This latest from overnight in Russia will have an effect on “peace” talks, one way or another. Engels Air Base is a very major Russian base:
Engels-2 (Russian: Энгельс) is a strategic bomber military airbase in Russia located 14 kilometres (8.7 mi) east of Saratov. Engels is a major bomber operations base, and is Russia's sole operating location for the Tupolev Tu-160 (NATO: Blackjack) strategic bomber. The base has a 3,500-metre (11,500 ft) runway and about 10 large revetments.
MenchOsint @MenchOsint
1h
The Ukrainians, with the help of NATO's intelligence, hit the Russian Engels-2 Base this night provoking a huge explosion.
Posted this early before I it was reported as an ammunition depot.
The question is, to what degree does a deep drone strike into Russia like this one require. I assume that in order to target the ammo dump specifically would require intel assistance and guidance assistance that Ukraine doesn’t have on its own. Russians will be unhappy. Putin, in the phone call, pushed Trump to quash such assistance. What now?
Also, looking forward to the proposed Trump - Putin meeting in KSA (?) next week (?), this Russian source claims that the Black Sea will be a major topic:
-- GEROMAN -- time will tell -  -- @GeromanAT
The Kremlin on the upcoming meeting between Russia and the US in Jeddah: it may not take place on Sunday, but perhaps at the beginning of next week.
According to my information, and also based on the analysis of what is happening on the other side of the Black Sea [large scale anti-Erdogan political unrest in Istanbul], there will be a broad discussion of the "Black Sea Initiative". This issue has been hanging in the air for a long time. Here is the passage of warships through the Bosphorus, which is currently being prevented by Turkey, and the ports of Odessa and Nikolaev, where the British and French are in charge. And also the issue of logistics of coal, ore and grain.
The Black Sea issue is one of the main ones in the Russia-US energy field.
Brief excerpt follows. What isn’t mentioned in the article is that Trump’s demand for negotiations is NOT just about nuclear weapons. Trump is also demanding a veto over Iran’s foreign policy—Iran must stop supporting resistance to Anglo-Zionism. That’s the meaning of the reference to Iran’s willingness to discuss a new nuclear deal—but NOT a surrender of its foreign policy:
Behind the scenes: The sources said Trump's letter to Khamenei was "tough." On the one hand, it proposed negotiations on a new nuclear deal, but on the other hand warned of consequences if Iran rejects the offer and continues to push forward with its nuclear program.
Trump said in the letter that he doesn't want open-ended [no time deadline?] negotiations and mentioned a two-month period for getting a deal, two sources said.
Before the letter was delivered to the Iranians, the White House briefed several U.S. allies, including Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, about its contents, a U.S. official and a source with knowledge told Axios.
The White House declined to comment. The Iranian mission to the UN did not respond to requests for comment.
What they're saying: Last week, Khamenei called Trump's letter and his proposal for negotiations "a deception" that is only meant to create the impression that Iran refuses to negotiate.
Khamenei said he didn't support negotiations with the U.S., but several hours later, the Iranian mission to the UN issued a statement on X and didn't rule out negotiations between Iran and the U.S. over the nuclear program.
"If the objective of negotiations is to address concerns vis-à-vis any potential militarization of Iran's nuclear program, such discussions may be subject to consideration," it said in the statement.
The Iranian mission to the UN added however that if the aim of the talks is "the dismantlement of Iran's peaceful nuclear program to claim that what Obama failed to achieve has now been accomplished, such negotiations will never take place."
What to watch: Iran's Foreign Ministry said in a briefing with reporters earlier this week that Trump's letter is still being studied and Iran's response is being drafted.
Again related—Alastair Crooke’s most recent article repeats his main themes, but is always worth reading. Here I quote an excerpt that highlights the Zionist mentality:
Crooke is discussing the political division and turmoil—near chaos, with the rise of Jewish militias in the “settler” movement—which is based in deep ideological and cultural differences:
Israel’s classical security vision (dating from the Ben-Gurion era) was configured to provide an answer to the enduring Israeli dilemma: Israel cannot impose an end to conflict on its enemies, yet at the same time, it cannot maintain a large army in the long term.
Therefore, Israel – in this optic – had to rely on a reserve army that needed adequate security warning before any war occurred. Advance intelligence warning of coming war therefore, was a paramount requirement.
And that key presumption blew apart on 7 October.
The shock and sense of collapse arising from 7 Oct led many to think that the Hamas attack had irrevocably broken the Israeli concept of security – the policy of deterrence had failed and the proof of that was that Hamas was not deterred.
But here, we approach the crux of the Israeli internal war: What was destroyed on 7 Oct was not just the old security paradigm of the Labour Party and the old security elites. It did that; but what arose from its ashes was an alternative weltanschauung that expressed a fundamentally different concept in philosophy and epistemology to the classic deterrence paradigm:
“I was born in Israel; I grew up in Israel … I served in the IDF”, says Alon Mizrahi;
“I was exposed to it. I was indoctrinated this way, and for many years of my life I believed it. This represents a serious Jewish problem: It is not just [a matter of one mode of] Zionism … How can you teach your children – and this is almost universal – that everyone who is not Jewish wants to kill you. When you put yourself in this paranoia, you give yourself permission to do anything to everyone … It is not a good way to create a society. It is so dangerous”.
…
“How can we have normality tomorrow”, Alon Mizrahi asks, “if this is who we are today”?
Here’s an example of what Mizrahi is talking about—how do you talk someone out of this mentality?
There are no civilians in Gaza. Hamas has drafted everyone, down to the newest babies, into the war effort, and they rejoice when the children they shove into the line of fire die because it's their most powerful weapon against those they hate more than life and blood.
And lastly, Veep Vance explains that globalism = colonialism:
Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand
This is actually an extraordinary admission to make for a US Vice President https://x.com/OopsGuess/status/1902396228404674853/video/1…
Vance explains that "the idea of globalization was that rich countries would move further up the value chain while the poor countries made the simpler things."
But he laments that it didn't quite work out this way: as he explains it turns out that poor countries (mostly China) didn't want to just remain cheap labor forever and started moving up the value chain themselves. Which is why, according to him, globalization was a failure.
Meaning that the objective of globalization wasn't to reduce global inequalities but very much to maintain them, to institute a system of permanent economic hierarchy where rich countries would maintain their hold over the most profitable sectors while relegating poor countries to perpetual subordination in lower-value production.
This is basically all you need to know to explain 90% of U.S. foreign policy these past few years: colonial thinking is alive and well, and America's shift of strategy in recent years - away from the previous "Washington Consensus" of "free" markets towards a much more overt attempt to contain and restrict China's development - stems precisely from this mindset.
From semiconductor export controls to investment restrictions, these policies aren't about 'national security' in any genuine sense - they're about trying to preserve a global economic order where, simply put, poorer nations know their assigned place and stay there. At the very core, that's the "China threat": a China that stepped out of the economic lane assigned to it by the West.
It's deeply ironic when you think of it: a global game allegedly designed to "spread market principles" worldwide is being abandoned precisely because it worked too well. When China succeeded better than expected, the response wasn't to celebrate the validation of the game's effectiveness but to change its rules. Precisely because the real unspoken game - but now clearly stated by the U.S. Vice President - was to maintain global inequality, not eliminate it.
All in all, in case they hadn't yet gotten the memo, this sends a very clear message to the developing world: economic development will require challenging a U.S.-dominated economic order that views their advancement as a threat rather than a success. Which incidentally is why Vance's words might actually help accelerate the very redistribution of global economic power he laments, pushing more nations to recognize that genuine development requires strategic independence from a system intended to keep them in their place.
What Veep Vance doesn’t actually say is that the whole globalist movement was designed not only to make the rich nations richer, but also—within the rich nations themselves—to make the rich richer, while buying off the bottom 90+ per cent with cheap stuff from a colonized China and buying off the political class with insider trading opportunities. But the really dirty secret is that those in the 90+ per cent—they and their offspiring—would end up on an economic treadmill in a hyper surveilled national security state.
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The Daily Pot @TheDailyPot
BREAKING:  After reviewing the JFK files, CNN claims Trump was the second assassin.
Russia has launched massive strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure in response to Ukrainian pipeline attack near Caspian Sea. Ceasefire?