Palestinians inspect destroyed residences in Khan Younis after Israeli military withdraws most of its ground troops from the southern Gaza Strip (Reuters) Press TV – April 7, 2024 Israel says it has pulled most of its troops out of southern Gaza in what it said is a move to recuperate and prepare for future offensives. […]
Three Israeli brigades on Sunday left the southern city of Khan Yunis but another remained to prevent displaced Palestinians from returning to their homes in the north.
The Israeli military said a “significant force” will remain in the rest of the besieged Gaza Strip.
Israel’s military earlier announced it’s pulling thousands of soldiers out of the south, including Khan Younis city, after months of fierce combat.
The military wing of the Hamas resistance movement said Israel was forced to end its operations before achieving its goals.
The al-Qassam Brigades dismissed Israel’s claims that it had destroyed resistance forces in those areas from where it had withdrawn.
The Brigades added that resistance forces have always surprised Israel.
Khan Younis residents, who rushed back to their city after Israeli forces relocated from southern Gaza, found a wasteland of destruction and rubble.
Media reports quoting residents said much of Khan Younis had been destroyed, many buildings had been bombed, and there were overturned cars stuck in the mud near craters left by missiles.
Witnesses said that damaged hospital beds were seen on one street.
They have been saying the situation is completely indescribable and chaotic as a great deal of destruction has been done to the entire area
“It is a shock, a shock. What happened was not small … while coming on the way in the car, I saw things. The destruction is unbearable,” said Mohammed Abou Diab, who was among those who returned to his old neighborhood.
The Secretary-General and CEO of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), Jagan Chapagain, says the situation in Gaza is “desperate and worsening” as the war hits its six-month anniversary.
The city has come under intense Israeli bombardment in recent months.
Khan Younis has been destroyed, with the destruction of civil infrastructure, mosques, and residential houses, and people are saying that they have nothing left in the city.
After six months of relentless attacks on Gaza, Israel remains no closer to a victory than it has been at any point since October of last year.
US says Israeli military’s troop reduction in Gaza is to ‘rest and refit’
White House National Security spokesperson John Kirby said the Israeli army’s troop reduction in Gaza appears to be a “rest and refit” and not necessarily indicative of any new operations.
“As we understand it, and through their public announcements, it is really just about rest and refit for these troops.”
“[This is] not necessarily that we can tell indicative of some coming new operation for these troops,” Kirby said when asked about the step.
Palestinians face more deaths and destruction in Gaza as the US-Israeli onslaught in the besieged strip continues for a seventh month.
Since the beginning of the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza, nearly 33,200 people have been killed.
At least 7,000 people are also unaccounted for or presumed dead under the rubble.
Huge news out of Germany as the federal government have been forced to admit that so-called “conspiracy theorists” were right about everything during the Covid pandemic.
Introductory Note
What is significant is that the German Health authorities based on official data have now been obliged under Freedom of Information to reveal the devastating nature and impacts of the Covid lockdowns imposed on 190 countries, starting March 11, 2020.
Most of the independent studies including those conducted by Global Research have been the object of censorship.
Of Significance, the official documents of Germany’s Ministry of Health are consistent with the independent reports published in the course of more than 4 years pertaining to the COVID-19 lockdowns, the mandatory wearing of the face mask, and the experimental mRNA vaccines.
Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, April 4, 202
***
In fact, according to the German government data, there was no pandemic at all, just a tightly choreographed military grade psy-op to brainwash the masses into accepting an experimental vaccine with disastrous consequences.
These secret German government documents obtained via a Freedom of Information request and subsequent lawsuit have blown the lid of the global elite’s Covid lies and it’s vitally important that as many people as possible are made aware of the truth.
More and more people all over the world are waking up and seeing the global elite for what they always have been: deranged psychopaths hell bent on destruction and domination.
Germany is no different. The German population suffered some of the most brutal lockdowns and vaccine mandates in all of Europe and now the people are rising up and demanding accountability.
Step forward Paul Schreyer and Multipolar magazine who launched a Freedom of Information request and then launched a lawsuit against the German government when they tried every trick in the book to keep the secret documents under lock and key.
As Professor Steven Homburg explains, the results are stunning, and represent total vindication for everyone who dared to question the narrative of lockdowns and mask and vaccine mandates.
🇬🇧🇺🇸 New: #RKIFiles are out! Over 2,000 pages showing that the 'pandemic' was all fraud. Highlights:
1. 'High health risk' was not derived from data, but a political decision. 2. 'Herd immunity' was seen as a mere narrative.
The secret government documents – all 2,000 pages of them – reveal that we were right about nearly everything and the so-called “pandemic” was all fraud.
Black Bearded Saki Chiropotes satanas Brazil Endangered The greatest risks for the future survival of the Black Bearded Saki, also known as the Black Cuxiú are the loss and fragmentation of their habitat and hunting pressure. IUCN Red list Black Bearded #Sakis are #endangered large monkeys endemic to #Brazil #SouthAmerica they are #endangered by #timber […] — Palm Oil Detectives
Conservation Status and Threats
The black bearded saki is classified as Endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN, 2020), appearing on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. This species is already considered extinct in much of its original range, and current populations are trending downward at alarming rates. The number of mature individuals may be fewer than 2,500.
Like many endangered primates throughout the world, the greatest threat to black bearded sakis is the loss of their natural habitat driven by human development. Large infrastructural projects like highways and the Tucurúi Dam have sacrificed large swaths of habitable land to human interests while smaller projects, like logging and agriculture, continue to fragment the scant pieces of habitat left over.
For primates like the black bearded saki who stay high in the canopy but who are not especially skilled leapers and climbers, forest fragmentation creates a host of problems. Climbing down out of the canopy, for instance, requires extra time and energy that these primates would otherwise spend performing more natural behaviors.
Additionally, leaving the canopy makes them easier targets for predators, including human hunters. In fact, forest fragmentation likely increases the rate at which black bearded sakis are hunted by humans since preferred game animals also decrease in number due to loss of their own habitats.
Furthermore, isolation caused by fragmentation creates genetic bottlenecks. The harmful defects and increased vulnerability to diseases that these cause can gradually render each new generation less viable.
Limited Conservation Efforts
Without significant efforts to save the black bearded saki from extinction, this species will soon become extinct. Fortunately, there are efforts currently under way to turn this trend around.
The Pitheciine Action Group (PAG) is an organization directly involved in black bearded saki conservation efforts. With help from an international committee established by one of Brazil’s top federal environmental agencies, PAG are developing a Conservation Action Plan for the black bearded saki.
A number of areas, both protected and unprotected, exist where the presence of black bearded sakis is possible but not confirmed. Therefore, surveys and research into the effects of fragmentation on isolated black bearded saki populations are needed for any future conservation efforts to have meaningful effects.
Black bearded sakis have found an ally in Projeto Kaapori (Project Kaapori). The Ka’apori capuchin (Cebus kaapori) is another Critically Endangered primate species with essentially the same range as the black bearded saki. Projeto Kaapori’s primary mission is Ka’apori capuchin conservation. However, in doing their work, they have simultaneously collected data on all other primate species living in the Ka’apori capuchin’s range, including black bearded sakis. In so doing, they are contributing information that is crucial to the PAG’s Conservation Action Plan. Additionally, they are showing how research and conservation projects can be planned in the future to benefit these species jointly.
Hope for black bearded saki conservation lies in the future of the Gurupi Biological Reserve. This reserve is the last significant patch of forest where black bearded sakis are known to be living. It, plus the many Amerindian reservations that border it, currently offers wildlife an estimated one million hectares of relatively unfragmented and untouched forest. Founded in 1988, Gurupi falls under the IUCN protection category as a “strict reserve.” It is one of the last remnants of the Belém Center of Endemism and, as such, its preservation is significant for a number of flora and fauna endemic to this area. Human activity is, therefore, heavily restricted within this reserve.
Deforestation pressures from illegal activities continue to plague the Gurupi Biological Reserve, however. A third of the reserve’s forest has been lost to local ranchers, timber companies, and illegal land settlers since its founding. Today, federal agencies like the Primate Protection Center (Centro de Protectão de Primatas Brasileiros) and the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade) are working to solve these and other pressures that face Gurupi with mixed results so far.
In addition to these federal protections, Gurupi is also supported by the Amazon Region Protected Areas Program, a collaboration between governmental and non-governmental agencies working to expand protections for the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. Furthermore, a proposition to create a South Amazon Ecological Corridor would connect the Gurupi Biological Reserve to other protected areas in the country. If initiated, the ecological corridor would eventually link more than 30,000,000 hectares (78,000,000 acres) of rainforest.
No doubt, the protection of their habitat will have mounting positive effects for black bearded sakis living within the Gurupi Biological Reserve. In tandem with the PAG’s developing Conservation Action Plan, the future of the black bearded saki does not seem as bleak as it once did.
Pricing power in criminal Gold market dominated by West’s institutional money moving East and implications are profound
The gold price has risen to a series of new all-time highs of late, a development that has received only cursory attention in the mainstream financial media. But as is the case with so much else these days, there is much more going on than meets the eye. In fact, the rise in the dollar price of gold is almost the least interesting aspect to this story.
For thousands of years, gold was the ultimate store of value and was synonymous with the concept of ‘money’. Trade was often settled either in gold itself or in bank notes backed by gold and directly exchangeable for it. Currencies backed by nothing but government decree – called ‘fiat’ currencies – have tended to eventually fail.
However, in 1971, gold found itself cast out of this ancient role when the US unilaterally suspended dollar convertibility into gold as enshrined in the Bretton Woods agreement that established the framework for the post-war economy. Shortly thereafter, in an act that medieval alchemists only dreamed of, gold was created out of thin air in the form of futures contracts, meaning bullion could be bought and sold without any metal changing hands – or even existing.
Besides the obvious ramification of all of this – the removal of gold backing to the dollar and thus implicitly to nearly all currencies – there are two important features of how the gold market has subsequently functioned: first, gold has essentially been reduced to trading like any other cyclical financial asset; second, the price of gold has largely been determined by Western institutional investors.
Both of these longstanding trends are now breaking down. As we will see, the importance of this development is hard to overstate. But let’s begin with a very quick examination of how gold went from being the ultimate source of value to just another ticker moving in predictable patterns in the constellation of financial instruments.
How paper replaced metal
The collapse of Bretton Woods in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s – culminating in the gold window being shut in 1971 – was a messy period of transition, uncertainty, and instability. The dollar devalued and a fixed-rate system was negotiated and soon thereafter abandoned. But what was clear was that the US was steering the world away from gold and toward a dollar standard.
Jelle Zijlstra, president of the Dutch central bank, chairman of the Bank of International Settlements from 1967 until 1981, and a prominent figure at the time, recalled in his memoirs how “gold disappeared as the anchor of monetary stability” and that “the road… through endless vicissitudes to a new dollar hegemony was paved with many conferences, with faithful, shrewd, and sometimes misleading stories, with idealistic visions of the future and impressive professorial speeches.” But, he concluded, the ultimate political reality was that the “Americans supported or fought any change, depending on whether they saw the dollar’s position strengthened or threatened.”
Nevertheless, gold was lurking in the shadows like a deposed but still-living monarch and thus represented an implicit guard against the abuse of what had become fiat currencies. If nothing else, as dollars continued to be printed, the price of gold would surge and signal a debasement of the greenback. And this is more or less what happened in the 1970s after the gold window was shuttered. After breaking the $35 per-ounce peg in 1971, gold rocketed all the way up to $850 by 1980.
Hunger for gold in the Global North is fueling a living hell for Indigenous people in the Global South. Here’s reasons why you should #BoycottGold4Yanomami @barbaranavarroTweet
So the US government had a strong interest in managing the perception of the dollar through gold. Most importantly, it didn’t want to see gold recreate a pseudo reserve currency by strengthening substantially. Legendary Fed chairman Paul Volcker once said “gold is my enemy.” And indeed it traditionally had been the enemy of central banks: it forced them to tighten rates when they didn’t want to and imposed on them a certain discipline.
This framework helps make sense of the rise of the unallocated – i.e. ‘paper’ – gold market in the 1980s and the countless gold derivatives that emerged. This actually started in 1974 with the launch of gold futures trading but exploded in the next decade. What happened is that bullion banks began selling paper claims on gold for which there was no actual gold attached. And buyers were not actually required to pay upfront but could simply leave a cash margin.
The setup is reminiscent of the old communist joke that went “we pretend to work and you pretend to pay us.” In this case, the investor pretends to pay for the gold and the seller pretends to own it. This is about as close as you can get to pure speculation.
Thus was born the fractional-reserve paper gold scheme that persists to this day. And indeed, there is now vastly more paper gold than physical, some $200-300 trillion compared to $11 trillion, according an estimate by Forbes magazine. Others put the discrepancy even higher. Nobody really knows. Comex, the primary futures and options market for gold, has also become more paper-driven. According to analyst Luke Gromen, whereas 25 years ago some 20% of the gold volume on Comex was related to a physical ounce, that number has fallen to around 2%.
Gold as just another cyclical asset
What is important to understand here is that the creation of a derivative market satisfies demand for gold that would otherwise go to the physical market. Only a limited amount of gold exists and can be mined but an unlimited amount of gold derivatives can be underwritten. As Gromen explains, when monetary expansion drives demand for gold (due to the inflation this brings), there are two ways this demand can be dealt with: let the price of gold rise as more dollars chase the same amount of gold; or permit more paper claims to be created on the same amount of gold, which allows the pace of gold’s rise to be managed.
There are several important implications of this. The rise of the paper market has clearly played an important role in defanging gold in its role as exerting a hard limit on expansionary policy, thus implicitly reinforcing the credibility of the dollar. But it has also meant that the gold price has largely been determined by investment flows rather than physical demand. And when we’re talking about investment flows, we mean first and foremost Western institutional investors.
Given that gold trades essentially as a cyclical asset, institutional investors have primarily traded gold based on movements in real US interest rates – meaning interest rates adjusted for inflation. Gold is bought when real rates fall and vice versa. The logic is that when interest rates rise, money managers can earn more by switching to bonds or cash, thus increasing the opportunity cost of holding non-interest-bearing assets such as gold. By the same token, lower rates make gold – seen as a hedge against inflation – more attractive. This correlation has been particularly strong over the last 15 years or so and many analysts date it back further than that.
So let’s go a step further and pose the following question: If Western institutional money has been driving the price, who has been on the other side of the trade when actual gold does change hands?
To oversimplify a bit, the model worked roughly as follows, as has been explained by gold analyst Jan Nieuwenhuijs: Western institutions essentially controlled the price of gold and bought from the East in bull markets and sold to the East in bear markets. This makes sense, because the Western side of this trade essentially consisted of investors who in any asset class tend to chase the price higher. The East, meanwhile, was characterized more by consumer demand. Because consumers are price-sensitive, they tend to buy when the price is low and are happy to sell into a rising market.
So gold flowed from East to West in bull markets and from West to East in bear markets. But, as we mentioned above, it was the Western institutional investors who were in the driver’s seat in this trade.
This was the well-established state of affairs up until 2022, which happens to be when the Ukraine proxy war began and the US took the bold step of freezing some $300 billion in Russian central bank assets.
The end of a longstanding correlation
A coincidence or not, what happened that year was that the correlation between US real rates and gold broke down and has not been restored. The first sign of an impending shift was that, in first few months after the Fed embarked on a sharp rate-hike cycle in March 2022, gold did drop but proved much more resilient to the rising rates than correlation models would have suggested. But the real breakdown in the correlation started around September of that year, when gold prices actually started climbing even as real rates remained flat. In fact, from late October 2022 through June 2023, the gold price rose 17%.
Meanwhile, over 2023, US real yields rose (despite quite a bit of volatility), which, according to the old correlation, should have meant a decline in gold prices as higher yields elsewhere would make non-yielding gold less attractive. However, gold rose 15% for the year.
Another notable aspect of this is that Western institutional investors have been net sellers of gold, as evidenced by declining inventory held by Western exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and falling open interest on Comex during the October 2022-June 2023 period mentioned above (when the correlation broke down). In 2023, gold ETFs posted net outflows for the year despite the rising gold price. Meanwhile, so far this year through February, the ETF outflow figure amounted to $5.7 billion, $4.7 billion of which came from North America – all while gold prices have surged to all-time highs.
So coming into focus is a picture of Western institutional investors responding like Pavlov’s dogs to rising interest rates and ditching gold in favor of higher yielding assets such as bonds, stocks, money market funds – you name it. And normally, like clockwork, this would have driven the price down.
Musk-US’s NATO promise to Kiev like start of ‘Nuclear Apocalypse’ –Watch Movie Here
A pledge by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Ukraine will become a member of NATO looks like a scene from a movie about a nuclear apocalypse, entrepreneur Elon Musk believes.
The top US diplomat reiterated the “rock solid” determination of his country and other members to eventually include Ukraine in the military bloc at a NATO summit in Brussels this week. Speaking alongside Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba, he said the purpose of the event was to “help build a bridge to membership.”
“This is literally how the nuclear apocalypse movie starts,” Musk responded on X (formerly Twitter). He shared a video from the 1983 American television film ‘The Day After’, which depicts a fictional nuclear war between the US and the USSR. The movie was shown to Soviet audiences in 1987, when the two superpowers were negotiating a key nuclear arms control treaty.
In a post on social media, former president Dimitry Medvedev lashed out at Kiev’s Western backers, arguing that they are “taking the world for fools” if they believe that sending foreign forces to Ukraine would not lead to a dangerous escalation. If NATO soldiers do end up in Ukraine, they will not be limited to non-combat roles, he claimed.“They will become part of the regular forces that are fighting against us. That is why they will have to be treated only as the enemy,” Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, wrote. “We should take no prisoners! The highest rewards must be given out for every killed NATO soldier.”
Musk has previously spoken out about the risks to Ukraine and the world of further escalation. Continued hostilities could result in Kiev losing access to the Black Sea, he said last week.
The billionaire has urged Kiev to offer concessions to Moscow in exchange for a peace treaty. He has also backed the argument that US attempts to weaken Russia by arming and funding Ukraine have backfired.
Un número desproporcionado de represores persiguió, apaleó, requisó el material e identificó a vendedores, mientras la gente denunciaba la actuación policial
Decenas de agentes de la Policía Municipal y de la Ertzaintza cargaron ayer por la tarde contra personas que estaban ejerciendo la venta ambulante en las inmediaciones de la Gran Vía de Bilbo.
Como se aprecia en los vídeos que han circulado en redes sociales, los vendedores, asustados, salieron huyendo —alguno incluso cayó en una fuente—, pero los policías les persiguieron, les requisaron el material e identificaron a cuatro de ellos.
En las imágenes se ve un claro empleo de la violencia por parte del operativo policial, con el uso de las porras, de la unidad canina y con agentes encapuchados, generando una situación de mucha tensión en pleno centro de la ciudad que llegó a provocar cortes en el tráfico y que suscitó un gran rechazo por parte de las personas viandantes que asistieron a los hechos.
Algunos de ellos, grabaron los vídeos que hoy dejan constancia de la desproporcionalidad de la actuación policial.
Al menos 57.000 millones de euros de gasto militar en 2024 –
El compromiso adquirido por el presidente Pedro Sánchez de alcanzar el 2% del PIB en gasto militar en 2029 en la Cumbre que tuvo lugar en Madrid en junio de 2022, se ha traducido en un gran aumento del armamentismo hasta alcanzar cifras nunca vistas en 45 años de democracia en España.
En el período de cuatro años (2020-2023) de la legislatura de Gobierno entre PSOE y Unidas Podemos, se han llevado a cabo unas inversiones de 24.139,7 millones de euros en Programas Especiales de Modernización (PEM, antes llamados PEA), que totalizan 21 nuevos programas y cuatro modificaciones de los ya existentes. Estos compromisos hipotecan el gasto de futuros gobiernos hasta el año 2035 y previsiblemente aumentarán la deuda
El presupuesto del Ministerio de Defensa aumentó en 2023 un 23,4% con respecto a 2022 y, debido a los compromisos adquiridos en inversiones de nuevos PEM, el próximo año 2024 volverá a subir en un porcentaje no menor, sobrepasando de nuevo el tan manido 2% del PIB en gasto militar que exige la OTAN.
Por otro lado, están las inversiones en I+D militar para desarrollar los PEM. En este año 2023 el Gobierno ha destinado 1.833 millones, un 11,2% sobre el total de la I+D en ayudas públicas a la I+D militar para el desarrollo de nuevas armas. Esta cuantía aumentó un 95% con respecto al año anterior, pasando de 938,5 M€ en 2022 a 1.833,3 M€ en 2023, contribuyendo en los últimos diez años a un crecimiento del 361,7%.
El pasado 13 de marzo se anunció que no se presentará para su aprobación en el parlamento del proyecto de ley de presupuestos generales del estado que estaba en negociación y que, por tanto, continuará la vigencia de la prórroga de los presupuestos aprobados en 2023.
En lo que respecta al gasto militar la prórroga es engañosa y no supone, en modo alguno, que el gasto militar de 2024 sea el mismo que el previsto en 2023 y, mucho menos, que el efectivamente ejecutado (muy superior al aprobado) para dicho año.
En el presente informe intentaremos acercarnos a una estimación del que podría ser (dado que la falta de presupuesto lo que hace es convertir en más opaco si cabe nuestro gasto militar) el gasto militar 2024.
También propondremos algunos puntos sobre los que habrá que estar vigilantes a lo largo del año para detectar las partidas y autorizaciones de gasto militar que se irán haciendo para provocar el aumento del gasto militar por encima del prorrogado.
Para ello, en un primer momento, recordaremos la cifra de gasto militar que en 2023 se presupuestó y los componentes ocultos en los que se distribuía. También veremos en un momento el crecimiento extrapresupuestario de este gasto militar “reconocido” según la intervención general de la Administración del Estado (IGAE), órgano público de fiscalización del gasto público.
La IGAE, sin embargo, no controla específicamente el gasto militar, ni desagrega el gasto por los distintos programas y partidas que disfrazan gasto militar en otros ministerios ajenos a Defensa, por lo que los datos obtenidos sólo nos darán una aproximación al gasto efectivamente ejecutado durante 2023 y a la cifra total de gasto militar español.
En un segundo momento analizaremos diversos parámetros que nos permiten estimar el crecimiento del gasto militar español para 2024 y ofrecer una cifra aproximada que sirva de referencia.
También analizaremos, desde una perspectiva antimilitarista, las principales tendencias y objetivos que dicho gasto pretende cubrir y algunos de los movimientos políticos a los que habremos de estar vigilantes para denunciar el crecimiento de dicho gasto.
The Free 