Reflectii

American military supremacy is an article of faith for most Americans, granting the military a strong measure of resistance to the broad decay in the trust that people have in their public institutions. Congress, the president, courts, banks, and tech companies are all lousy and crooked in the eyes of most Americans, but the military, almost uniquely, retains the trust and support of the majority. The prevailing view remains that the American military is the best trained, most technologically advanced, most competently lead, and liberally equipped force in the world. America’s colossal defense budget is practically a point of pride.

Empires don’t just fall like toppled trees. Instead, they weaken slowly as a succession of crises drain their strength and confidence until they suddenly begin to disintegrate. So it was with the British, French and Soviet empires; so it now is with imperial America.

What happened?

On the evening of 22 March, militants mounted a harrowing attack on Crocus City Hall, a music venue in the suburbs of Moscow, taking at least 139 lives. Surveillance camera footage from inside the building shows the assailants firing ruthlessly upon concert attendees with light automatic weapons, adding to the chaos by setting the premises ablaze. The arson caused many of the deaths, with people dying of burns and smoke inhalation, and enabled the attackers to get away from the scene.

Scholars over the years have tried to fathom the emergence and difference between Nazism and Fascism. Looking into various scales of similarity and differences they reached different conclusions. In their views, the Fascist and Nazi movements developed in roughly three parallel stages.

There is still no universal definition of barbarism. It is politics that defines what is or is not a terrorist act. The recent negotiation of the amnesty law for those convicted by the “procs” reactivates the debate

The case of Canadian Nathaniel Veltman is exemplary, of book. At the age of 20, on June 6, 2020, he claimed the lives of four members of the Afzaal family, Muslims of Pakistani origin, rammed them with their van in the Canadian province of Ontario. After committing the multiple murder, he went to a mall, called the police, confessed and surrendered. Veltman was part of a disstructured family, of divorced parents, but a fundamentalist Christian. In the interrogation, the boy stated that he killed the Afzaal after months of planning to attack Muslims simply because they were; that he wanted to send a message to other young white people to do the same: to kill with their cars citizens who professed Islam, including children, with their cars, with the aim of making the impact, terror, greater. I wanted to generate a sense of insecurity in that community to leave the country. On 22 February, Judge Renee Pomerance sentenced him to life imprisonment. The judge did not want to pronounce her name, but she left one thing clear: she is a terrorist, and what she did, a case of a book of terrorism.

Russia’s war on Ukraine makes cooperation among France, Germany, and Poland more important than ever. Public disagreements can only weaken the EU and play into Putin’s hands.

It happened back in 1991, just as the Cold War was ending and the Eastern and Central European countries were making the transition to democracy.

Fin février, les États membres de l’Union européenne se sont mis d’accord sur une treizième série de sanctions à l’encontre de la Russie, bien qu’ils soient de plus en plus critiqués pour l’incapacité des restrictions déjà en vigueur à mettre un terme à la guerre en Ukraine.

Abstract

This article examines a thwarted Hezbollah terror plot targeting Jewish sites in Brazil, orchestrated by two Brazilian nationals of Middle Eastern descent, facilitated by Hezbollah’s shift in strategy from using trained agents to employing local recruits via intermediaries. The narrative unfolds with the arrest of a Lebanese drug trafficker in the Tri-Border Area, revealing Hezbollah’s deep-rooted connections within the local Lebanese diaspora, exploited for both drug trafficking and terror financing. The involvement of local businessmen and the recruitment of Brazilian nationals underscore Hezbollah’s adaptation and the complexities of its operational tactics, contrasting with its traditional reliance on its External Security Organization. The investigation highlights Hezbollah’s leveraging of diaspora communities for establishing illicit finance networks, a strategic maneuver unveiled by the DEA’s decade-long investigation into Hezbollah’s criminal activities. The article delves into the backgrounds of the plot’s orchestrators, their ties to the diaspora, and their recruitment methods, painting a detailed picture of Hezbollah’s operational evolution and its implications for global security. The foiled plot serves as a stark reminder of the persistent threat posed by Hezbollah’s international network and the challenges of countering its multifaceted operations.

When Napoleon engaged Russia in a European land war, the Russians mounted a determined defense, and the French lost. When Hitler tried the same, the Soviet Union responded similarly, and the Germans lost. In World War 1 and its post-revolutionary civil war (1914-1922), first Russia and then the USSR defended with far greater effect against two invasions than the invaders had calculated. That history ought to have cautioned U.S. and European leaders to minimize the risks of confronting Russia, especially when Russia felt threatened and determined to defend itself.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump set off alarm bells in Europe when he told a campaign rally that he would encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to any countries he judged to be delinquent on their defense obligations. European countries were already fretting about the possibility of a second Trump term, and these latest remarks sent these concerns into high orbit. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told the Financial Times a few days later that Europe was facing a world “that has got rougher” and that “we have to spend more, we have to spend better, and we have to spend European.”