“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. ...
Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow.
The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism.
Instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.”
On Stability and Chaos ...
“The point is that both Hitler and Stalin held out promises of stability in order to hide their intention of creating a state of permanent instability.”
On the Quality of Followers ...
“Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.”
Hannah Arendt, a Jewish activist
from Germany, in her famous book
'The Origins of Totalitarianism'
A rather reluctant position takes China's Global Times, not being acquainted to surprise actions of high-ranking political leaders. The photo shows an allegation to VOX News, the voice of Trump's Republican supporters, fitting with Trump's subliminal stance of 'bringing them behind bars'.
During the last days, Chinese social media have gone viral with remarks running down Kamala Harris while, at the same time, rather praising Donald Trump who, in reality, has never been China's friend.
While Chinese social media trended toward insulting personal attacks on Harris, state media remained focused on criticizing her professional qualifications.
One of the most-read articles from the nationalistic Global Times called her “mediocre” and said Harris — who previously served as San Francisco’s district attorney, California’s attorney general and a U.S. senator before being elected vice president — lacks the experience to serve as president. It asserted that she would continue to deepen alliances in Asia “in the face of China’s geopolitical ascendence.”
An article on Baidu’s news channel said former President Barack Obama’s lack of an immediate endorsement for Harris was “equivalent to expressing a lack of support.”
Another said, “Harris has not achieved any political achievements worth mentioning in the more than three years since she became vice president, her governing ability is limited, and she often laughs for no reason.”
Meanwhile, China’s lively social-media landscape was rife with sexist and disparaging posts.
[WSJ Market Watch on July 24]
Chinese netizen making fun of Harris' cheerful nature in his tweet posted on X on July 25, 2024.
Here an excerpt from the Global Times article presented above:
拜登宣布退选震惊各方！美媒：他成为56年来第一位放弃连任机会的现任美国总统
Biden's announcement of his withdrawal from the election shocked all sides! US media: He became the first current president of the United States in 56 years to give up the chance to be re-elected.
Under strong internal pressure, U.S. President Biden announced in a statement on July 21 afternoon local time that he withdrew from the 2024 U.S. presidential campaign,and expressed support for Vice President Harris received the Democratic Party nomination,candidate for president. U.S. media said this decision marked the rapid and shocking end of Biden’s 52 year election political life. Biden also became the first renounced re-election opportunity incumbent president in 56 years. The last relinquished re-election was that of President Lyndon Johnson, who announced in March 1968 that he did not seek another term. For Biden's resignation, former U.S. President Barack Obama praised his decision, and called "Biden is a top-ranking patriot." Democratic Senator Bennet specifically called Biden’s exit as giving Democrats a “defeating Trump opportunity”. However, Republican presidential candidate Trump criticized Biden as the worst president in U.S. history. He also described Harris as being more easily to defeat than Biden. The New York Times review said Biden mastered the U.S. outbreak of the epidemic and the resulting economic turmoil. However, the fractured hopes of U.S. expansion during the Trump administration have been dashed and America's society remains highly polarized. At the same time, Biden's decision subverted the campaign, laying the foundation for the noisy and unpredictable campaign activities unprecedented in modern history. Harris has only 107 days left to consolidate Democratic support, establishing herself as a credible national leader.
[Global Times on July 23, 2024. The article was published at a time when VP Kamala Harris already enjoyed broad support for her own nomination campaign within the Democratic Party.]
Israel has been attacked by a Yemeni Houthi drone. The attack seems to be partly successful. Here is how this became possible.
Let's begin with the US attacks on Houthi installations using America's MQ-9 'Reaper' drones.
Six of these drones were grounded by the Houthis, one of them probably belonging to an upgraded version able to intrude enemy territory without being observed.
So, US technology might have become available to their enemies, the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
I would just like to mention recent unnoted intrusions of Hezbollah surveillance drones into Israeli territory, making photos of the Haifa region and the Golan Heights. Another intrusion of a Houthi drone could now be responsible for the attack on Tel Aviv.
.........................................
MQ-9 'Reaper' drone equipped with new EW pod that makes it a 'black hole' that can 'disappear off of enemy radar,' top Marine general says.
The US Marine Corps has equipped its MQ-9 'Reaper' drones with a new electronic warfare pod. The pod "can mimic things that are sent to it," Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Eric Smith said.
The announcement follows the drone's struggles against the Houthi Rebels.
The US Marine Corps has equipped its MQ-9 'Reaper' drones with a new electronic warfare pod that can 'mimic' signals to help hide them from enemy sensors, a top US Marine Corps general has said, The War Zone reported.
According to Associated Press [AP], a video released by the Yemeni Houthi armed forces shows that a U. S. MQ-9 'Reaper' drone crashes after a surface-to-air missile attack on the desert area of Malib province in central Yemen. This is the third such incident this month.
Based on exposure image analysis, AP informs about the MQ-9 unmanned aerial vehicle in the desert that its tail component is separated from other parts of the fuselage. After the drone was shot down, at least one hatch on the fuselage seems to have been opened, but the main part of the drone is basically intact, and there is no obvious damage from explosion. It is worth noting that the drone does not appear to have any markings.
A senior U. S. defense official told Associated Press, “The U. S. Air Force has not lost any aircraft within the jurisdiction of U. S. Central Command. "The official refused to disclose more details. Associated Press said it came to believe that the CIA once dispatched a 'Reaper' drone over Yemen. When AP contacted U. S. Central Intelligence Agency, the agency refused to comment.
According to a Turkish Anadolu News Agency report, the Yemeni Houthi organization announced on [May] 29 that it shot down a U. S. drone in Malib province. Houthi spokesman Yahya Sarri said his militants shot down a U. S. MQ-9 'Reaper' drone in northern Yemen. Another statement said: "This drone was shot down by a surface-to-air missile while carrying out a hostile mission over Malib province. Others added: "This drone is the sixth drone to be shot down."
[SINA 新浪财经 on May 30, 2024]
..........................................
Yemeni Houthi rebels attacked near the US embassy in Tel Aviv. Here's how they managed to slip through the world's best-protected city.
For many years, Israel has been targeted by Hamas fighters from the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah from Lebanese territory. This has led to the creation of the world's most advanced anti-air and anti-missile defense system.
It's multi-layered and challenging to penetrate, but the Yemeni Houthi rebels demonstrated it is possible. They claimed responsibility for the attack on the night of July 18-19, 2024. The attack using the new Yafa drone was intended as a gesture of solidarity and support for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Additionally, the Houthis have announced more attacks in their declaration.
It's also worth noting that the drone's target was most likely the nearby American embassy, but the drone missed its intended target due to the precision of commercial navigation modules.
[Essanews, Warsaw / Poland on July 19, 2024]
THE FULL YEMENI ARMED FORCES STATEMENT:
In the name of Allah, the most gracious, the most merciful:
In support of the oppressed Palestinian people and their mujahideen, and in retaliation to the Zionist enemy's massacres against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.
The UAV force of the Yemeni Armed Forces, with the help of Allah Almighty, carried out a specific military operation, which consisted of targeting one of the important targets in the occupied Yafa region, what is now called Israeli Tel Aviv.
The operation was carried out with a new drone called "Yafa", which is capable of bypassing the enemy's interception systems and undetectable by radars. The operation has achieved its goals successfully.
The Yemeni Armed Forces declare the occupied Yafa region an unsafe area and will be a primary target within the range of our weapons. and will focus on targeting the Zionist enemy's internal front and reaching the depths.
In announcing this specific operation, the Yemeni Armed Forces confirm that they have a bank of targets in occupied Palestine, including sensitive military and security targets, and will continue, with the help of Allah Almighty, to strike those targets in response to the enemy's massacres and daily crimes against our people in the Gaza Strip.
The operations of the Yemeni Armed Forces continue to support the heroic mujahideen in Gaza who are defending all our people and countries of our Arab and Islamic Ummah, and their operations will not stop unless the aggression and the siege on the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip is lifted.
Allah is sufficient for us, and He is the best disposer of affairs, the best protector, and the best helper.
Long live Yemen, free, beloved and independent.
Victory belongs to Yemen and to all the free people of the Ummah.
Sanaa,
Muharram 13, 1446 AH
July 19, 2024 AD
Issued by the Yemeni Armed Forces
Citizen Trump posing
for the perfect shot
before the cameras.
Editor's Comment:
When we experienced incompetent George Bush jun. and the useless wars he started, we thought it couldn't come worse. Then we learnt about Trump and his "ability" to invent reality and incite American hillbillies. What comes next ? Lincoln 2.0 and the American Civil War ?
كيف تخترق مسيّرات حزب الله الدفاعات الجوية الإسرائيلية؟
مما يستدلّ به على العجز الإسرائيلي إزاء الجبهة الشمالية، هو ما سُرّب عن مصدر في الجيش إلى الإعلام، وتحديدًا صحيفة "يديعوت أحرونوت"، تعقيبًا على الاختراق الذي حققته مسيّرة حزب الله "الهدهد" في حيفا، من أن عدم إسقاطها كان لـ"تفادي إحداث حالة من الهلع في المدينة، أو التسبب بأضرار من أثر الصاروخ الاعتراضي
لا تفضح هذا الادعاء حقيقة أن طائرات أف- 16 الإسرائيلية تدخّلت في عام 2013 لإسقاط طائرة وصلت إلى ميناء حيفا ذاته الذي شوهد في الصور، ولا أن مسيّرة قبلها، اسمها "أيوب"، وصلت حتى مفاعل ديمونا في أقصى الجنوب وأقرّ الاحتلال في حينها أنها ربّما تكون قد التقطت صورًا حساسة للمنشأة النووية، وحسب، بل أن جيش الاحتلال ما زال يتلقّى الضربة تلو الأخرى من مسيّرات حزب الله اللبناني، من قصف قاعدة المطلة بصاروخين موجّهين قبل انقضاض المسيّرة الناقلة على الهدف، إلى ضرب بالون "طال هشمايم" -وأحد مهامه رصد الطائرات بدون طيار- في مفترق غولاني، إلى الإجهاز على بطارية قبة حديدية في ثكنة "راموت نفتالي" في السابع من هذا الشهر
لكلّ ذلك، يمكن القول إن الحرب الحالية سجّلت إخفاقًا غير مسبوق لما ظلّت تفاخر به إسرائيل على أنه أحد أكثر أنظمة الدفاع في العالم تقدّما، وتشابكًا، وكلفة، من القبة الحديدية، إلى "مقلاع داود" التي دخلت الخدمة حديثًا خلال جولة التصعيد مع حركة الجهاد الإسلامي، ثم إلى سائر ما تملكه من طائرات متفوّقة. كيف إذًا يمكن لطائرات لا يتجاوز ثمن إحداها بضع مئات من الدولارات، وربما يشتريها أشخاص هواة للتسلية، على حد وصف مقال في مجلة Air and Space Power، أن تُعجز نظامًا دفاعيًّا بكل تلك التقانة؟
...............
How do Hezbollah rallies penetrate Israeli air defenses?
An indication of Israel's inability on the northern front is what was leaked by an army source to the media, specifically the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, commenting on the breakthrough achieved by the march of Hezbollah's "Hudhud" in Haifa, that not shooting it down was to "avoid causing panic in the city, or causing damage from the impact of the interceptor missile. "
This claim not only exposes the fact that Israeli F-16s intervened in 2013 to shoot down a plane that arrived at the same Haifa port seen in the photos, nor that a drone before it, called "Ayoub", reached the Dimona reactor in the far south and the occupation admitted at the time that it may have taken sensitive photos of the nuclear facility, but that the occupation army is still receiving one blow after another from Lebanese Hezbollah marches, from the bombing of the Metulla base with two guided missiles before. A drone pounced on the target hitting the [radar dome of] "Tal Hashimim" - one of [the dome's tasks] being to monitor drones - at the Golani junction, [another one] finished off an Iron Dome battery in the "Ramot Naftali" barracks on the seventh of this month.
For all this, it can be said that the current war has recorded an unprecedented failure of what Israel has been boasting of as one of the most advanced, intertwined, and expensive defense systems in the world, from the Iron Dome to the newly entered David's Sling during the round of escalation with Islamic Jihad, and then to all its superior aircraft. How, then, can planes that cost only a few hundred dollars and may be bought by amateurs for entertainment, as an article in Air and Space Power put it, fail to have a defense system with all that technology?
................
Beyond the defensive gap
With the threat of drones being a reality, their impact in any close battle may go beyond providing images and data to Hezbollah in real time, and enabling its forces to gather field information on the deployment and location of enemy units. In a scenario of "roof without roof and without controls," as the party's secretary-general Hassan Nasr Allah said in his recent speech, a scenario like the one warned of by the American think tank Alma two years before the current war became possible: The party's drone swarms attack the air defense systems in northern Israel, which could neutralize them or cause them severe damage, and then the entire north becomes exposed to the heavier warheads in the party's arsenal.
[العربي الجديد two weeks ago]
Editor's Note: Alma Research and Education Center is an
Israel based organization rather than a US think tank. As
Alma is known to maintain close contact with high-ranking
US officials, it cannot be excluded that they are being
supported by the US government as well.
..........................
Data passing through New York / Manhattan
probably via some Australian internet node.
The largest source of missile technology for Yemen's Houthi rebels is Iran, which has also successfully tested hypersonic missiles. So, where did Iran's advanced missile technology come from?
To develop hypersonic missiles, there are three main difficulties, the first is computer control capabilities. When a missile is flying at a high speed of more than 5 times the speed of sound, the radio signal can be severely affected. Therefore, in order to control the missile's flight trajectory at high speed without the slightest deviation, computer processing power is very important.
Secondly, hypersonic missiles can reach extremely high speeds, and it is necessary to conduct repeated wind tunnel tests of aerodynamic shapes. It is necessary to have a variety of wind tunnel systems to make the measurements. Finally, high-performance rocket engines can soar at high speeds.
There is information that the hypersonic missiles of the Houthis in Yemen are also solid rocket engines, and the maximum speed can be 8 times the speed of sound. It can be directly hit at Israeli dominion.
To this end, Yemen's Houthi leader Malik Houthi said that now our enemies should see all this, and Yemen's Houthi missile strike capabilities have become among the best in the world.
Where did the Yemeni Houthis come from with this alien technology? In addition to Iran's Persian Gulf anti-ship ballistic missiles and Fatah 110 tactical missiles, the other missiles of the Yemeni Houthis are Qahe ballistic missiles modified from SAM-2 anti-aircraft missiles, and Badr-1, Badr-P1 and Badr-F ballistic missiles modified from Scud missiles.
[腾讯网 on July 1st, 2024]
So Russia and China seem to be the most important 'suspects'.
As to me, it makes sense to compare the Yemenite Houthis with North Korea, known to have recently carried out hypersonic missile tests itself. The recently proclaimed 'deepening of bilateral friendship' between Russia and N-Korea is serving the extensive delivery of munitions and weapons from N-Korea to Russia needed to fuel Russia's war on Ukraine.
On the other hand, China has undergone a massive technological leap in the development of sophisticated weaponry, hypersonic missiles included, such that both, the Yemenite Houthis and N-Korea, could benefit from there. China's foreign policies could establish an ideal basis for some discrete 'help from their friends'.
Here are two additional articles related to the subject:
North Korean airborne "garbage balloon" and projectile picture protest Korea-Japan Joint Military Exercice
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said that North Korea launched a ballistic missile from around Pyongyang towards the eastern waters of the Korean Peninsula at 5. 30 a. m. on Wednesday (June 26), flying more than 250 kilometers. It is likely that North Korea conducted a forced test-launch in order to improve solid-fuel hypersonic missile performance, but ultimately failed.
South Korean military personnel pointed out,North Korea this year announced a successful test launch of a solid-fuel hypersonic missile,this time may be for further testing missile.
Analysis believes,North Korea this provocation may be against South Korea,U. S. and Japan held joint military exercises,Arrival of South Korea's USThe aircraft carrier is not only North Korea vigilant U. S. military strategic assets, but also will participate in military exercises, so North Korea is very sensitive
Picture: The South Korean military said North Korea failed to launch a ballistic missile from Pyongyang into the eastern waters of the Korean peninsula early on Wednesday, June 26. Near the North Korean border on the maritime border of Yontsun Island can be seen one article believed to be a North Korean ballistic missile-producing vapor trail.
Founded in 2019, Tianbing Science & Technology is a Chinese private commercial aerospace company. The company is mainly dedicated to the development of new generation liquid rocket engines and medium and large liquid carrier rockets. In April last year, Tianbing Science Tenlong No. 2 remote carrier rocket was successfully launched from China Sake Spring Satellite Launch Center. Many of its core teams come from China Aerospace Technology (.....) and China Aerospace Engineering.
Tianbing Scientific and Technological Founder and Chairman of the Board Kang YongLai, has been engaged in rocket launch technology research and development and project management for nearly 20 years, is a typical scientific entrepreneur.
Kang YongLai was Director of the Rocket Launch General Laboratory, Deputy Chief Model Officer, and Chief Engineer of the China Rocket Launch Technology Research Institute. As the youngest head of the research laboratory in the history of the institute, Kang YongLai presided over the overall demonstration design of the Tongfeng-17 hypersonic missile and the Long March 11 launch vehicle.
