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  Simplicius has this Ukraine War update, which is extensive and far broader geopolitically than the title suggests:

  Ukraine Commits Last Remaining Elite Brigade For Final Attempt 

  [I have seen the opinion that US/NATO expects Ukraine to expend ALL of the military hardware against Russia ASAP, for maximal "gains" and damage to Russia before terminal negotiations for a settlement are undertaken. There are few Ukrainian men remaining to catch in another round of conscription.]

  The 82nd Air Assault brigade is an elite force which was entrusted with the British Challenger 2 tanks, American Stryker AFVs, and even German Marder IFVs. In fact, they were even rounded out with the British M119 light howitzer which makes them the only brigade out of the entire offensive supergroup to be armed entirely with modern Western/NATO arms and not a single legacy Soviet system...

..On June 22, Forbes assessed that the 82nd, and the 117th Mechanized Brigade where being held in reserve waiting for a significant breach in Russian lines to allow them to storm Melitopol. 

 The Forbes article says the deployment of the brigade is both “good and bad” news. Good because it’s a fresh brigade, bad because they have nothing left after it...

..One thing to note is that, the 82nd is structured in a peculiar way compared to the other brigades. They appear to be the lightest and most mobile. This is due to every other brigade of the 9th Corps being distributed with the equivalent of two tank companies or perhaps a light tank battalion of about 30 tanks with 90 armored vehicles (AFV, IFV, ICV, AMV, APC, etc.). But the 82nd has a measly 14 x Challenger 2s but 90 Strykers + 40 Marders for a total of 130 capable lightly armored combat vehicles. Even their M119 light howitzers specialize in fast setup and mobility.
  If you ask me, this is more dangerous as tanks have typically proven useless in the hands of the AFU as they’re merely sitting ducks. Ukraine does better with IFVs and MRAPs when they’re able to just race down field and overwhelm Russian defenses as they did in the Kharkov offensive last year. Also, the quick-moving IFVs/AFVs typically scatter Russian artillery defenses, making them less effective and depleting their ammo. In short, I see this brigade as more of a threat than the Leopard 2 heavy 47th, which was meant to be the other big ‘elite’ unit. Sure, 2 of the Strykers are already kaput but they’ve got 88 more and another 39 or so German Marders which were always touted as the best available IFVs in the world next to the Swedish CV-90.
  With that said, tanks are a requisite for certain things. Against hastily prepared or ad hoc defenses, lighter vehicles can be fine. But against something like Russia’s main Zaporozhye line, which likely has concrete-fortified structures and strong points, caponiers, etc., the lighter vehicles simply don’t have the firepower to blast through such reinforced assemblages. Only a tank firing HE rounds can get the job done...

..[A Russian soldier comments on the losses of Ukrainian men for the minimal gain of a small village.] Sympathy does not come to visit on the battlefield, but seeing how much damage the enemy is taking in Harvest, we experienced feelings that are difficult to describe. We lacked infantry and equipment, but we had enough means of destruction to grind up a significant part of what the enemy threw at the capture of the village. Harvest resembled a meat grinder, which included living people, and minced meat came out. The number of destroyed and damaged equipment was not calculated in units. A very specific residue remained: We lost Urozhayne, and at the same time caused such damage that part of our consciousness refuses to understand the motives of the Ukrainian command. So only those who hate them more than ours can drive their own to slaughter...

..Western Media goes into "hard truths" mode...

..An American West Point officer who apparently served as “special advisor” to Zaluzhny and now works in Kiev is quoted in the article:
"If General Zaluzhnyi was a NATO general, he would have to refuse the order to take the counter," Dan Rice—a West Point graduate who served as a former special adviser to Zaluzhnyi before taking up the post of president of the American University Kyiv—told Newsweek.
  Rice pointed to, in particular, Ukraine's lack of air support, the continued U.S, refusal to supply MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), and the absence of longer-range cluster munitions for use with the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS).
"You can't win this without superior artillery and superior airpower to go on the offensive," Rice added. "Nobody should really be shocked by this." ...

..[They are talking about a spring 2024 Ukrainian offensive, but I will ignore that pie-in-the-sky talk.] ...

..NATO’s chief of staff Jenssen made the suggestion—long predicted by yours truly—that NATO could offer membership to Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine completely giving up claims to all the territories Russia controls, as a last act of desperation toward freezing the conflict. Ukrainian officials were apoplectic with rage. [See story below that NATO has retracted this "out of context" statement now.] ...

..Dmitry Medvedev assessed the NATO secretary's statement:
"A new idea for Ukraine from the North Atlantic Alliance office: Ukraine can join NATO if it gives up disputed territories.
Why? The idea is a curious one. The only question is that all of their alleged territories are highly disputed. 

And in order to enter the bloc, the Kiev authorities would have to give up even Kiev itself, the capital of Ancient Rus." ...

..[ I have been reading about the thoughts, actions and battle plans of Hitler and the German high command in the period from late 1943 to the end of the German war in 1945. They persisted in the hopeless task of defensive battles, taking a great toll of German, Russian and allied lives, while maintaining the command structure of the Wehrmacht and the obedience of the German soldiers dying in the trenches.] ...

..Alarms inside NATO are beginning to ring as it’s now become a realization that this Ukrainian ‘project’ could take them all down with it. Why ride a dying horse into a burning field when you can jump off now and save your skin? Jettison the poor beast for your own good.
  In the meantime, Russian ex-general and Duma deputy Kartapolov says that Russia is preparing the conditions for its own big offensive...

  [There is detailed discussion of the Russian economy, growing robustly, looking for more workers, and the falling foreign-exchange value of the Ruble, which is largely separated from "unfriendly" currency trade this year. The isolation of Russia from the global financial regime since early 2022 is unprecedented. The falling global-ruble is not apparently harming the Russian real economy at all.]

..Not only is Russia now using $110B more in ruble terms but 40% of all Russian exports for the current quarter are in rubles compared to 14% for the same quarter in 2021. In other words: last year, in all its trades, Russia used the ruble only 14% of the time to settle those trades. Now it’s using it 40% of the time.
  Likewise, last year Russia used foreign currencies of unfriendly countries (presumably dollar and euro) in trade settlements a whopping 85% of the time and now uses them only 34%. The currency of friendly countries (presumably yuan, rupee, etc.) was used only 1% of the time and is now used 27%.
  Putting the numbers together, this means that currently 67% of all trades are done in either the ruble or friendly currencies (yuan, rupee, etc.), while the remainder of trade—33-34%—is done in unfriendly currencies like dollar and euro...

..Long story short: once the current dollar-denominated bonds are paid off eventually, the problem could be resolved as in the future Russia could choose to not issue such bonds anymore. But for the time being it has to pay them off via foreign currencies...

..Russia added $600 billion of total wealth, the Swiss bank found in its annual Global Wealth Report, published Tuesday.
  The number of Russian millionaires also rose by about 56,000 to 408,000 in 2022, while the number of ultra-high-net-worth individuals — people worth over $50 million — jumped by nearly 4,500.
  But the US lost more wealth than any other country last year, shedding $5.9 trillion, while North America and Europe combined got $10.9 trillion poorer, UBS reported...

[Perceptions are tipping over.]

..A sampling of polls of citizens in France and Germany, which shows a small majority actually favoring Russia and Putin....

..We now have the subtitled and first person version of the Russian marine boarding of a non-complying ship near the Odessa corridor. Recall that Ukraine’s official declaration was that no such inspection took place and is merely “Kremlin lies”. [Complete video of boarding and Russian commander talking with captain of ship in English.] ...

..Ukraine has released footage of their naval terror strike on the Kerch bridge last month. [provided videos.] ...

..Depending on the orientation of the cameras on the roadway, some have suggested it appears that the naval drones actually approach the roadway section of the bridge from the Sea of Azov side. This would point to the drones somehow being launched from the Sea of Azov rather than the Black Sea...

..Ukraine used a new prototype drone they’re calling the “Sea Baby”. They’ve now released footage of it—this is what was used on the Kerch Bridge... [video]

Ukraine Commits Last Remaining Elite Brigade For Final Attempt

NATO official retracts Russian land grab suggestion as means to broker peace in Ukraine

Official says the quoted fragment was taken out of context https://rmx.news/nato/nato-official-retracts-words-on-possible-ukraine-peace/

  Gilbert Doctorow, 

  Russia’s asymmetric response to latest announced plans of U.S. and NATO for sending more devastating military hardware to Ukraine

  Did the Ukrainian counter-offensive which began on 4 June fail?  An increasing number of Western mainstream media including CNN have published reports acknowledging it is a failure...
..Europe is a backwater in more than one dimension. Not everyone here has gotten the word about Ukraine’s losses in two months of desperate attacks on Russian defensive positions across the entire 1,000 km front. Last night I watched a round-table discussion of the war on French television in which not a single panelist had been told that the game is up in Ukraine...

 ..In the German media, mainstream journalists have been seeding the discussion of the war with news about Ukraine’s setbacks and the improbability of their accomplishing anything other than self-destruction as the fighting continues...

..Biden in the past week inserted authorization for another 14 billion dollars in military supplies into a bill for provision of aid to victims of natural disasters, meaning the present disaster in Hawaii and elsewhere in the States. The tactic was meant to overcome rising Republican opposition to giving Ukraine one more cent of aid should the aid have been in a separate bill dedicated to the war effort...

..So what are the Russians doing about the new arms on the way to Ukraine? ...
..First, those air raid sirens across the whole of Ukraine were related to the systematic Russian bombardment of all still functional Ukrainian airports from which their air force’s SU-24 and SU-27 can operate. These are the aircraft that are capable of carrying and firing the Storm Shadow and other long range missiles...
..Second, we are told that the Russians have just used Kinzhal hypersonic missiles to destroy the railway tunnels passing under the Carpathians which have been the main supply route of Western military hardware arriving from Poland and Romania...
..By Russian calculations, they have now nullified the latest Western plans to prolong the war. https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2023/08/14/russias-asymmetric-response/

  Gilbert Doctorow,  “Army 2023”: More news from Russia that you will not find in Western mainstream

  Two parallel military-related events in Russia this week have attracted delegations from many ‘friendly’ foreign countries. These are the 11th annual Moscow International Security Conference, said to have guests from 60 countries, and “Army 2023” which, from what I caught ‘on the fly,’ appears to have participants from 30 countries.
  The most important of the foreign delegations, judging by the attention it is receiving on Russian television, is the one headed by Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu.  We have heard so far that he was in side meetings with his Russian counterpart  Sergei Shoigu. Russian commentators see as the main purpose of the talks alignment of Russian-Chinese countermeasures to the latest U.S. and NATO activities in and around Ukraine, as well as Belarus, and in Taiwan and the Far East more generally. It has been pointed out that, exceptionally, this is the second visit of Li Shangfu to Russia this year.....The conference on security heard an in-person speech by Defense Minister Shoigu which was notable for several sound bites carried by Russian state television. He said flatly that Ukraine has ‘exhausted its military reserve.’ This suggests that the Russians will be initiating their own strategic offensive in the coming weeks. He also said that the experience of the Ukrainian attacks over the past two months show that the supposed superiority of U.S. and NATO doctrine and practice, the superiority of their military hardware, is all a myth... Surely his most damaging remark for the Pentagon was his stated readiness to share with ‘friendly countries’ what Russia has learned on the battlefield about the vulnerabilities of U.S and NATO equipment and combat methods.....For his part, Vladimir Putin delivered a speech to the conference by video from off-site.  He denounced the Collective West for its ‘geopolitical adventurism and egoistical, neocolonial actions.’...Putin has picked the raisins from the cake of the Marxist critique of the West that the Kremlin leadership promoted on the world stage for three generations...

..But there is another aspect of “Army 2023” which will probably evoke more enthusiasm from the general public when the exhibition opens to them on Friday:  the display of several thousand ‘war trophies’ from the battlefield in Ukraine. In particular that relates to the French wheeled tank, to the British armored personnel carriers, to American artillery pieces, to special battlefield vehicles made in Sweden and much more that was brought back from the battlefield in near mint condition after being abandoned by their Ukrainian crews who ran for their lives. This may well be the best piece of outdoor advertising for the strength of Russian arms. It is surely going to be a bone in the throat of U.S. and European arms vendors. https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2023/08/15/war-2023-more-news-from-russia-that-you-will-not-find-in-western-mainstream/

  Why US Drones Prove Useless in Ukraine    [Not Approved for Off Road Use!]

  On one hand, US defense-tech firms produce drones with a price tag starting from $16,000, well above China's DJI Mavic UAVs that cost around $2,000 or even less.
  What's more, according to the US mainstream press, some US defense contractors who have spent months testing their drones in Ukraine have now decided to leave their drones in storage. The crux of the matter is that despite "outstanding performance characteristics" their highly-sophisticated equipment couldn't perform appropriately in Ukraine's tough battlefield conditions.   https://sputnikglobe.com/20230815/why-us-drones-prove-useless-in-ukraine-1112615946.html

Thanks to Government, Maui's Lahaina Fire Became a Deadly Conflagration , Conner O'Keeffe

  The city of Lahaina sits on the west coast of Maui, Hawaii’s second-largest island. It is surrounded by grassland, much of which the state owns.
Nearly a decade ago the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization, a research nonprofit, warned the Hawaiian government that the area around Lahaina was extremely fire-prone due to frequent downslope winds, steep terrain, and dry grass. Little was done to address these risks. A subsequent report in 2020 added that an invasive species of exceptionally flammable grass was prevalent in the surrounding fields and that passing hurricanes created strong winds known to fuel wildfires on the islands.
  Early last week, Hurricane Dora crossed the ocean south of Hawaii. By early Tuesday morning, August 8, winds as fast as sixty miles per hour were blowing down the slopes of the West Maui Mountains into Lahaina. Around sunrise, a large fault was detected in the power grid, indicating a downed power line. Twenty minutes later, the first reports of fire came in from the area around Lahainaluna Road, uphill and upwind from the city.
  The area where flames were first spotted is full of electrical infrastructure, mostly operated by Hawaiian Electric, the state’s monopoly electricity supplier. This included a substation and a multitude of power lines. Most of the land in the area is owned by the State of Hawaii except for a parcel belonging to the estate of one of Hawaii’s last princesses. This parcel housed a solar farm supplying electricity to the Hawaiian Electric substation. Early last year, NPR published a glowing article about the solar project, praising it the direct result of government regulation crafted to help transition Hawaii to 100 percent renewable power by 2045.
   But on the morning of August 8, as winds hammered the old wooden utility poles, this highly electrified area in the dry grasses above Lahaina was quickly becoming dangerous. Yet no formal procedure was in place to shut off sections of the grid in the face of severe fire risks. As a result, twenty-nine fully energized poles fell across West Maui that day.
  But even with downed poles in the way, the first firefighters on the scene met with some early success. Around 9 a.m., the county fire department declared the fire “100 percent contained.” But the message to residents included an ominous request. The county’s water pumps were powered by electricity, much of which was frantically being turned off to deactivate the downed lines. Officials asked the public to conserve water to preserve water pressure.

  But by midafternoon, a flare-up brought the fire back to life on the Lahaina Bypass, a major road that heads straight into town. The flames moved swiftly into Lahaina at 4:46 p.m., one minute after the county government finally sent out an alert to warn the city’s population, largely without power, about the flare-up that had occurred over an hour before.
  To make matters worse, county officials failed to activate emergency sirens, leaving residents unaware of the danger bearing down on them. And as firefighters heroically rushed toward the flames to try and save their community, they found that there was little to no water pressure in the fire hydrants, which quickly ran dry.
  With a single backed-up highway leading out of the city, many residents of Lahaina had nowhere to go. Some scrambled into the ocean to escape the smoke and flames. But in the end, many couldn’t get out.  [School was called off for high winds, so children were home alone across the island] ...

..To review, a power company shielded from competition by the state placed electrical infrastructure among highly flammable state-owned grass fields above the historic city of Lahaina, which the government was twice warned were highly susceptible to fire. And once a fire broke out, a combination of defective water infrastructure, terrible communication by government officials, and only one escape route doomed the people of Lahaina to the worst wildfire experienced in this country in over a hundred years. https://mises.org/wire/thanks-government-mauis-lahaina-fire-became-deadly-conflagration

  With wildfires ripping across West Maui on Aug. 8, a state water official delayed the release of water that landowners requested to help protect their property from damage and stop the spread. The water standoff played out over much of the day and the water didn’t come until too late.  The dispute involved the Department of Land and Natural Resources’ water resource management division and West Maui Land Co., which manages agricultural and residential subdivisions in West Maui... According to accounts of four people with knowledge of the situation, M. Kaleo Manuel, a Native Hawaiian cultural practitioner and DLNR’s deputy director for water resource management, initially refused West Maui Land Co.’s requests for additional water to help prevent fires from spreading to properties managed by the company. Manuel eventually released water but not until after the fire had run its course.[This was irrigation-ditch water from an uphill reservoir, not city water.]
  His office has not yet commented on the delay of water resources. [The brief archival video of M. Kaleo Manuel discussing his reverence for water is instructive.]. ..Hawaii’s Democrat Governor, Josh Green, says there are people “fighting against the release of water to fight fires” & that it needs to be explored further. [Josh Green MD was an ER Doc, sometimes working in North Kohala from 2008-2013 when I worked there. We talked about various things at various times. He is a decent person who likes politics and was in the Hawaii House, then Senate when I knew him. There were never any bad stories about Dr. Green, though I heard unfavorable reports about a couple of other doctors. Josh is well thought of in Hawaii.] https://www.zerohedge.com/political/woke-hawaiian-official-stalled-release-revered-water-until-it-was-too-late-save-maui

  FEMA Money For Maui Disaster Relief May Get Caught Up In A Partisan Fight Over Ukraine 

 The Biden administration sought $12 billion in emergency funding that would extend disaster relief programs while simultaneously requesting some $24.1 billion in military spending for Ukraine in the same package.
  That means that funding Hawaii’s needs for Maui’s recovery has been tied to funding to back Ukraine’s military, an increasingly unpopular topic in some Republican circles. https://www.civilbeat.org/2023/08/fema-money-for-maui-disaster-relief-may-get-caught-up-in-a-partisan-fight-over-ukraine/

New Ed Dowd & Steve Bannon: Ed Lives There! Maui Hawaii Urgent Update August 2023

Most of the information is presented between 2:50 to 11:50 in this video. FEMA is shutting everybody out, especially reporters. Residents are provided tents. https://beforeitsnews.com/prophecy/2023/08/new-ed-dowd-steve-bannon-ed-lives-there-maui-hawaii-urgent-update-august-2023-2544231.html

  Sasha Latypova posted this interesting twist. Some wondered about arson, but it does not look like that kind of conspiracy now.

  The government of Hawaii states goal for rebuild is to make the entire island of Maui the first Smart ISLAND. They want the entire island governed by AI as outlined in the Hawaii Digital government summit of 2023 that they have planned to host next month Monday, September 25, 2023 on Maui.
  Plans to implement a Digital AI government over Hawaii:  https://events.govtech.com/Hawaii-Digital-Government 

[There is also information and links about the smart cities Hawaii.]

Maui - Plans for A High Tech Prison Island?

  I personally think that the "smart-island" plans will be viewed with an extremely jaundiced and suspicious eye by Hawaiians going forward.

  Lahaina Fire Victims Being Pressured to Sell Land, Governor Warns: 'You would be pretty poorly informed if you try to steal land from our people and then build here'   https://themessenger.com/news/lahaina-fire-victims-being-pressured-to-sell-land-governor-warns

  Largely deplatformed USMC (Ret.) weapons inspector, Scott Ritter,  The US is caught in a dilemma with Niger
  Washington can’t sever relations with the post-coup government lest it lose the basis for its military presence in the African country

(Deputy Secretary of State, Victoria) Nuland had sought a meeting with the ousted president, Bazoum, as well as the leader of the new  military government, General Tchiani. She was denied both, and instead held a very strained dialogue with Tchiani’s military chief, General Moussa Salaou Barmou, who headed a delegation of lesser officers. Nuland called the talks with Barmou “frank” and “difficult.” What she did not do, however, was call a spade a spade, refusing to label the Nigerien coup a coup, but rather treating it as temporary domestic political mishap which, with a little bit of US-applied pressure from the right source, could be overcome.
  The reasoning behind the American game of semantics is that, by law, if the US recognizes the Nigerien coup as a coup, then it must cease all military-to-military interactions between a force of some 1,100 US military personnel currently stationed in Niger, and their Nigerien military counterparts, as well as all other forms of US-funded aid. The law in question, known as Section 7008 (of Public Law 117-328, Division K), specifically states that no funds appropriated by Congress in support of State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs (SFOPS) “shall be obligated or expended to finance directly any assistance to the government of any country whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup d’état or decree.” https://www.rt.com/news/581312-us-niger-nuland-dilemma/

  Simplicius has extensive insights regarding anti-colonial sentiments and actions in the Sahel.

  Change is in the air.
Under cover of the Ukrainian war, vast sweeping changes are in order for the global architecture which has secured Western hegemony for the past century and a half.
  The events currently playing out in Africa and the ‘global south’ dare to eclipse the significance of the Ukrainian war, which acts merely as the frosting to the revolutionary layer cake of anti-imperialist sentiment bursting forth around the world.
  Africa has had enough, and is self-assembling along geopolitical lines. The U.S. stooges of ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) seek to keep the status quo going while rival blocs are ready to strip the Western powers of their self-proclaimed birthright to the African land—and its resources—once and for all...

..This new revolt of the global south follows in the footsteps of previous movements, notably that of Gaddafi, who pushed for pan-Africanism and sought to replace the French Franc with an African currency based on the classical Libyan gold Dinar.
  This was revealed in hacked Clinton emails from 2011 (released in 2015). One of them featured Clinton Foundation employee Sydney Blumenthal (a proxy for a CIA agent, it was later learned) telling Hillary the following:
  The vaults of the Libyan Central Bank in Tripoli. This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French.franc (CFA).
  Blumenthal goes on to intimate that:
“French intelligence officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began”, and that this “influenced President Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to commit France to the attack on Libya”...

..It’s clear that Russia’s David vs. Goliath performance in the Ukrainian war against the combined powers of the West is seen by the world as a reinvigorating and animating inspiration. When African countries see Russia leading the charge with its opening salvo against the West, they feel secure in marching behind their ‘big brother’.
  The true war has always been about Europe’s main hegemonic weapon: its currency and banking system, which it uses to enslave lesser countries and control other ‘great powers’. But things are now converging with remarkable synchronicity to wrest back control from the West. In only a little over a week, a historic BRICS summit will take place and is set to become a linchpin in upturning the world order.

Change Is in the Air in Africa

  UK intelligence service MI-6 has prepared a sabotage squad comprising 100 militants from Ukrainian nationalist groups for operations on the African soil, a military-diplomatic source has told TASS. 
  "According to information, confirmed by several sources, UK special service MI-6 has formed and prepared for deployment on the southern continent a sabotage and assassination squad, comprising members of Ukrainian nationalist and neo-Nazi groups, in an attempt to prevent cooperation between African countries and Russia," the source said.
  According to the source, the Kiev government tasked the country’s national security service SBU, military intelligence service GUR and the Defense Ministry in July with helping MI-6 and SAS to select 100 militants from Ukrainian nationalist groups with vast combat experience "on the eastern front." The instructions were given on a request from London.
  "The task of the Ukrainian squad, formed by the British special services, will be to carry out sabotage attacks at infrastructure facilities in Africa and to assassinate African leaders eyeing cooperation with Russia," the source said. https://tass.com/russia/1661071

Wednesday was yesterday, but I see no update on this hearing.

Judge schedules emergency hearing in RFK Jr.'s lawsuit over YouTube allegedly censoring his campaign
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. alleges Google is censoring his campaign based on statements from the Biden administration https://www.foxnews.com/politics/judge-schedules-emergency-hearing-rfk-jr-lawsuit-youtube-allegedly-censoring-campaign

Arguing in Class (pictured cooking)