Above Top Secret has been one big mess since these new absentee owners bought it. Too many questionable things have been going on. My list of strange and suspicious events over there is getting long now, but the latest was the most disturbing to me.

Earlier today, an ATS member created a thread in the Board Business and Questions Forum about getting everyone's attention on a serious matter. He said that at the end of one of his posts, it was edited. It includes another two paragraphs of comments he never made. He was asking how a moderator was allowed to do this and that he wanted everything after a certain sentence deleted. I saw the added comments that were political in nature, it wasn't a typical moderator edit. The main and most active moderator over there responded by telling the member that it is only super moderators or administrators who could make an edit like that, but it should have had a notice indicating such an edit, and it didn't. That was something she couldn't explain and needed to look into. The thread was closed after a couple of comments and now I can't find it anywhere I looked. Going to my browser history and going back to his thread, I found it was removed with no explanation. I sent a PM to the member about his thread with a short list of suspicious things going on, which he agreed with and will get back to me on, I guess.

It's getting really strange on ATS now, I don't want to be there anymore, and yet I want to witness it, whatever is happening. I've been finding its demise to be interesting, but these latest things are freaking me out a little. There is more, I just won't elaborate unless I get some feedback or other information here.

What was the deeper message of Alice in WonderLand?
Among many, the strongest messages was the wool being pulled over our eyes about the very nature of reality. The scientific materialist paradigm of particles behind everything and the denial of the Aether.




Jared Kushner had cited Lewis Carroll’s classic as the key to understanding Trump. It appears the conparison is one of the most often cited in the media when discussing Trump.

Quote:One of the strangest revelations in Bob Woodward’s latest book on Donald Trump’s presidency, Rage, is that Jared Kushner suggested to Woodward that the way to understand his father-in-law was to meditate on Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. This was, apparently, intended as praise. But groveling flattery is hardly new among Trump’s courtiers. What makes the remark stand out is that it’s also almost entirely true, especially as applied to U.S. foreign policy—though perhaps not in the way that Kushner intended.

Some of the parallels lie on the surface of Carroll’s narrative: Alice’s progress throughout the story, after all, consists largely of negotiations with irascible megalomaniacs (even if the Queen of Hearts has neither Novichok nor chainsaws for the dismemberment of corpses at her disposal). But there is a much deeper connection between this children’s fantasy and foreign policy in the age of Trump.

References to Alice in Wonderland are generally used as a shorthand for anarchy, which is apparently how Kushner intended it, with the implication that Trump was uniquely positioned to navigate those conditions. But when you reread the book and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, it’s obvious that this is not what’s going on at all. There is a tight internal logic that regulates the actions of the characters. It is just completely detached from the logic of the world beyond the rabbit hole. It pays attention only to words, and not to the things in the world that they usually point to.

In Through the Looking-Glass, Humpty Dumpty, for example, says that words mean only whatever he wants them to mean—but this is not exactly true. Lewis Carroll thinks like a man setting clues in a British cryptic crossword. The obvious meaning is never the one that is useful. Inside the looking-glass world, meanings are chosen precisely for their incongruity with the outside world, rather than “contrariwise” (to quote Tweedledum). The application to the self-described business titan Trump—or even Britain’s own “world-beating” Prime Minister Boris Johnson—is too obvious to belabor.

Kushner seems to have meant his reference to the Cheshire Cat—“whose strategy was endurance and persistence, not direction,” in the presidential advisor’s words—as an endorsement of the apparent lack of planning or direction in Trump’s actions. Whatever obstacles she encounters, Alice always makes it through to the end. Or perhaps, in his reference to Alice and the Cheshire Cat, he was describing his own cautious approaches to another threatening orange enigma.

The Cat only grinned when it saw Alice. It looked good-natured, she thought: still it had very long claws and a great many teeth, so she felt that it ought to be treated with respect.

“Cheshire Puss,” she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider. “Come, it’s pleased so far,” thought Alice, and she went on. “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where——” said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

“—— so long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation.

“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”

This exchange from Alice in Wonderland surely captures much of Trump’s attitude toward, for instance, the Middle East, where his previously stated positions (with his emphasis on withdrawing from the region) only haphazardly intersect with his policies. He doesn’t much care where he goes so long as he gets somewhere—and in a work of fiction there is no distinction between word and deed: Whatever destination you announce you’ve reached, you have gotten to. Outside the rabbit hole there are Kurds, Syrians, Iraqis, Palestinians, and so forth to whom this isn’t fictional at all. But down the rabbit hole they don’t exist at all. They are only words to be twisted into any shape that’s useful for the moment.

In a similar way, there are vast quantities of bloviation that can be boiled down to a single remark made right at the beginning of the first book as Alice is falling down an apparently endless rabbit hole and trying to find her feet. Like anyone else pitched from New York real estate into geopolitics, “Alice had not the slightest idea what Latitude was, or Longitude either, but she thought they were nice grand words to say.”

If the foundational principle of the looking-glass world of Carroll’s sequel is that reality obeys words, rather than the other way around, almost everything about Trump’s foreign policy becomes clear: not least that it is almost as bewildering from the inside as it is from the outside.

In Alice in Wonderland, Alice is sometimes huge, sometimes entirely insignificant; only very occasionally is she the same size as the other characters. Surely this is how American power must feel to Jared Kushner. As the British writer Anatol Lieven pointed out in a recent issue of Prospect magazine: “For all America’s overwhelming superiority on paper, it has turned out that many countries have greater strength than the U.S. in particular places: Russia in Georgia and Ukraine, Russia and Iran in Syria, China in the South China Sea, and even Pakistan in southern Afghanistan.”

Alice would sympathize. When the White Rabbit asks her to go into the house to fetch a pair of gloves and a fan, she rushes in as eagerly as an American government bringing democracy to Afghanistan—and once inside, she drinks, of course, from the bottle she finds on the table. “‘I know something interesting is sure to happen,’ she said to herself, ‘whenever I eat or drink anything; so I’ll just see what this bottle does. I do hope it’ll make me grow large again, for really I’m quite tired of being such a tiny little thing!’”

In no time at all she finds she is so large that she is entirely trapped within the house. She is able to kick out anyone else who tries to enter, but she’s entirely unable to get her leg out of the chimney or her arm out of the window. Only when the pebbles that the actual owners of the house throw at her are miraculously transformed to cake that shrinks her can she escape—and then she is chased into the woods by a furious mob and threatened by a gigantic puppy before talking on equal terms with a hookah-smoking caterpillar all of three inches long.

This inability to maintain a size at which the world makes sense is coupled with an astonishing tactlessness. Alice dearly loves her cat Dinah, so she tells a mouse all about it. When the mouse is offended, she talks about a terrier instead, which is a wonderful rat-killer; at this the mouse flees again, only returning after she promises not to speak of cats or dogs again. But she has learned nothing from this, and as soon as she has an audience of birds she starts to tell them in turn what a wonderful animal her cat is.

Truly to understand what links the world of Alice in Wonderland with the Trump presidency you have to perform one final imaginative inversion and picture not just what Wonderland looked like to Alice, but how Alice seemed to the inhabitants of Wonderland—and how happy they must have been to see her go.

The Real Foreign Policy of ‘Alice in Wonderland’

Elements in EndTheMaddnessNow’s post today inspired me. Not sure whether it was the list of top 40 music or the Volkswagens but something fired up the old noggin to dig deep into the memory banks and retrieve a few files I thought I would share.

1967

Having a birthday during the first week of January is kind of cool because except for a couple of days, each calendar year is equivalent to a year of my life so it is easy to keep track of things or at least as best as my months away from 70 year old brain can. I turned 12 in 1967.

Because of my “problems” and after enduring a tumultuous 5th and 6th grade at four different schools in Reno, NV, my parents (mom & step-dad) decided a fresh start was needed as they were tired of moving and stuff to try and keep me in a school that wasn’t horrible so after the 6th grade we decided to move to Phoenix, where my mom and I lived before moving to Reno, with the hopes of putting down more substantial roots.

I don’t remember much about that summer but things come clearly into focus when it was time to start junior high (7th grade) because the same old shit started happening again – the school wouldn’t enroll me unless I cut my hair and that just wasn’t happening. By this point in my life asserting myself more outwardly like other girls (or at least not as a boy) had become very important to me and my hair was a big part of that. Besides, a pact between my mom and I made after the 3rd grade promised I could grow out my hair if I stopped begging to wear girl’s clothes all the time and I held her to it.

In a significant show of love and support, my folks got with an attorney and threatened to sue the school board who eventually caved in and made an exception so right off the bat I was a troublemaker but I was allowed to start school although a week later than everyone else.

Let’s just say I was not treated too kindly and I didn’t make it a week before something else happened. A PE coach tried to drag me into the boy’s locker room/showers and I wasn’t having it and fought back. I was promptly suspended and forced to see a school district appointed psychologist before I could return.

Having been seeing psychologists and psychiatrists from the time I was 10 before starting the 5th grade, I was none too happy about this but in addition to the school’s minion, my folks also found a “private mental health professional” to send me to so I was seeing two shrinks at once and hated every second of it but lied, bullshitted and stonewalled my way through.

I was never really privy to the details but both recognized my extreme distress and I was permanently excused from PE class and the whole locker room/shower debacle. Two weeks later I was allowed back in school and spent 7th and 8th grade PE class folding towels in the coach’s office which was fine with me and something I considered a big win.

No doubt encouraged by the shrinks, it was about this time my folks started talking to me about being gay. I didn’t really know what gay (or trans) was, I was mature for my age from all the crap I’d been through and different places I’d lived but naïve and innocent is so many other ways and since most everyone had treated me like a freak, I wasn’t really interested in boys or girls. My folks let me know that if I was gay, it wouldn’t make any difference in their love for me so I just ran with that for the next few years as it was easier than reviving all my early childhood assertions about really being a girl and avoiding the whole shitstorm that caused but moving on…

The whole hippie thing and the summer of love was something I saw on the evening news with great fascination. Like other sociopolitical events in the ‘60s, the civil rights movements, women’s liberation and the burgeoning sexual revolution, I found it all very interesting and was excited things were moving beyond the stultifying 1950s ethos and saw many of these changes embraced by my parents who were in their mid 30s in 1967 and fancied themselves as modern, progressive and cool which was definitely to my benefit.

It might have been ’67 or ’68 but I got this poster for my bedroom. LBJ on a Harley chopper. LOL!



Not that they were hippies or radicals or anything, my step-dad was a retired Lutheran pastor working as a psychologist for the state helping the visually impaired and my mom, a simple farm girl artist turned office person working her way up in construction administration for a custom home builder but they embraced these cultural revolutions and newfound freedoms. In 1967, my step-dad bought a new VW Microbus and my mom a Pontiac GTO.



I started driving the VW bus when I got my learner’s permit and took my 1st time driving test in it in 1971 when I turned 16 and got my license. I loved that thing and no, it didn’t have peace signs or flowers on it. Later on I inherited the GTO when my hot rod mom bought a Trans-Am.

I went on to own 3 air-cooled Beetles, a Karman Ghia and this rare beast.



Looking through ETMN’s music list really brought back some memories. There were two competing AM radio top-40 stations in Phoenix. KRIZ and KRUX and I was super into music as were my folks although they exposed me to other things beyond pop. Music was actually good back then.

Here is a list of Billboard magazine's Top Hot 100 songs of 1967. How many boomers remember some of these classics? How many not boomers know these songs or artists?

1 To Sir With Love Lulu
2 The Letter The Box Tops
3 Ode to Billie Joe Bobbie Gentry
4 Windy The Association
5 I'm a Believer The Monkees
6 Light My Fire The Doors
7 Somethin' Stupid Frank & Nancy Sinatra
8 Happy Together The Turtles
9 Groovin' The Young Rascals
10 Can't Take My Eyes Off You Frankie Valli
11 Little Bit O' Soul The Music Explosion
12 I Think We're Alone Now Tommy James and the Shondells
13 Respect Aretha Franklin
14 I Was Made to Love Her Stevie Wonder
15 Come Back When You Grow Up Bobby Vee
16 Kind of a Drag The Buckinghams
17 Sweet Soul Music Arthur Conley
18 Expressway to Your Heart Soul Survivors
19 Soul Man Sam & Dave
20 Never My Love The Association
21 Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie Jay & the Techniques
22 Come On Down to My Boat Every Mother's Son
23 Incense and Peppermints Strawberry Alarm Clock
24 Ruby Tuesday The Rolling Stones
25 It Must Be Him Vikki Carr
26 Love Is Here and Now You're Gone The Supremes
27 For What It's Worth Buffalo Springfield
28 Gimme Little Sign Brenton Wood
29 The Happening The Supremes
30 All You Need Is Love The Beatles
31 Release Me Engelbert Humperdinck
32 Your Precious Love Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell
33 Somebody to Love Jefferson Airplane
34 Get on Up The Esquires
35 Brown Eyed Girl Van Morrison
36 Jimmy Mack Martha and the Vandellas
37 I Got Rhythm The Happenings
38 A Whiter Shade of Pale Procol Harum
39 Don't You Care The Buckinghams
40 Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye The Casinos
41 Reflections The Supremes
42 On a Carousel The Hollies
43 Please Love Me Forever Bobby Vinton
44 Alfie Dionne Warwick
45 Silence Is Golden The Tremeloes
46 My Cup Runneth Over Ed Ames
47 Up, Up and Away The 5th Dimension
48 San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair) Scott McKenzie
49 The Rain, the Park & Other Things The Cowsills
50 There's a Kind of Hush Herman's Hermits
51 Mercy, Mercy, Mercy The Buckinghams
52 This Is My Song Petula Clark
53 (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher Jackie Wilson
54 I've Been Lonely Too Long The Young Rascals
55 Penny Lane The Beatles
56 You're My Everything The Temptations
57 Georgy Girl The Seekers
58 Western Union Five Americans
59 Baby I Love You Aretha Franklin
60 A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You The Monkees
61 California Nights Lesley Gore
62 Dedicated to the One I Love The Mamas & the Papas
63 How Can I Be Sure The Young Rascals
64 Carrie Anne The Hollies
65 (We Ain't Got) Nothin' Yet Blues Magoos
66 Friday on My Mind The Easybeats
67 Soul Finger Bar-Kays
68 Gimme Some Lovin' The Spencer Davis Group
69 Let It Out (Let It All Hang Out) The Hombres
70 Let's Live for Today The Grass Roots
71 Close Your Eyes Peaches & Herb
72 Groovin' Booker T. & the M.G.'s
73 Funky Broadway Wilson Pickett
74 Pleasant Valley Sunday The Monkees
75 I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You) Aretha Franklin
76 Tell It Like It Is Aaron Neville
77 Cold Sweat James Brown
78 She'd Rather Be with Me The Turtles
79 98.6 Keith
80 Here We Go Again Ray Charles
81 White Rabbit Jefferson Airplane
82 Bernadette Four Tops
83 The Beat Goes On Sonny & Cher
84 Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron The Royal Guardsmen
85 Society's Child Janis Ian
86 Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon Neil Diamond
87 Ain't No Mountain High Enough Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell
88 I Take It Back Sandy Posey
89 Here Comes My Baby The Tremeloes
90 Everlasting Love Robert Knight
91 I Dig Rock and Roll Music Peter, Paul and Mary
92 Little Ole Man (Uptight, Everything's Alright) Bill Cosby
93 I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night) The Electric Prunes
94 Daydream Believer The Monkees
95 Baby I Need Your Lovin' Johnny Rivers
96 I Can See for Miles The Who
97 Mirage Tommy James and the Shondells
98 Green, Green Grass of Home Tom Jones
99 Don't Sleep in the Subway Petula Clark
100 Thank the Lord for the Night Time Neil Diamond

What were you doing in 1967?

Attached Files

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Some of the latest reveled developments and capabilities of USN attack Submarines ....
Some of the sea mines are impressive with their ability to lay dormant and fire a torpedo at a target at range during a conflict. 

Dr. Scott Atlas on Why We Were Forced to Jab & Mask

https://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread1349317/pg1

Quote:In 2020, Dr. Scott Atlas was an advisor to the president and a member of the White House COVID-19 Task Force. He was shocked to see how powerful figures in Washington, including Dr. Fauci, were incentivized to politicize and monetize the response to the pandemic. In this candid conversation with PragerU CEO Marissa Streit, Dr. Atlas reveals that many Americans may have died because of censorship, dishonesty, and the demonization of medical dissent. Will Americans allow this to happen again?

Article 4 of the new Russia-DPRK treaty: In the event that either party falls into a state of war due to armed aggression from an individual state or multiple states, the other party shall immediately provide military and other assistance by all means available...according to various media, which is all unconfirmed.

Quote:Russia Struck a Defense Pact With North Korea. What Does It Mean?

The new defense treaty demonstrates a growing closeness between the two pariah states that is likely to make the rest of the world uneasy.



This Expert Brief combines interviews with Sue Mi Terry, senior fellow for Korea studies, and Stephen Sestanovich, George F. Kennan senior fellow for Russian and Eurasian Studies. Terry was a deputy national intelligence officer for East Asia at the National Intelligence Council from 2009 to 2010. Sestanovich was the U.S. State Department’s ambassador-at-large for the former Soviet Union from 1997 to 2001.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un just signed a new defense pact. Why now?

SUE MI TERRY: Putin capped off his two-day trip to North Korea today with the surprise signing of a new comprehensive strategic partnership pact. The actual text of the document has yet to be released, so the details are uncertain, but the treaty is said to include a mutual defense provision, calling for each country to provide military assistance should the other be attacked.

STEPHEN SESTANOVICH: “Why now?” This is the easy question. North Korea has been supplying Russia with arms for its war in Ukraine, and Putin is paying them off with a great big thank you. 

TERRY: Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 forced Moscow to look to North Korea for munitions—and Pyongyang has delivered, providing artillery ammunition and short-range rockets that Russia has used against Ukraine. In return, Russia is likely to provide not only economic aid, as North Korea desperately needs cheap oil from Russia, but also military aid to help improve North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program.

The new treaty is a sign of the growing closeness between these two pariah states. As Putin said, “This is a truly breakthrough document, reflecting the desire of the two countries not to rest on their laurels, but to raise our relations to a new qualitative level.”

SESTANOVICH: But let’s also remember to ask, “Why ever?”  

For years, North Korea has not been part of international polite society. All major powers—and the entire UN Security Council—stood against its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. Putin hadn’t visited North Korea since 2000, for a reason. But he's now cast his lot more irrevocably with the world’s rogues, and even if he claims it’s part of building an anti-U.S. “world majority,” the result in Japan and South Korea—in virtually all countries that Russia used to treat as more important than North Korea—has to be shock. There’s probably even some cringing within the Russian elite, asking themselves if they really want to be Kim Jong Un’s “dearest friend.”

What does this pact commit the two countries to do?

SESTANOVICH: Even after the text is made public, important questions will likely remain unanswered. Russian diplomats will likely be telling other governments not to worry and that they won’t do anything stupid—that Putin is just paying Kim off with a show, with meaningless gestures. What we don’t know is what’s been promised in secret—or will be promised over time. Kim has learned he’s got Putin where he wants him. So don’t be surprised if, before the next delivery of artillery shells, North Korean officials say, “you know, we were wondering whether you could help us out with X or Y.”

What does the treaty say about North Korean and Russian intentions?  

TERRY: This treaty makes clear that Putin has abandoned all hopes of joining the West and is instead intent on bringing down the U.S.-led international order by making common cause with China, Iran, and North Korea. In the process, he is throwing a vital lifeline to a North Korean regime that remains weak and impoverished despite the success of its WMD program. Having failed to reach a deal with the United States under former President Donald Trump, North Korea has now broken out of its diplomatic isolation by making a deal with Russia.

What is the significance of the treaty?

TERRY: Because neither country is likely to be attacked by an aggressor, the mutual defense provision is unlikely to be invoked—unless North Korea chooses to pretend that the Russian “special military operation” in Ukraine is not an unprovoked invasion, but rather (as Putin pretends) a defensive measure against aggression by Ukraine and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). 

If that were to happen, it’s possible that North Korea could send soldiers to fight in the Russian army—a military version of the “guest workers” that Pyongyang has sent around the world for years as a way of earning hard currency. Russia could certainly use more manpower given the heavy losses it is suffering in Ukraine and its own demographic woes in recent decades.  

The more likely consequence of the treaty is simply closer cooperation in weapons production, with North Korea manufacturing more munitions for Russia and Russia providing more high-end help for North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, likely including aid in developing submarines capable of launching ballistic nuclear missiles. Both countries will become more dangerous as a result of this new partnership.

North Korea and Russia are both nuclear powers. Does this mean Russia will provide help to improve North Korean WMD capabilities?

TERRY: The likelihood is that, yes, this will lead Russia to improve North Korean WMD capabilities. There is some evidence of this already happening, with Russia possibly providing help to North Korea with its successful satellite launch last November, just two months after the last Putin-Kim meeting. This is deeply concerning because of the substantial overlap between the technologies used for space launches and intercontinental ballistic missiles. Russia can also provide North Korea with critical help in areas where its capabilities are still nascent, such as submarine-launched ballistic missiles. There is no way to tell how much assistance Russia will provide—and Moscow will always be wary of parting with its most cutting-edge technology—but there is no doubt that Russia has the capability, if it so desires, to substantially increase the threat that North Korea poses to its neighbors.

Is this new pact a revival of the now defunct 1961 treaty between North Korea and Russia?

TERRY: The mutual defense provision in the new Russia-North Korea treaty recalls the 1961 Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance [PDF] between North Korea and the Soviet Union that was voided by the collapse of the latter in 1991. The mutual defense clause was notably missing when the two countries signed a Treaty of Friendship, Good Neighborliness, and Cooperation in 2000 at the beginning of Putin’s reign.

In subsequent years, Russia cooperated with the United States to try and limit North Korea’s WMD program by imposing sanctions at the United Nations. Those days have clearly passed—and are unlikely to return. This year, on March 28, Russia actually vetoed the UN Security Council resolution reauthorizing an independent panel of experts to monitor North Korean sanctions compliance. The new treaty symbolizes the growing closeness between Moscow and Pyongyang.

SESTANOVICH: This new pact may or may not fall short of the one signed in 1961, but the wording isn’t the only interesting comparison.

In 1961, Soviet policy was on a tear. Premier Nikita Khrushchev revived nuclear testing, exploding the biggest bombs ever; built the wall between East and West Berlin; had a famously confrontational meeting with U.S. President John F. Kennedy; was waging a fierce rhetorical war with Chinese leader Mao Zedong; and was probably starting to think about missiles in Cuba, which he deployed a year later. The question for Western policymakers now is whether Putin is becoming comparably reckless. His language in North Korea—where he denounced the United States as a “worldwide neocolonialist dictatorship”—might make you think so.

What does the pact mean for Ukraine?  

SESTANOVICH: Ukraine, has, of course, been feeling the impact of North Korean supplies for some time. It’s not clear to me whether there’s anything that Kim has been holding back from the Russian war effort, so there may not be much change in that respect. But we probably ought to look at the impact of this alliance in broader terms.

On the one hand, Ukraine can say to its Western friends that Putin has made absolutely clear that he poses a threat to Western allies everywhere. In conversation with their counterparts in Japan and South Korea, Ukrainian leaders will have even less trouble saying we’re all in this together. On the other hand, Putin has also telegraphed a readiness for escalation that will surely unsettle some Western governments. We don’t know yet how this will play out.   

What is China’s view of this pact?

TERRY: The Chinese are conflicted. They are North Korea’s biggest supporters, but they also have an uneasy relationship characterized by suspicion on both sides. Chinese President Xi Jinping didn’t even meet with Kim Jong Un until Trump decided to meet with him.

From the Chinese perspective, close ties between Russia and North Korea are a welcome distraction for Washington. But China is also wary of having Russia dilute its sway over North Korea by offering itself as an alternative source of support. North Korea’s increasing military collaboration with Russia undermines Beijing’s almost exclusive geopolitical influence over Pyongyang. Beijing may also be concerned that the Russia-North Korea axis could bring the United States, Japan, and South Korea closer together and increase the U.S. military footprint near China.

Given that there are some overlapping concerns in Beijing and Washington, it would make sense for the Joe Biden administration to reach out to the Chinese government and try to foster greater unease about closer Russia-North Korea alignment.

What should the United States do in response?

TERRY: The Biden administration has extremely limited options for responding. The best that it can do would be to double down on sanctions on both North Korea and Russia while strengthening the trilateral relationship between the United States, Japan, and South Korea.

At the same time, the Biden administration should also continue to pursue efforts to bring together U.S. allies in Asia with those in Europe—an effort that has already borne fruit with the leaders of Australia, Japan, and South Korea attending NATO summits. South Korea has also reportedly provided artillery ammunition to the United States to enable U.S. ammunition transfers to Ukraine. Washington’s Asian allies need to double down on their support for Ukraine because of the growing links between Russia and the countries that threaten them in Asia—namely China and North Korea. If the world’s dictators are uniting against the U.S.-led international order, the world’s democracies need to unite in its defense.

SESTANOVICH: The Putin-Kim alliance further adds to the importance of “helping Ukraine win the war”—that exact phrase is directly from the new U.S.-Ukraine bilateral security agreement announced last week. There’s no better way to show the limits of North Korean arms supplies than to associate them with a losing cause. And there’s no better way to give Putin (or his successor) second thoughts about his foolish opening to Pyongyang than to show its futility. Fortunately, the shock of Putin’s visit is great enough that policymakers—in Washington and elsewhere—may understand what they need to do. 

Interesting continued research into how a dog functions in this world. https://lists.youmaker.com/links/mb225Dm...VZhlDsUCTn

Quote:Ukraine released footage of their special forces battling Russian troops inside Syria. This happened in the Golan Heights. Ukraine hit Russian checkpoints, ammunition storage depots, and logistics convoys. Then Russian foot Patrols were ambushed with small arms fire. But How did Ukraine's Khimik team insert into Syria nearly 1,000 miles away? and why are they diverting forces to a seemingly unrelated battle? The fight is also spilling over into Sudan as of last year. What does it mean for all these conflicts starting to bump up against each other?

https://lists.theepochtimes.com/links/BJ...jAhmQ4KoIX

Quote:1,000 People Live on a Rock Smaller Than a Football Field on a Giant Lake—But You'll Never Guess Why


Migingo Island is one of the most populated islands on Earth. (Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images)

By Michael Wing
6/17/2024
Updated:
6/17/2024
On a tiny island on the world’s second-largest freshwater lake two nations wage Africa’s “smallest war.”
An iron-clad tortoise of rock and sheet metal juts from Lake Victoria, christened after Britain’s late queen, surrounded by over 23,000 square miles of water. Here a thronging mix of nationalities mingles—despite territorial disputes, competition over fishing, and myriad viewpoints—all in relative harmony on an island less than half the size of a football field.
All this began over three decades ago, with reports of fishermen earning three to four times in a day what shore-based cohorts earned in a month, driving anglers to seek their fortunes on Migingo Island, the outcrop in question, at the very source of the Nile River.

United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations

We have over 2,000 years of written records, remarkedly consistent given the turnover of empires & technology - of how to successfully eliminate piracy. In the Red Sea, we decided to ignore that and only do part of the recipe but expect the same result.

Quote:Shortly after Israel began its war on Gaza last year, Yemen’s Ansarallah, commonly known as the Houthis, began firing missiles and drones at Israel-linked merchant and commercial vessels in the Gulf of Aden and southern Red Sea.

This was Ansarallah’s way of supporting the Palestinians in Gaza by “counter-blockading the blockader.” Such action has been consistent with Ansarallah’s practice of taking an “eye-for-an-eye” when dealing with the rebel movement’s domestic and foreign enemies.

Perceiving this Houthi conduct near the Bab al-Mandab strait as a major threat to the global economy, the U.S. and U.K. — with nonoperational support from Australia, Bahrain, Canada, and the Netherlands — began waging military operations against Ansarallah on January 12. The aim has been to deter the Houthis from carrying out such maritime attacks.

The coalition has been waging these strikes against the Houthis on almost a daily basis for the past five months. Recently, on June 7, the U.S. and U.K. conducted six air strikes — four of which targeted Yemen’s Hodeidah airport and the Salif seaport, while two were against the al-Thawra region, according to the Houthi-owned, Beirut-based Al Masirah TV.

These strikes came eight days after the two Western militaries attacked Houthi targets in Hodeida and southern Yemen, killing at least 16 and wounding 35 in what appeared to be one of Washington and London’s largest attacks against Ansarallah since the joint American-British campaign began in mid-January.

How much damage the strikes have inflicted on the Houthi war machine and its ability to continue attacking maritime targets is difficult to determine. Nonetheless, these operations, which have cost the U.S. some $1 billion according to a new intelligence report, have ultimately failed to deter Ansarallah, which continues firing missiles and drones at vessels off Yemen’s coast.

“Clearly, there has been some damage [to Houthi targets], but not at a significant level; the Houthis have suffered some losses, but they retain the ability to obstruct maritime shipping in the Red Sea,” said Thomas Juneau, an associate professor who focuses on the Middle East at the University of Ottawa's Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, in an interview with RS.

“And perhaps more importantly, beyond the material damage they have suffered, their intent to continue obstructing shipping in the Red Sea has not wavered.”

Neil Quilliam, an associate fellow in the Middle East and North Africa program at the London-based think tank Chatham House, sees the overall situation similarly. “The Houthis have remained undeterred, and the U.S.-U.K. strikes have had limited impact as evidenced by continued attacks despite repeated U.S.-U.K. attempts to disrupt the group’s campaign,” he told RS. “Continuation of the military campaign is unlikely to deter the Houthis.”

Since the military campaign against the de facto Yemeni government in Sanaa began in January, the U.S. has waged 450 strikes against Ansarallah. There is good reason to question the sustainability of these U.S.-U.K. operations against the Houthis. “Their supply of weapons from Iran is cheap and highly sustainable, but ours is expensive and our logistics tails are long. We are playing whack-a-mole, and they are playing a long game,” the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Emily Harding recently told the Wall Street Journal.

The Biden administration refuses to see Houthi conduct in the Gulf of Aden and the southern Red Sea as linked to the U.S.-backed Israeli war on Gaza. Although Ansarallah has been straightforward with their vows to cease disruptive behavior off Yemen’s coasts once a ceasefire is in place in Gaza, the White House claims there is no connection between the two and that continuing these military operations against the Houthis, rather than addressing the root cause of this behavior, is the best course of action.

There is no denying that the coalition strikes have, to a significant extent, empowered the Houthis within Yemen and across the Arab world. Mindful of how anti-Israeli sentiments are shared by Yemenis across the country and its political spectrum, it has not been surprising to see Ansarallah boost its recruitment as a result of its maritime attacks waged under the banner of defending the Palestinians.

In the process, this has also put anti-Houthi forces in Yemen under increased pressure. This includes the Southern Transitional Council (STC), which depends on support from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Arab state that pioneered the Abraham Accords — a series of normalization agreements between Arab states and Israel. The Houthis have seized this crisis as an opportunity to “bolster their position as champions of the Palestinian cause, allowing them to increase their regional prestige and influence,” explained Juneau.

Ultimately it is unclear what Western and regional actors can do to influence the Houthis, who have proven their ability to live under intense pressure from the West and certain Arab states.

“The reality on the ground in Yemen is that the Houthis have won the civil war and the internationally recognized government is not in a position to challenge them; it is weak, fragmented, and corrupt,” Juneau told RS.

“The Houthis, moreover, fully intend to project their power beyond Yemen’s borders now that they have won the war. The U.S. faces a menu of only bad options in the face of this reality.”

Giorgio Cafiero is the CEO and founder of Gulf State Analytics, a geopolitical risk consultancy based in Washington, DC. He is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Georgetown University, and an Adjunct Fellow at the American Security Project.

Are the Houthis winning in the Red Sea?