western hegemony in the region.

While Israel has been scurrying around to mobilize its troops and equipment for a counterattack, the Americans sent messages to the Resistance Axis - specifically Iran and Hezbollah - saying, essentially: “We don’t want this to escalate. We want and need stability on the Lebanese border with Israel. We are urging you not to interfere in this war.” 

The messages were sent on 7 October, as events unfolded, and through more than one medium. Hezbollah's response was seen on the ground the very next morning, when it bombed Israeli army positions in the occupied Lebanese Shebaa Farms. This was a warning message, which was clarified further by Hezbollah's Executive Council Chief Hashem Safi Al-Din when he said: “We will not remain neutral in this battle.” 

Neither will Washington, which immediately announced $8 billion in aid to Israel, and sent an aircraft carrier to the eastern Mediterranean Sea. The US cannot afford for Israel to take more losses, but how far will they go to deter Tel Aviv's adversaries?

Within the axis of resistance, from Iran to Gaza, there is a uniform decision to prevent the defeat of any of the principal allies. As this axis made clear during the Syrian war, a major attack on one will be viewed as an attack on all. Today, their red line is preventing the collapse of the resistance in Gaza.

Israel's urgent need to restore its deterrence is not, however, possible without destroying Gaza's resistance factions. Both Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant have ominously warned that Tel Aviv’s response to Gaza’s attack will “change the Middle East.”  Those are fighting words indeed: the US called for the birthing of a “new Middle East” during Israel's month-long bombardment of Lebanon in July 2006.

Tel Aviv and Washington want to take down the Palestinian resistance while ensuring that no other battle fronts flare up to distract from that mission. Of course, the Resistance Axis principals will seek to do exactly the opposite, doing what is necessary to distract Israel from its strategic objective.