🛡❗️🇾🇪❗️ — 🌟 Axios | Exclusive: Houthi arsenal shocks the Pentagon's top weapons buyer | November 14, 2024:

"Houthi rebels are brandishing increasingly sophisticated weapons, including missiles that "can do things that are just amazing," the Pentagon's chief weapons buyer said at an Axios event."

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🏴🇲🇱🇧🇫🇳🇪 Wagner’s failures shake Africa’s faith in Putin’s promises

Humiliating defeats for Russian mercenaries in Mali may make countries think twice before turning to Moscow for help

The videos from Mali’s capital in September were starkly at odds with the assurances Russia’s Wagner group mercenaries had given the country’s ruling junta about improving security.

As many as 100 people died in the Sept 17 attacks, mostly young police recruits, when the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM) seemed to easily penetrate two of the country’s most secure sites.

The jihadist attacks were an embarrassment for the junta, which took power partly because of public frustration at the former government’s feeble attempts to deal with a decade of Islamist insurgent violence.

But they were also a humiliation for its security partner, Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, which had supplanted France and the United Nations in Mali by promising to bring safety where they had failed.

This is not the image of Russian assistance that Vladimir Putin was pushing this week in a summit of African leaders in Sochi, when he offered new allies “total support”.

Yet experts in the Sahel region say the two incidents show that, more than two years after successfully edging out the West, Wagner is struggling to deliver on its promises.

Ulf Laessing, director of the Sahel programme at German think tank the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, said: “Overall, they haven’t been able to achieve more than the French or the Europeans in improving security and some say they have made it worse because they are so brutal.

“From a marketing point of view it will be more difficult for Russia to present that they are really doing much, or are more successful than the French and the Europeans were.”

The Kremlin, using Wagner as its foreign policy arm, used its disinformation machine to skilfully play on deep local frustrations with France, to push out the former colonial power. All three nations have since tilted towards Moscow for help, relying to different extents on Wagner forces. Wagner has about 1,500 mercenaries in Mali, 400 in Burkina Faso and as few as 100 in Niger.

Turkey, for example, could be in pole position after spending years boosting its influence and trade across Africa. Ankara has signed military co-operation agreements with more than 25 African countries, supplying Turkish-made weapons, including drones, helicopters, training aircraft and armoured vehicles. Its hostile stance towards West-imposed sanctions on the military regimes of Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali has also helped its ties with these nations.

🔗https://archive.ph/EytoU

🇩🇪 German right wing AfD criticizes Chancellor Scholz for continued military support to Israel

By supplying arms to Israel, Scholz is effectively accepting all civilian casualties on both sides, says Tino Chrupalla

He argued that rather than contributing to de-escalation, this action exacerbates the conflict.

The German government believes it can resolve the Middle East conflicts through arms shipments, he said and insisted that German weapons should not be provided to any warring party.

He emphasized the need to protect the people of the region and asserted that it is time to engage in a critical and objective dialogue with the Israeli government.

The politician further noted that the shared goal in the region should be peace and a two-state solution, pointing out that the recent attack on the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has once again shown that the situation is spiraling out of control.

📝 Benjamin Netanyahu's dream of creating a Zionist right-wing EU is crumbling before his eyes. His only allies in Europe are Viktor Orban (Fidesz) and Geert Wilders (PVV). Other right-wing figures like Giorgia Meloni, and now Tino Chrupalla, are distancing themselves from Tel Aviv supporting arms embargos and it is unlikely Netanyahu and Likud will find more supporters in right-wing European political parties.

🔗 https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/german-far-right-afd-criticizes-chancellor-scholz-for-continued-military-support-to-israel/3364507

🇮🇱❌🇱🇧 While Israeli politicians speak of signing a ceasefire with Hezbollah, the IDF is moving artillery units beyond the UN 2000 Blue Line in preparation for an offensive towards the city of Tyre.

🔗 Nadav Pollak

🇮🇱❌🇱🇧 Israeli army forces have launched another offensive on the town of Khiam.

Battles are taking place in the Al-Maslekh area, located in the south of Khiam, and in the Wata neighborhood to the east of the town.

🔗 IWN

🇺🇸🇺🇦🇷🇺 Biden Allows Ukraine to Strike Russia With Long-Range U.S. Missiles

Allowing the Ukrainians to use the long-range missiles, known as the Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, came in response to Russia’s surprise decision to bring North Korean troops into the fight, officials said.

While the officials said they do not expect the shift to fundamentally alter the course of the war, one of the goals of the policy change, they said, is to send a message to the North Koreans that their forces are vulnerable and that they should not send more of them.

The officials said that while the Ukrainians were likely to use the missiles first against Russian and North Korean troops that threaten Ukrainian forces in Kursk, Mr. Biden could authorize them to use the weapons elsewhere.

Some U.S. officials said they feared that Ukraine’s use of the missiles across the border could prompt President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to retaliate with force against the United States and its coalition partners.

But other U.S. officials said they thought those fears were overblown.

🔗 https://archive.ph/5NLwU

🇺🇸 Trump’s victory will change America. But Europe can have a different future

Democratic norms look unusually fragile in the US

The week when the transition team of President-elect Donald Trump named a TV journalist as defence secretary and revealed that the world’s richest man would be heading up a new department of governmental efficiency felt like a harbinger of regime change.

Joe Biden was hailed in 2020 by relieved liberals as a course correction after the first Trump presidency. He now looks less like the upholder of America’s eternal mission to spread freedom around the globe, and more like the end of its ancien régime.

The American century ended much as it had begun, with Clinton advisers hailing the US as “the worldwide symbol of opportunity and freedom”. Many believed that the Washington Consensus would set the new rules of the economic game and liberal democracy would flourish even in the birthplace of Bolshevism. Today that looks like hubris. Since the 2007-08 financial crisis, the number of democracies around the world has fallen, and the backlash to globalisation has gathered pace. American voters themselves this time round welcomed a programme based around trade protectionism, immigration controls and opposition to multiculturalism.

Yet even in these very changed circumstances, it is hard to break the habit of seeing the US as a kind of precursor. If the US was once a beacon of liberty and hope to the world’s “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” (in the words engraved on the Statue of Liberty), does the 2024 election imply that a different, perhaps more authoritarian future lies ahead for everyone? Naturally people interrogate the past to try to figure such questions out and ask history to help them make sense of what is happening. In particular, they look for analogies.

The analogy of choice these days is fascism, not surprisingly perhaps in an era of strongmen in countries such as India, Russia, Turkey and Hungary. Some see fascist dictators between the two world wars as their forerunners. Former White House chief of staff John Kelly has said that his ex-boss falls under “the general definition of fascist”. The prospect may be alarming; but it has the merit of familiarity.

🔗 https://archive.ph/sQAhx