Dutch Farmers May Be Forced To Kill Off 30% Of Livestock

Dutch Farmers May Be Forced To Kill Off 30% Of Livestock To Save Planet

Via Technocracy

Egged on by eco-activists, the highest court in the Netherlands ordered the government to comply with an EU law to reduce the inert gas nitrogen in vulnerable areas. That would mean culling 30% of its livestock. One farming organization called the plans ‘disgusting’.

The proposal sparked protests from the farming community, while enviro-nutters called for even more action.

The 30% reduction is in response to the so-called ‘nitrogen crisis’, including concerns about ammonia pollution.

Despite making up 78% of the atmosphere, excess nitrogen can get into water sources or the oceans via agricultural runoff as it’s a key ingredient in fertilizers.

To cut livestock numbers by 30%, the Finance And Agriculture Ministry published two proposals: the forced sale of farmland and the mass disposal of livestock. Both would devastate farmers across the country.

All this as the world teeters on the brink of global famine because of a fertilizer shortage and wheat blockade instigated by sanctions against Russia.

Tellingly, this is part and parcel of the Great Reset being pushed by the ruling elite, the same people who fly private jets to climate conferences and help politicians write laws that make life worse for everyone.

Read full story here…

Terrorists Entering U.S. In Unprecedented Numbers

Known And Suspected Terrorists Entering US In Unprecedented Numbers: Rep. Higgins

Katabella Roberts

Known and suspected terrorists are entering the United States in unprecedented numbers amid a surge in illegal immigration, according to Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.).

Higgins, a decorated law enforcement officer, said he believes this number to be much higher in part owing to the number of suspected terrorists who have aggressively avoided interaction with law enforcement at the border, which are referred to as “got-aways.”

Higgins’s comments come after Border Patrol agents captured 50 people who were on the FBI’s terror watchlist from October 2021 to May 2022.

That figure was just 15 in the fiscal year 2021, which included several months under former President Donald Trump’s administration.

“Towards the end of last year, I had estimated that we had lost about 250 KSTs, known and suspected terrorists, so the total numbers now that we’re told could serve about 700,000 ‘got-aways’ are suspected to have crossed into America. I think that’s a low number,” Higgins said.

“From my perspective, with data delivered to me by boots on the ground, from the border and from Central America and Mexico, and from the official numbers that are delivered to Congress from official data collection processes with Customs and Border Patrol, I think it’s reasonable for Americans to sort of step back and say, ‘My God, we have somewhere between 500 and 1,000 known and suspected terrorists [that] have entered into our country across our southern border since President [Joe] Biden has been inaugurated into office.’ This should startle every American citizen regardless of political affiliation,” Higgins said.

Explaining why he believes the actual number of suspected terrorists in the United States could be higher, Higgins, pointed to Biden’s administration, which he said is using “conservative numbers” when it comes to estimating how many there are.

The lawmaker added that this is in part because “got-aways” are very difficult to catch because they aggressively run and hide from law enforcement.

Things have been made even harder, according to Higgins, because much of law enforcement at the border has been pulled away from their primary mission of securing the border to instead processing illegal aliens, giving the “got-aways” more opportunity to escape.

“So the men that are aggressively evading law enforcement, we’re looking at true numbers of probably a million but we’ve been told 700,000,” Higgins said. “So just using a number of 700,000, and estimating that a very small percentage of that number would be a known or suspected terrorist, which fits the historical data, you could look at 700 known and suspected terrorists who have crossed into our country.”

What's Going On With Commercial Airlines?

What’s going on with our commercial airlines?

Terry Paulding

Every night, I hear a report on the network news announcing the number of flights canceled. If it’s a slow news day, reporters might interview a couple of irritated, stranded travelers. Thousands of flights are axed on any given day. Many more are delayed. News readers just read the report, without any substantive questioning about why there’s suddenly a great shortage of pilots. The weather is the only excuse ever offered, and that doesn’t work when there are no storms slowing things down.

What’s going on? We’ve never had a pilot shortage before. We may currently have more air travelers needing flights than a year ago, but not more than before COVID—and yet, here we are, facing an entirely new problem. It’s so bad that American Airlines is offering pilots on its regional carriers double and triple pay for the month of July if they’ll take extra flights.

It’s not hard to figure out what’s happening—despite the seeming prohibition on our pilots saying anything about it. We rarely hear a peep from them, at least on mainstream news outlets. There’s even a noticeable dearth of questions asked at Fox News of late. Nobody is questioning this fiasco beyond some Fox Business report of a lot of pilot retirements. It just is, apparently.

There are always going to be retirements and saying, as the link above does, that it’s “expensive to become a pilot.” Give me a break! That’s never been an issue before. So why even consider it now? What job does one get where advanced training doesn’t cost money?

Let’s put the blame for this shortage squarely where it belongs: On COVID “vaccination” policy. Many pilots who got the jabs are suffering injuries and have been unable to pass their required 6-month comprehensive physicals. None of us want a pilot who has a heart attack mid-flight. If you search the net, you come up with reports like this one from last week that pretty much says it all but they’re not from mainstream sources, of course. Such reports are forbidden fruit for widely heard reporters.

More...

Will The Blockade Of Kaliningrad Ignite WWIII?

Will the Blockade of Kaliningrad Ignite WW3?

Jeremiah Johnson

Most are unaware of the Lithuanian blockade preventing the flow of goods into Kaliningrad. Fewer still understand the significance of this strategic area, a small plot of land that may very well touch off a world war between Russia and her allies and NATO. 

What is the key to understanding the gravity of the Lithuanian blockade and Kaliningrad’s strategic importance to Russia?

Kaliningrad is the headquarters of Russia’s Baltic Sea Fleet.

Basically, it is a 160-square mile plot of land called an oblast by Russia, a word that translates roughly into  “province.” It sits between Lithuania and Poland. It is accessible by land via an avenue known as the Suwalki Gap, a narrow corridor extending about 50 miles from the Russian forces stationed in the nation of Belarus and the Russian territory of Kaliningrad, which is situated on the Baltic Sea coast.

On June 18, 2022, Lithuania halted all rail movements of goods along the Suwalki Gap and into Kaliningrad and further imposed EU “sanctions” on materials permitted to enter the Russian province.

The Russians are not completely isolated in this matter. The president of Belorussia, Alexander Lukashenko, said this to the press at RIA Novosti:

“We are very concerned by the situation and the policy being pursued by our neighbors. You know, in general terms: this is the leadership of Poland and the leadership of Lithuania…with Lithuania…there is a growing flow of information about their plan to suspend transit from Russia through Belarus to Kaliningrad, to isolate Kaliningrad. Well, listen, that’s akin to a declaration of war! That sort of thing is unacceptable in the current conditions.”

Lukashenko met with Vladimir Putin on June 24 to talk about the current situation. Putin assured the Belorussian president that Russia would send its ally weapons to help counter what both leaders see as an encroachment by NATO and an attempt to completely cut off Kaliningrad.

The bottom line? Putin told Lukashenko that Russia would provide Belorussia with Iskander missiles and nuclear warheads for them.

The potential line in the sand? The blockade also cuts off the oil pipeline running from Russia to Kaliningrad.

The ban is not just by rail but also restricts trucks and aircraft from entering the Russian province.  

As Lithuania is a member of NATO, any aggression against it by Russia would violate Article 5 of the NATO treaty and put all of NATO into immediate conflict with Russia. It is simple to see from all of this how large a “powder-keg” this is, and it wouldn’t take much to set it off. Now let’s examine more of the strategic considerations here.

Not only is Kaliningrad the only ice-free Baltic Sea port and home to the Russian Baltic Sea Fleet, but there is a tremendous troop presence there, along with missiles and other equipment. The province holds Iskander missiles, and recently the Russians have moved nuclear warheads to the missile bases that can be fitted to them.

More...

We're In BIG Trouble... (And It's About To Escalate)

Empire To Expand NATO In Response To War Caused By NATO Expansion

Putin: Russia Will Respond If NATO Sets Up Infrastructure In Finland, Sweden

Putin: Russia will respond if NATO sets up infrastructure in Finland, Sweden

Reuters

President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Russia would respond in kind if NATO deployed troops and infrastructure in Finland and Sweden after they join the U.S.-led military alliance.

"With Sweden and Finland, we don't have the problems that we have with Ukraine. They want to join NATO, go ahead," Putin told Russian state television after talks with regional leaders in the central Asian ex-Soviet state of Turkmenistan.

"But they must understand there was no threat before, while now, if military contingents and infrastructure are deployed there, we will have to respond in kind and create the same threats for the territories from which threats towards us are created."

He said it was inevitable that Moscow's relations with Helsinki and Stockholm would sour over their NATO membership.

Wed, June 29, 2022, 4:33 PM

MOSCOW (Reuters) -President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Russia would respond in kind if NATO deployed troops and infrastructure in Finland and Sweden after they join the U.S.-led military alliance.

"With Sweden and Finland, we don't have the problems that we have with Ukraine. They want to join NATO, go ahead," Putin told Russian state television after talks with regional leaders in the central Asian ex-Soviet state of Turkmenistan.

"But they must understand there was no threat before, while now, if military contingents and infrastructure are deployed there, we will have to respond in kind and create the same threats for the territories from which threats towards us are created."

He said it was inevitable that Moscow's relations with Helsinki and Stockholm would sour over their NATO membership.

"Everything was fine between us, but now there might be some tensions, there certainly will," he said. "It's inevitable if there is a threat to us."

Putin made his comment a day after NATO member Turkey lifted its veto over the bid by Finland and Sweden to join the alliance after the three nations agreed to protect each other's security.

The move means Helsinki and Stockholm can proceed with their application to join NATO, marking the biggest shift in European security in decades.

Putin added that the objectives of what Moscow calls its "special military operation" in Ukraine remained unchanged, that its goal was to "liberate" eastern Ukraine's Donbas region and create conditions to ensure Russia's security.

He said Russian troops had advanced in Ukraine and that the military intervention was going as planned. There was no need, he said, to set a deadline for an end to the campaign.

Water Rationing In Italy From Extreme Drought

Due to extreme drought, water will be rationed in Italy – Po river has almost dried up!

StrangeSounds

On Monday evening, the head of the Civil Protection Fabrizio Curcio said that due to the ongoing extreme drought “some areas of Italy will certainly face water rationing and could also be turned off in daytime.”

After a year without rain and snow, the Po Valley is experiencing an unprecedented period of drought aggravated by temperatures above the seasonal average.

In many municipalities in Piedmont, Lombardy, Veneto, Trentino-Alto Adige and Friuli Venezia Giulia, measures have been taken to limit water consumption (i.e., suspending water supplies at night).

Meanwhile, water shortage is also experienced across the country.

The Po River, the longest river in Italy, is hitting record low water levels after months without heavy rainfall. This Copernicus Sentinel-2 animation shows a part of the Po Valley, near Piacenza, and reveals how the river has significantly shrunk between June 2020 and June 2022.

Stretching from the Alps in the northwest to the Adriatic Sea on the east coast, the vast waterway is a vital source of water for several regions. It is used for drinking water, nourishing vast swathes of agricultural land, as well as producing hydroelectric power across northern Italy.

Water in the Po Valley has now dropped to record-low levels, partly as a result of the lack of rainfall that northern Italy has been suffering, as well as high temperatures and a lack of snow in the mountains that feed the river. Many of these areas have now been without any rain at all for more than 110 days, according to the Po River Observatory.

The Po Valley is the most important agricultural area in the country, as it produces around 40% of Italy’s food including wheat, rice and tomatoes. With the ongoing drought, farmers are struggling to keep crops irrigated and many towns in the Po Valley have been asked to ration water during the night amidst the drought.

Anti-Semitism On The Rise

Europe: Dangerous Influence Of Anti-Semitic Propaganda

Breanna Claussen

A study released on Tuesday found a 40% increase in Jew-hatred in Germany in 2021, a rise the German government’s commissioner to combat antisemitism referred to as “frightening.”

The Department for Research and Information on Antisemitism (RIAS), a German organization that monitors antisemitism in Germany, published the study, which revealed an outbreak of 2,738 incidents of antisemitism in Germany in 2021, averaging over seven per day in the country. Of these incidents, 63 were reportedly cases of “extreme violence.” 

In contrast, 2020 saw 1,957 cases of Jew-hatred reported marking a 40% increase within the span of a single year.

One particular flare-up of antisemitic instances occurred in May of 2021. That month, German Muslims used Israeli self-defense against Hamas terrorists, who fired over 4,000 rockets at Israeli cities, to call for genocide against Jews and the obliteration of the Jewish State of Israel.

The organization stated in the report that one main driver of the Jew-hatred was Palestinian propaganda against Israel.

Indeed, much of the modern antisemitism we witness today is cloaked in pro-Palestinian activism. As former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asserted in 2021, the widespread claim that the Jewish State is an occupier of the land of Israel is the “antisemitic canard of the present generation.”

The terror organization Hamas, which carries the support of much of the Palestinian population, espouses within its charter numerous antisemitic conspiracies that were popular within Nazi Germany, revealing that these two forms of Jew-hatred are far less distinct than many may believe.

Additionally, many of the attacks resulted from conspiracy theories linking Jews to the COVID-19 Pandemic, a false accusation that brazenly echos antisemitic lies told during the Black Plague in the 1300s.

In the middle-ages, many falsely pointed the finger at the Jewish population, claiming that they had spiked water wells causing the illness. Similar to what took place in Nazi Germany, Jews were then evicted from countries, forced into ghettos, and massacred. 

Unfortunately, the media, politicians, Hollywood, and social media today help spread the antisemitism they claim to condemn through pro-Palestinian sentiment and their refusal to denounce anti-Jewish and anti-Israel rhetoric.

This is particularly disturbing since societies are often swift to eat up anti-semitic propaganda.

More..

NATO Admits Preparations For Conflict With Russia Since 2014

NATO admits it’s been preparing for conflict with Russia since 2014

RT

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters on Wednesday that increases in military spending and rising numbers of troop deployments in Eastern Europe since 2014 were carried out in anticipation of a conflict with Russia.

Speaking after a meeting of NATO members and partner states in Madrid, Stoltenberg accused Russia of “using force in the eastern Donbass since 2014,” despite the fact that Kiev’s forces have shelled cities in the region ever since the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics declared independence from Ukraine that year.

Nevertheless, Stoltenberg said that the US-led military bloc decided in 2014 to start beefing up its forces in Eastern Europe. 

“The reality is also that we have been preparing for this since 2014,” he stated. “That is the reason that we have increased our presence in the eastern part of the alliance, why NATO allies have started to invest more in defense, and why we have increased [our] readiness.”

According to NATO figures, the alliance’s European members and Canada have increased their military expenditure by between 1.2% and 5.9% every year since 2014. However, only 10 out of 30 NATO states currently meet the bloc’s target of spending 2% of GDP on defense. 

The increase in expenditure has been most noticeable in Eastern Europe and the Baltics, with Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania all meeting the target for the first time in 2022.

Earlier on Wednesday, NATO members agreed to adopt a new Strategic Concept. This policy blueprint sets out the alliance’s stance toward partners, non-members, and adversaries, with the 2022 iteration naming Russia as the “most significant and direct threat” to the bloc.

On the other hand, Moscow has labeled NATO’s expansion into former Soviet states since the end of the Cold War – which Western leaders explicitly promised in the early 1990s would not happen – as a threat against its own security. NATO’s official position on Ukraine, set out in the 2008 Bucharest Declaration, is that it and Georgia “will become members of NATO” at an unspecified future date. Russia has cited Ukraine’s pursuit of NATO membership as a key factor behind the current conflict.

'Biblical' Swarms Of Giant Mormon Crickets In Oregon Stress Food And Farming Industries

‘Biblical’ swarms of giant Mormon Cricket and other grasshoppers spur Oregon push to fight pests to relieve stress on the already suffering US food and farming industries

Strange Sounds

Driving down a windy canyon road in northern Oregon rangeland, Jordan Maley and April Aamodt are on the look out for Mormon crickets, giant insects that can ravage crops.

“There’s one right there,” Aamodt says.

They’re not hard to spot. The insects, which can grow larger than 2 inches (5 centimeters), blot the asphalt.

Mormon crickets are not new to Oregon. Native to western North America, their name dates back to the 1800s, when they ruined the fields of Mormon settlers in Utah. But amidst drought and warming temperatures — conditions favored by the insects — outbreaks across the West have worsened.

The Oregon Legislature last year allocated $5 million to assess the problem and set up a Mormon cricket and grasshopper “suppression” program. An additional $1.2 million for the program was approved earlier this month.

It’s part of a larger effort by state and federal authorities in the U.S. West to deal with an explosion of grasshoppers and Mormon crickets that has hit from Montana to Nevada. But some environmental groups oppose the programs, which rely on the aerial spraying of pesticides across large swaths of land.

Maley, an Oregon State University Extension Agent, and Aamodt, a resident of the small Columbia River town of Arlington, are both involved in Mormon cricket outreach and surveying efforts in the area.

In 2017, Arlington saw its largest Mormon cricket outbreak since the 1940s. The roads were “greasy” with the squashed entrails of the huge insects, which damaged nearby wheat crops.

Rancher Skye Krebs said the outbreaks have been “truly biblical.”

“On the highways, once you get them killed, then the rest of them come,” he explained. Mormon crickets are cannibalistic and will feast on each other, dead or alive, if not satiated with protein.

In 2021 alone, Oregon agricultural officials estimate 10 million acres of rangeland in 18 counties were damaged by grasshoppers and Mormon crickets.

With The Knesset Set To Disband, What Happens Next For Israel And Elections?

With the Knesset set to disband on Wednesday, what happens next?

CARRIE KELLER-LYNN

With the ideological ties that bound Israel’s big-tent coalition having frayed, the 24th Knesset is set to dissolve itself by midnight on Wednesday, just over a year after being sworn in.

After that happens, three big changes will take place: Foreign Minister Yair Lapid will succeed Prime Minister Naftali Bennett as premier on Thursday; Israel will go to its fifth elections since 2019 in the fall; and the Knesset will largely cease to function, with the government shifting into caretaker status.

The political shake-up comes in the wake of Bennett and Lapid’s dramatic June 20 announcement that they would draw the curtains on their own government. Since losing its one-seat parliamentary majority in April, the shaky coalition had been unable to stabilize.

Bennett said on Saturday that the imminent threat of a successful opposition-led bid to disperse the Knesset, coupled with the June 30 deadline for averting a potentially chaotic legal situation for Jewish settlers in the West Bank, was the immediate catalyst for his decision to close up shop.

While the coalition hopes to finalize the Knesset’s dispersal by Wednesday evening, it still has several outstanding arguments with the opposition. Most significantly, the sides are bickering over when to schedule the elections, with their preferred dates one week apart.

The right-religious opposition bloc is pushing for October 25, hoping for better turnout and on-the-ground manpower because it’s a day before religious schools reopen after the Jewish holiday season. Coalition parties and the opposition’s majority-Arab Joint List party prefer November 1, which would both deny the right its perceived boost and allow interim prime minister Lapid another week in power.

As caretaker prime minister, Lapid will be constrained in his ability to push a new agenda, and without the Knesset, he will not be advancing legislation, except in narrow, special circumstances.

That said, Lapid will be caretaker prime minister for at least four months, and possibly much longer, should post-election coalition formation prove protracted or impossible. Former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu held the interim title intermittently in the two years between 2019 and 2021, when Israel cycled through four elections.

Only entering politics a decade ago, the centrist former TV anchor will be the first non-right-wing prime minister since Ehud Barak left office in 2001, and one of the few without significant military experience.

What to expect during the election period

Although the election date will only be set alongside the Knesset’s finalized dispersal on Wednesday evening, it is expected to be either October 25 or November 1. By Israeli law, it must be a Tuesday and is granted as a national holiday with paid time off from work.

Elections will happen in two major phases. First, parties that hold primaries will conduct them before submitting their candidate slates, which must happen no later than 47 days prior to elections. This means either September 8 or 15, depending on the general election date.

While none of the parties has announced a formal date for primaries, Likud, Meretz, and Labor are expected to hold them. Many of the parties split their leadership primary from primaries for the rest of their slates. Labor has announced a leadership primary for July 18, although it’s unclear if there is a candidate emerging to challenge Merav Michaeli.

In the second phase, after party slates are set, campaigns are expected to accelerate. Israeli voters do not vote for individual candidates in national elections, but rather parties. Knesset members are allocated based on their spot on their party slate and each party is apportioned members based on their results in a nation-wide, single-district vote. A party must clear the Knesset threshold — currently set at 3.25% of votes cast nationwide — to be eligible for seats.

More....

UK's Boris Johnson Embraces Macron's View Of Revived Roman Empire

Roman empire’s alliance would benefit Europe – UK PM

RT

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was reportedly so infatuated with French President Emmanuel Macron’s idea of a “European Political Community” encompassing not only the EU but Eastern Europe – particularly Ukraine – and the UK that he has claimed it as his own idea and framed it as a modern take on the Roman Empire, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday. 

Johnson’s modern Imperium would stretch from the UK to the Maghreb region of northern Africa and eastward to Turkey and Ukraine, he said, declaring he had come up with Macron’s idea “back when I first became foreign secretary” and revealing he believed “we should basically be recreating the Mare Nostrum of the Roman Empire” in an audience with journalists en route to Madrid for a NATO summit on Tuesday. Mare Nostrum was the Roman name for the Mediterranean Sea, adopted at a time when the empire controlled much of Europe, the coast of northern Africa, and modern-day Turkey, extending into the Caucasus region.

However, Macron preempted even Johnson’s revisionist chronology when he proposed the idea at the European parliament, claiming his predecessor Francois Mitterrand had called for a “broad European club” all the way back in 1989 as the USSR was facing crises.

Johnson tempered his enthusiasm, describing Macron’s idea as “worth looking” at so long as it dovetailed with the UK’s strategic goals while acknowledging “inventing new structures” might not be the best use of resources that could be spent on improving partnerships between countries.

While relations between the French and British leaders have been frosty in the past, the pair agreed to start over on Sunday while speaking one on one during the G7 summit, with one UK official describing their newfound partnership as “le bromance.” However, a French official was less excited, describing the meeting as having gone “well. That’s it.”

Has The Church Failed To Recognize The Urgency Of The Hour?

As The World Is Transfixed By Chaos, Has The Church Failed To Recognize The Urgency Of The Hour?

JB Hixson

As I watched the sunset each night, I could not help but think of the church in America today. Is the sun setting on the church? Is our time in God’s plan of the ages drawing to a close? Is God’s work in and through the Church winding down? It is a difficult question to answer with certainty. Yet, there are many signs that indicate we may be entering the twilight of the church.

The Bible warns, “Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons” (1 Timothy 4:1). More than ever before, deception has swept across this country. Satan is “blinding people’s hearts to the Gospel” and “deceiving the whole world” (2 Cor. 4:4; 2 John 7). According to a recent Gallup poll from June of 2022, only sixty-eight percent of Americans under age thirty believe in God.

This statistic is validated by a recent conversation I had with a woman who attended an event where I was speaking about the Great Satanic Reset. After my presentation, she came up to me and insisted that Jesus Christ is not the only way to heaven and that the Bible is filled with lies and errors. She is deceived.

We are also told in Scripture, “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables” (2 Timothy 4:3–4). The great Satanic reset that is being thrust upon us by the Luciferians is a giant fable that is capturing the minds of many people. The “new normal” is rapidly setting in, and few seem to be aware of its dangers.

More...

U.S. Navy Set To Challenge Latest Chinese Claims On Taiwan Straits

DailySA: U.S. Navy set to challenge latest Chinese claims on Taiwan Straits

Troy Watson

U.S. NAVY SET TO CHALLENGE LATEST CHINESE CLAIMS ON TAIWAN STRAITS: 

A U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer, the USS Benfold, entered the South China Sea over the weekend, one day after a Navy P-8 Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft flew through the nearby Taiwan Strait. China declared the Taiwan Strait to be Chinese territorial waters earlier this month, sparking concerns that it would militarize the strait and block transit of the key area separating Taiwan and mainland China. The Benfold, homeported in Yokosuka, Japan, sailed through the East China Sea through the Verde Island Passage before entering the South China Sea. The U.S. Navy said the Benfold was on routine patrol and declined to confirm it planned to challenge China’s latest claims on the Taiwan Strait with a freedom of navigation transit.

UK GENERAL: BE PREPARED TO FIGHT IN EUROPE: 

Head of the British Army, General Sir Patrick Sanders, said the West must be “unequivocally prepared to fight” Russia in Europe. “This is our 1937 moment. We are not at war, but must act rapidly so that we aren’t drawn into one through a failure to contain territorial expansion,” he said. “We must therefore meet strength with strength from the outset and be unequivocally prepared to fight for NATO territory.”

China Mocks G7

China mocks G7

RT

Amid high-profile meetings of the G7 and NATO, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian posted an image on Tuesday pointing out that despite being referred to as “international society,” the G7 members actually account for a small percentage of the world’s population.

Depicting the leaders of the bloc alongside their counterparts from the BRICS, the image noted that the population of the former amounts to 777 million, while the latter are home to 3.2 billion people. 

“So next time when they talk about ‘international society,’ you know what they mean…” Zhao wrote.

After the summit in Germany over the weekend, the G7 leaders departed for Madrid, where the US-led NATO military bloc is meeting to draft its new Strategic Concept – a document that outlines its mission and stance toward non-members. In its first update since 2010, the document will address China as a “challenge,” and according to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, “will make clear that allies consider Russia as the most significant and direct threat to our security.”

Just days before the G7 summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and the leaders of Brazil, India, and South Africa, met virtually for the less-reported, in the West, BRICS summit. The group, denoted by an acronym composed from the first letter of its member nations’ names, includes four of the world’s top ten economies and represents more than 40% of the planet’s population and 30% of its GDP.

While the BRICS is not a formal alliance in a military or economic sense, its members are often united in opposition to the Western consensus. Save for Brazil, none of the BRICS nations voted with the US and its allies to condemn Russia’s military operation in Ukraine at the UN General Assembly in March, for example, and China and India have stepped up their trade links with Moscow since then.

Also, the bloc may soon expand. Argentina and Iran applied last week for membership, with the Iranian Foreign Ministry describing BRICS as a “very creative mechanism with broad aspects,” and Argentinian President Alberto Fernandez said that the platform could “implement an agenda for the future that will lead to a better and fairer time.”

During the BRICS summit last Wednesday, Putin said that the five-member group was working on setting up a new global reserve currency “based on a basket of currencies of our countries.”

NATO Formally Invite Sweden, Finland To Join Alliance

NATO Leaders Officially Invite Sweden, Finland to Join Alliance

Sputnik News

The invitation was made possible after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan dropped his objection to the Nordic nations' membership in the bloc. Ankara held up Finland and Sweden's NATO bids for weeks over the countries' sheltering of Kurdish paramilitaries Turkey classifies as 'terrorists'.

NATO formally invited Finland and Sweden into the alliance on Wednesday at its Madrid summit.

"Today, we have decided to invite Finland and Sweden to become members of NATO, and agreed to sign the Accession Protocols. In any accession to the Alliance, it is of vital importance that the legitimate security concerns of all Allies are properly addressed. We welcome the conclusion of the trilateral memorandum between Turkiye, Finland, and Sweden to that effect," the bloc said in its official summit declaration.

The alliance stressed that the Nordic countries' security was "of direct importance to the Alliance, including during the accession process," and characterized the invitation as a reaffirmation of its "commitment to [the] Open Door Policy" on alliance membership.

Russia has expressed concerns about the two countries' entry bid, including the prospects of the Baltic Sea being turned into a 'NATO lake', and the potential militarization of the 1,340 km long shared border it has with Finland. Last month, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warnedthat "the latest expansion of NATO will not make our continent more stable and secure."

China's New H-20 Stealth Aircraft - Could Change Everything

The U.S. Military Has A Problem: China’s H-20 Stealth Could Change Everything

Brent M. Eastwood

China is flexing its nuclear triad and one of the big legs of that powerful platform will be the new H-20 stealth bomber that resembles the American B-2. The Xian H-20 has that familiar flying wing design that looks like it stole design characteristics from the U.S. Air Force. Does it have the range to reach the United States for a nuclear bombing run while evading radar? That’s a head-scratching dilemma for American defense planners as they ponder Chinese aerial power. The H-20 has a reported range of 7,500 miles– enough to reach the homeland without refueling.

Kris Osborn at Warrior Maven describes the H-20 in the following manner. “It features a similar rounded upper fuselage, blended wing body, curved upper air inlets and essentially no vertical structures. There appears to be a fair amount of evidence, simply available to the naked eye, to demonstrate China’s overt ‘copycat’ maneuver.”

Bigger Payload Than American Bombers?

Moreover, the H-20’s munitions payload eclipses that of the B-52 and the B-2, if reports can be believed. It can deliver 45 tons of bombs and stand-off missiles. By comparison, the next-generation stealth bomber, the B-21, can only carry 15 tons of payload.

Whatever the Final Tally, It Has Long Range 

H-20 will be an airplane to reckon with as it is believed to be nuclear-capable and maybe hypersonic-weapon capable. And it would also have the ability to attack Guam, South Korea, and Okinawa – all areas with U.S. military personnel. The H-20 is bad news for Taiwan as well.

It could perhaps be equipped with air-to-surface missiles to threaten American aircraft carriers. That may be a departure as China’s ground-based ship-killing missile, the DF-21D missile, has only been tested from a destroyer. It’s not clear if the DF-21D could be launched from airplanes, but China could likely have this capability in the coming years if the H-20 also advances as expected.