Eternally Vigilant,
Simplicius with Ukraine war update: SITREP 10/27/25: Pokrovsk Reaches Its Final Arc as Russian Bulldozer Plows Ahead
The [Economist] piece centers on the massive disappointment that Western drones have brought with them on the Ukrainian battlefield... The West was hoodwinked into drinking its own bathwater by the so-called “success” its drones experienced in total mismatch “wars” like Iraq and Afghanistan.....The article only passingly mentions something quite interesting and important, which I have harped on many times in the past. That one of the reasons Western companies and ‘innovators’ in general may be refusing to fully commit to creating wonder-weapons for Ukraine is the shaky ‘long-term business case’...
..The [Ukrainian] drones which reach extremely deeply into the Ural zone, such as the strike on an Orenburg refinery earlier in the month, end up doing very little damage due to their small warhead size. Their main purpose appears to be a ‘psychological effect’, and the ability to merely rouse headlines sporting new “high score” counts of 1500km, 2000km+, and more into the Russian heartland. Further, since only a couple kinds of Ukrainian drones can even make it that distance—like the Lyuti—these long-range attacks are extremely limited compared to the hits on refineries much closer to the Ukrainian border....."Drones, however, can carry only a limited payload, which is why Ukraine is also developing its missile program."
Unfortunately, this so-called “missile program” doesn’t really exist. Ukrainian MP Roman Kostenko had just recently explained the ‘Flamingo’ missile program has no money, has not started any kind of real production, and the missile itself has never even been tested at more than 50% of its claimed flight range...
..Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev also explained what the real result of the refinery hits and energy sanctions on Russia will be—in short, higher oil prices which will lead to Russia simply selling less oil for more, and making roughly the same bank... Unfortunately, this so-called “missile program” doesn’t really exist. Ukrainian MP Roman Kostenko had just recently explained the ‘Flamingo’ missile program has no money, has not started any kind of real production, and the missile itself has never even been tested at more than 50% of its claimed flight range...
..Trump’s new ‘sanctions’ on Russia are mostly for show. According to him, the sleight-of-hand actually resulted in the sanctioning of US companies buying Russian oil...
..The fact that Russia is destroying far more of the Ukrainian energy sector and infrastructure in general also gets only a passing mention... https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-102725-pokrovsk-reaches-its Big Serge has a fine view of the progress of the Ukraine war to date: Living Dangerously - Russo-Ukrainian War: Autumn 2025 The Russo-Ukrainian War seems to have been engineered in a laboratory to frustrate people with repetition and analytic paralysis. Headlines appear to be circulating on a choreographed loop, all the way down to the place names. Kaja Kallas at the European Commission recently announced, without a hint of irony, that Europe’s new sanctions package - the 19th one - is the toughest yet. Ukraine’s supporters are insisting that Tomahawk missiles are the weapons system that will finally change the game and break the war decisively in Kiev’s favor - reiterating the same grandiose claims that they made about GLMRS, and Leopards, and Abrams, and F-16s, and Storm Shadows, and ATACMs, and virtually every other piece of military hardware in NATO’s inventories...
..The analytic frameworks applied to the war have also changed relatively little, buried and obfuscated by the nebulous concept of attrition. On the Ukrainian side, there is continued insistence that Russia is suffering exorbitant losses and straining under the pressure of Ukrainian deep strikes, while Ukrainian setbacks are blamed in large part on the failure of the United States to expand its largesse and give Ukraine everything it needs. Many pro-Russian lines of thinking mirror this and suppose that the AFU is on the verge of disintegration, while the Kremlin is accused of failing to “take the gloves off”, particularly in regards to the Ukrainian energy grid, Dnieper bridges, and dams...
..This is an extraordinarily high-intensity ground war. Both armies remain in the field, holding hundreds of miles of continuous front after years of bloody fighting. Both armies are (depending on who you ask) taking unsustainable casualties which ought to lead to collapse soon, and yet Moscow, Keiv, and Washington are all (again, depending on who you ask) guilty of failing to take the war seriously enough. All of this is maddeningly repetitive, and one could be forgiven for tuning out entirely...
..Few would argue that the trajectory of the war changed in an obviously dramatic way in 2025... 2025 has been the first year of the war in which Ukraine launched no ground offensives or proactive operations of its own. This fact is not only a hint at the threadbare state of Ukraine’s ground forces, but also a testament to the way Russian forces transformed “attrition” from a buzzword into a method of persistent pressure across a variety of axes this year...
..After years of insisting that it would achieve maximal territorial integrity - an outcome which would require the total and decisive defeat of Russia’s ground forces - Ukraine has reframed its path to victory mainly as a process of inflicting strategic costs on Russia that mount until the Kremlin agrees to a ceasefire. Consequentially, the debate about arming Ukraine has shifted from a conversation about armor and artillery - equipment useful for retaking lost territories - to a discussion about deep striking weapons like Tomahawks, which can be used to shoot at Russian oil refineries and energy infrastructure...
..Notwithstanding Ukraine’s attempts to jumpstart indigenous production, it is inevitable that Ukrainian capabilities will be largely determined by the largesse of western sponsors. This aspect of the war took a sudden turn at the beginning of the October when fresh reporting began to circulate that Tomahawk missiles might be on the table for Ukraine...
..The “problem” with Tomahawks does not relate to any “problem” with the missile itself, but with its availability and Ukraine’s technical capability to launch them. The Tomahawk is conventionally a ship-launched missile (there is no extant air-launched variant) with a few novel options for ground launch. Ukraine, obviously, would require ground launch systems, and the problem is that these systems are essentially brand new and available in very limited quantities: more importantly, American service branches are in the process of trying to build out these capabilities throughout the decade...
..Tomahawk itself is a fine missile, the systems for ground launch are so new and available in such limited quantities that equipping Ukraine with Tomahawks would require either the US Army or the Marines to materially alter their force structure in the near term (through 2030, essentially)...Tomahawk ground launch is a brand new capability that is in the middle of deployment and buildout for the first time...
..Broadly speaking, then, the issue is not so much that the United States is in immediate danger of running out of Tomahawks, but that procurement schedules are so slow that even relatively minor expenditures can erase multiple years worth of deliveries...
..In comparison to Tomahawks, then, ATACMs are both vastly more strategically expendable, produced in larger numbers, and easier to deploy. Despite all these points in their favor, the United States provided Ukraine with just 40 ATACMs. Even if the Army could be pressured into handing over one or two of its brand new Typhon launchers, it is difficult to imagine that more than few dozen Tomahawks could be spared for Ukraine: a token inventory far too small to wage a sustained strike campaign in the Russian heartland...
..On the other side of this equation, it is a common complaint from the Russian perspective that Moscow has done too little to “deter” the United States from empowering Ukraine’s strike campaign - both by directly providing munitions and supplying the planning, ISR, and guidance systems. This, however, rather misses the point. Russia has done nothing of note to deter the United States because both Moscow and Washington understand fully that there is essentially no appetite (on either side) for a direct confrontation...
..The basic pattern here is well established. The United States has done what it can to backstop Ukrainian strike capabilities, but it has held them at a level where Ukraine’s damage output falls far short of decisive levels. So long as that is the case, Russia has clearly demonstrated that it will simply eat the punches and retaliate against *Ukraine*. Hence, when the United States helps Ukraine target Russian oil facilities, it is Ukraine that receives the reprisal, and it is Ukraine which has its natural gas production annihilated as the winter approaches. In a sense, neither side is really trying to deter the other at all. The United States has raised the cost of this war for Russia, but not enough to create any real pressure for Moscow to end the conflict; in response, Russia punishes Ukraine, which is something the United States does not really care about...
..In the case of Tomahawks, the risk-reward calculus is just not there. Tomahawks are a strategically invaluable asset that the United States cannot afford to hand out like candy. Even if the launch systems could be provided (highly doubtful), the missiles could not be made available in sufficient quantities to make a difference. The range of the missiles, however, significantly raises the probability of miscalculation or uncontrolled escalation...
..The biggest risk of sending Tomahawks is not that the Ukrainians will blow up the Kremlin and start World War Three. The bigger risk is that the Tomahawks are used, and Russia simply moves on after eating the strikes. Tomahawks are arguably one of the last - if not *the* last - rung in the escalation ladder for the USA. We have rapidly run through the chain of systems that can be given to the AFU, and little remains except a few strike systems like the Tomahawk or the JASSM. Ukraine has generally received everything it has asked for.
In the case of Tomahawks, however, the United States is running the most serious risk of all: what if the Russians simply shoot down some of the missiles and eat the rest of the strikes? It’s immaterial whether the Tomahawks damage Russian powerplants or oil refineries. If Tomahawks are delivered and consumed without seriously jarring Russian nerves, the last escalatory card will have been played. If Russia perceives that America has reached the limits of its ability to raise the costs of the war for Russia, it undercuts the entire premise of negotiations. More simply put, Tomahawks are most valuable as an asset to threaten with...
..Tomahawks are simply more valuable to the United States as a tool to threaten escalation, rather than as an actual kinetic asset in Ukrainian hands, and so long as Trump keeps his powder dry he can re-raise the issue later...
..At this point, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to say anything meaningful about the actual operational progression on the ground. There are several reasons for this. First and foremost, the war has now gone on so long and is consistently moving at such an apparently glacial pace that most people simply do not care at this point whether Russia holds Yampil or not, or whether they have advanced past the rail line in Pokrovsk. There is severe fatigue (or perhaps boredom is the better word) with the status of an interminable sequence of apparently small settlements, industrial complexes, and forestry plantations, and as a result most people have essentially checked out...
..It should be understood and appreciated that Ukraine has lost essentially all battlefield initiative. In 2024, the AFU was able to assembled a mechanized reserve and launch their operation into Kursk. This operation ultimately failed and resulted in severe Ukrainian losses, but this is unrelated to the fact that Ukraine was still able to accumulate forces and pursue offensive operations on its own initiative...
..There is a very clear pattern at play here, with Ukraine’s offensive punch progressively shrinking before disappearing entirely in 2025. This was a year of essentially uninterrupted Russian initiative...
..There is a very clear pattern at play here, with Ukraine’s offensive punch progressively shrinking before disappearing entirely in 2025. This was a year of essentially uninterrupted Russian initiative...
..Putting Ukraine permanently on the backfoot is a significant Russian achievement, and it is owed to a few converging factors. Obviously, the attrition of Ukrainian forces is a major factor... Ukraine’s ability to husband forces for offensive operations appears to be severely degraded. Russia has exacerbated this problem by pressing steadily on a variety of different axes. At the moment, there are no fewer than seven Russian axes of attack, pressuring a slew of cities all along the line. This creates a series of defensive emergencies, maintains the burn rate on Ukrainian forces, and fixes them on the line...
..The main point that I want to impress is essentially as follows: rather than fixating on Pokrovsk, Russia’s advances across Southern Donetsk and on the inner bend of the Donets River ought to be thought of as vital operations which have severely disrupted the coherence of both the Ukrainian front and their logistics. This has the triple effect of preventing the Ukrainians from launching offensives of their own, accelerating the attrition of Ukrainian forces, and shaping the front for the coming operation to capture the Slovyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration...
..Broad Russian pressure across a half-dozen axes maintained a steady burn rate on Ukrainian forces and prevented the accumulation of forces for proactive operations...
..The frontline has yielded no real good news for Ukraine at any point this year. Beyond the broader strategic point, that Ukraine has lost the initiative and does not seem capable of getting it back, Russia is in the process of capturing two important urban centers (Russian troops are in the city centers of Pokrovsk and Kupyansk), it has begun the assault on at leas two more (Lyman and Kostyantinivka), it has rolled up half of the southern front, and cleared most of the inner Donets-Oskil bend...
..One thing that has become apparent over the last year is that Kiev has abandoned previous notions of outright victory on the battlefield and adopted a new strategic framework predicated on imposing unacceptable costs on Russia, so that Moscow will agree to freeze the conflict.
This is a subtle and unspoken yet extremely important distinction. It is easy to miss, because both Ukrainian leadership and Ukraine’s western backers continue to speak of Ukrainian “victory” and the possibility of Ukraine “winning” the war. What is crucial to understand is that the “victory” that they speak of now is categorically different than the victory of 2022 and 2023...
This is a subtle and unspoken yet extremely important distinction. It is easy to miss, because both Ukrainian leadership and Ukraine’s western backers continue to speak of Ukrainian “victory” and the possibility of Ukraine “winning” the war. What is crucial to understand is that the “victory” that they speak of now is categorically different than the victory of 2022 and 2023...
..Today, with the Ukrainian army stuck in a permanent state of reactivity and slowly receding defense, it no longer makes any sense to speak of Ukrainian victory in the most straightforward sense, which is to say victory on the battlefield - no matter how tenaciously or bravely the Ukrainian rank and file continues to fight in essentially intolerable circumstances. Instead, Ukrainian “victory” has been transmogrified to mean essentially that Russia absorbs such exorbitant costs that it agrees to some sort of ceasefire without preconditions...
..Trump’s suggestion that Tomahawks may be on the table for Ukraine must be seen as a constituent element of this new strategy and theory of victory. And this, ultimately, is very important to understand. Tomahawks are not being bandied about because anybody (in Kiev or Washington) believes that 50 cruise missiles will allow Ukraine to defeat the Russian Army and recapture the Donbas. Tomahawks were mentioned because the Ukrainian alliance is threatening to cripple the Russian fossil fuels industry (through a mixture of sanctions and kinetic strikes on production facilities) unless Putin agrees to a ceasefire.
This is why it is wrong to be surprised that Trump abruptly cancelled his meeting with Putin and instead announced more sanctions. There’s nothing abrupt or erratic about this. Threats to Russian oil are now, without exaggeration, the main lever that the Ukrainian bloc has against Russia...
..Trump’s suggestion that Tomahawks may be on the table for Ukraine must be seen as a constituent element of this new strategy and theory of victory. And this, ultimately, is very important to understand. Tomahawks are not being bandied about because anybody (in Kiev or Washington) believes that 50 cruise missiles will allow Ukraine to defeat the Russian Army and recapture the Donbas. Tomahawks were mentioned because the Ukrainian alliance is threatening to cripple the Russian fossil fuels industry (through a mixture of sanctions and kinetic strikes on production facilities) unless Putin agrees to a ceasefire.
This is why it is wrong to be surprised that Trump abruptly cancelled his meeting with Putin and instead announced more sanctions. There’s nothing abrupt or erratic about this. Threats to Russian oil are now, without exaggeration, the main lever that the Ukrainian bloc has against Russia...
..We have fundamentally reached an impasse when it comes to negotiations. For Moscow, negotiations with the United States are essentially a way to string Washington along. Moscow feels that it is winning on the ground, therefore a diplomatic impasse suits Russian interests... ..The sense of urgency that Washington feels to end the war - mainly by yanking furiously on the oil lever until the Kremlin cries uncle - stems from the fact that this is now the only sort of victory that Ukraine can hope to win. The ground war has been written off as a total loss, and all that remains is to lob missiles and drones at Russian refineries, sanction Russian firms and banks, and harass shadow tankers until the costs become intolerable. The longer the Ukrainian ground forces can hold the line the better, but this is merely a matter of limiting the downside. The fact that Russia can retaliate disproportionately against Ukraine barely factors into this thinking.
The key point here, however, is that the concept of Ukrainian victory has been completely transformed. There is now no real discussion of how Ukraine can win on the ground. For the Ukrainian bloc, the war is no longer a contest against the Russian Army, but a more abstract contest against Russia’s willingness to incur strategic costs. Rather than preventing Russian capture of the Donbas, the west is testing how much Putin is willing to pay for it. If history is any guide, a game predicated on outlasting Russia’s strategic endurance and willingness to fight is a very bad game to play indeed. https://bigserge.substack.com/p/living-dangerously
The key point here, however, is that the concept of Ukrainian victory has been completely transformed. There is now no real discussion of how Ukraine can win on the ground. For the Ukrainian bloc, the war is no longer a contest against the Russian Army, but a more abstract contest against Russia’s willingness to incur strategic costs. Rather than preventing Russian capture of the Donbas, the west is testing how much Putin is willing to pay for it. If history is any guide, a game predicated on outlasting Russia’s strategic endurance and willingness to fight is a very bad game to play indeed. https://bigserge.substack.com/p/living-dangerously
"They know we have a nuclear submarine, the greatest in the world, right off their shores," Trump posited in response. "We don’t need to go 8,000 miles. Putin ought to end the war — a war that should’ve taken one week is now in its fourth year," he continued. "That's what he ought to do instead of testing missiles." ... "They are not playing games with us. We are not playing games with them either. We test missiles all the time," he said. https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/not-playing-games-trump-responds-putin-testing-invincible-nuclear-cruise-missile
Russian Secrets, a new cross-border investigation, reveals the shadowy procurement network behind Russia’s surveillance program Harmony. https://www.icij.org/investigations/russia-archive/russia-secretly-acquired-western-technology-to-protect-its-nuclear-submarine-fleet/
The U.S. official made clear that the United States expects Hungary to cut off Russian oil imports in the future and come up with a plan to do so.
“There’s a lot of planning that our friends in Hungary should do and we’re going to help them obviously, as a good ally, to make those plans and execute them to get them off of Russian oil and gas,” Whitaker told Fox News...
..Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban suffered diplomatic setbacks last week after the U.S. called off a Trump-Putin meeting in Hungary’s capital ... Orban suggested that “The battle is not over yet” over Hungary’s choice of oil supply. https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/US-Steps-Up-Pressure-on-Hungary-to-Cut-Off-Russian-Oil.html
“There’s a lot of planning that our friends in Hungary should do and we’re going to help them obviously, as a good ally, to make those plans and execute them to get them off of Russian oil and gas,” Whitaker told Fox News...
..Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban suffered diplomatic setbacks last week after the U.S. called off a Trump-Putin meeting in Hungary’s capital ... Orban suggested that “The battle is not over yet” over Hungary’s choice of oil supply. https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/US-Steps-Up-Pressure-on-Hungary-to-Cut-Off-Russian-Oil.html
The past couple of months have seen Ukrainian long-range drone strikes on Russian energy sites and oil depots become an almost nightly phenomenon. https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/zelensky-declares-will-expand-long-range-attacks-russian-oil-refineries
Andrew Korybko, The US Is Weaponizing Energy Geopolitics In A Bid To Break Apart BRICS
It might succeed in terms of optics, but this won’t make any substantive difference in reality. The US’ latest sanctions against Russia, the first under the second Trump Administration, are intended less as a weapon against the Russian economy and more as a means of weaponizing energy geopolitics in a bid to break apart BRICS, especially its Russia, India, China (RIC) core. This assessment is based on India and China’s close trade ties with the US in spite of its respective 50% and 55% tariffs on them, their continued rivalry despite their incipient rapprochement, and their triangulation with Russia.
In the order that they were shared, India’s and China’s trade with the US is much larger than their trade with Russia, but Russia importantly supplies a significant share of their energy...
..Nobody should assume that India and/or China will totally stop importing Russian energy, let alone right away. There simply isn’t enough supply on the market right now for them to do so. Even if others ramp up production, those two might still only gradually wean themselves off of Russian energy, which would then likely be sold at an even steeper discount to incentivize them to retain some purchases. Everything will therefore likely balance itself out.
Nevertheless, the US could still highlight India’s and China’s reduced imports under duress (the first’s confirmed by its top buyer and the second’s only reported) to debunk the BRICS myth of them all (especially RIC) working in harmony against the US, which Trump has complained about before. It doesn’t matter that such information warfare would have no tangible effect on global processes since all that’s important to Trump is the perception of the US having broken BRICS’ (and especially RIC’s) unity. On that note, Russia’s special operation wouldn’t be curtailed even in the political fantasy that India and China soon dump its energy for good since the Kremlin has a big enough war chest to keep financing its side of the conflict for at least the next few years, though this might come with some opportunity costs. The takeaway is that the US is indeed weaponizing energy geopolitics in a bid to break apart BRICS, which it might succeed with in terms of optics, but this won’t make any substantive difference in reality. https://korybko.substack.com/p/the-us-is-weaponizing-energy-geopolitics
The Israeli military says the captive’s remains were being transported to its troops by the Red Cross. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/10/27/hamas-hands-over-remains-of-captive-as-israeli-drone-strike-kills-two
Tens of thousands of UXOs left behind from two years of war will continue to put civilians' lives at risk in the Gaza Strip despite the war ending https://www.newarab.com/news/around-20000-unexploded-ordnance-endangering-gaza-rights-group
Unexploded ordnance has killed and injured dozens of Palestinians returning home after the ceasefire announcement https://thecradle.co/articles-id/33862
The military has been dumping tonnes of construction waste inside Israeli-occupied Gaza in an operation one officer described as 'disgraceful'. https://www.newarab.com/news/israel-uses-gaza-dumping-ground-construction-waste
Dozens of Palestinian bodies returned by Israeli authorities were 'blindfolded, bound, crushed under tanks, and missing corneas, livers, and limbs,' officials denounced https://thecradle.co/articles-id/33754
While the Trump administration has ruled out sending US soldiers into the Gaza Strip, it has been speaking to Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Qatar, Turkiye and Azerbaijan to contribute to the multinational force.
“We are in control of our security, and we have also made it clear regarding international forces that Israel will determine which forces are unacceptable to us, and this is how we operate and will continue to operate,” Netanyahu said. https://www.arabnews.com/node/2620333/middle-east
“We are in control of our security, and we have also made it clear regarding international forces that Israel will determine which forces are unacceptable to us, and this is how we operate and will continue to operate,” Netanyahu said. https://www.arabnews.com/node/2620333/middle-east
Used to be called "invasion": Israeli forces enter Syrian towns, fortify military outposts
Israeli forces have continued incursions into towns in the southern Syrian governorate of Quneitra, as soldiers bolster the army's outposts in the area. https://www.newarab.com/news/israeli-forces-enter-syrian-towns-fortify-military-outposts That’s right. The US manufacturing economy has been shrinking in real physical terms for the past 18 years, notwithstanding the fact that during that interval the Fed has printed nearly $6 trillion in brand, spanking new money that it snatched from thin air.
So something big and bad happened after the Fed went all in on money-printing in response to the stock market meltdown in the fall of 2008. After all, during the 28 years between 1972 and 2000 the very opposite occurred. Manufacturing output in the US rose by nearly 150%, which translates to a 3.3% growth rate per annum. https://internationalman.com/articles/david-stockman-on-how-the-feds-money-printing-broke-american-industry-and-what-comes-next/
So something big and bad happened after the Fed went all in on money-printing in response to the stock market meltdown in the fall of 2008. After all, during the 28 years between 1972 and 2000 the very opposite occurred. Manufacturing output in the US rose by nearly 150%, which translates to a 3.3% growth rate per annum. https://internationalman.com/articles/david-stockman-on-how-the-feds-money-printing-broke-american-industry-and-what-comes-next/
The accounts will become inactive November 1, even with funds "in" them: Food Stamps To Be Paused For 42 Million Americans: What To Know... https://www.zerohedge.com/political/food-stamps-be-paused-42-million-americans-what-know
This seems futile, a PR move: States Sue Trump Admin To Try To Stop Suspension Of Food Stamps https://www.zerohedge.com/political/states-sue-trump-admin-try-stop-suspension-food-stamps
In the fall of 2023, with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin at the helm of Department of Defense (DoD), J.M. Phelps carried out an independent survey targeting both enlisted members and officers of the various branches of the military.
One of the key issues addressed in the anonymous survey was the probability of service members suggesting military service to their family or friends. To that end, over 98 percent, specifically 225 out of 229 people, expressed their reluctance to encourage their children, relatives, or friends to join the military, 69 percent specifically citing Austin’s tyrannical enforcement of the COVID-19 shot mandate as their reason. https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/10/ignoring-accountability-covid-19-shot-leads-diminished-trust/
One of the key issues addressed in the anonymous survey was the probability of service members suggesting military service to their family or friends. To that end, over 98 percent, specifically 225 out of 229 people, expressed their reluctance to encourage their children, relatives, or friends to join the military, 69 percent specifically citing Austin’s tyrannical enforcement of the COVID-19 shot mandate as their reason. https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/10/ignoring-accountability-covid-19-shot-leads-diminished-trust/
Trump framed the fund as one the U.S. could "invest as we like," while Japan described it as loans and guarantees backing Japanese firms' U.S. operations. Both sides emphasized coordination on permitting, financing, and resource mapping, but the White House acknowledged that the agreements remain ill-defined. https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/trump-praises-japan-key-ally-signs-rare-earths-deal-and-us-investment-boost
China is responding increasingly aggressively to mounting trade pressure from Washington. The practice of forcing even German companies to hand over trade secrets in exchange for rare earths exposes the Chinese leadership’s coercive stance. https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/trade-secrets-vs-rare-earths-eu-faces-chinese-pressure-us-moves
Trying to light up their air-defense systems? Pair Of US Long-Range Bombers Buzz Venezuela's Coast For 2nd Time In A Week https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/pair-us-long-range-bombers-buzz-venezuelas-coast-2nd-time-week
Andrew Korybko on the strategic Bay of Bengal, The Great Nicobar Island Project Is The New Lynchpin Of India’s Act East Policy https://korybko.substack.com/p/the-great-nicobar-island-project
Globalists put locals on their back foot: ‘It’s only going to get worse’ – Irish teen girl delivers passionate speech warning against mass immigration
Welcome to the new "normal" in Europe, where a 15-year-old girl is terrified to take the bus or go running alone due to mass immigration https://rmx.news/article/its-only-going-to-get-worse-irish-teen-girl-delivers-passionate-warning-against-mass-immigration/Brazil’s government has unveiled what it calls the “Platform of Respect,” a project that critics of censorship say pushes the country further toward criminalizing dissent.
Promoted as a tool to combat “hate speech” and “disinformation,” the new system effectively establishes a mechanism for prosecuting anyone who challenges state-approved gender ideology.
The initiative, presented by the Ministry of Human Rights in partnership with the NGO Aliança Nacional LGBTI+, received R$300,000 (about $56,000) in funding through a parliamentary amendment from Erika Hilton, a politician identifying as transgender.
The basis is an artificial intelligence system named Aletheia, which, according to its website, is designed to “track the origin of disinformation, report its impact, and enable accountability for authors and disseminators.” https://reclaimthenet.org/brazil-to-prosecute-gender-speech-offenses-and-track-online-dissent
Tulsi Gabbard details arrest of cartel 'baby trafficker' who was selling newborn babies Promoted as a tool to combat “hate speech” and “disinformation,” the new system effectively establishes a mechanism for prosecuting anyone who challenges state-approved gender ideology.
The initiative, presented by the Ministry of Human Rights in partnership with the NGO Aliança Nacional LGBTI+, received R$300,000 (about $56,000) in funding through a parliamentary amendment from Erika Hilton, a politician identifying as transgender.
The basis is an artificial intelligence system named Aletheia, which, according to its website, is designed to “track the origin of disinformation, report its impact, and enable accountability for authors and disseminators.” https://reclaimthenet.org/brazil-to-prosecute-gender-speech-offenses-and-track-online-dissent
Gabbard described an operation in which intelligence provided to Mexican law enforcement led to the arrest of an alleged Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) associate known as “La Diabla.” The individual is accused of leading a criminal network involved in human trafficking, illegal medical procedures, and the sale of newborns. https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/gabbard-details-arrest-cartel-baby-trafficker-who-was-selling-newborn
Eat fresh and fermented foods and avoid ultra-processed foodlike-products with RoundUp: How Gut Microbes Drive Cancer Risk - And What You Can Do to Restore Balance https://www.zerohedge.com/political/how-gut-microbes-drive-cancer-risk-and-what-you-can-do-restore-balance
This is the report we expected last month, when we got the Tylenol curveball: BREAKING — Landmark Report Finds Vaccination Is the Dominant Risk Factor for Autism Spectrum Disorder
McCullough Foundation’s authoritative analysis of more than 300 studies provides the most comprehensive synthesis to date on the possible causes of autism. https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/breaking-landmark-report-finds-vaccinationAt perihelion, on the other side of the sun today; Astrophysicist Stefan Burns: The Critical Time has Come What Will 3I/ATLAS Do on October 29th? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XS337W7ui54
Approaching Winter (pictured again, prepping fall/winter garden)
