Search

Just another WordPress site

Final battle of the civil war

White supremacists convicted after training for civil war in Michigan

by www.newsweek.com Leave a Comment

Four members of a white supremacist group known as “The Base”—which trains recruits for a race war—have been convicted in Michigan, authorities said.

The cases against Justen Watkins, Alfred Gorman, Thomas Denton and Tristan Webb all ended in guilty or no-contest pleas, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced on Tuesday.

One of the charges filed against Watkins, Denton and Webb was conspiring to train for a civil disorder, making the first convictions for the felony in the state’s history.

“Securing these convictions on the conspiracy to train for civil disorder holds significance for many reasons,” Nessel said.

“They reiterate this office’s commitment to protecting Michigan residents, they create a historic precedent in our state’s court system, and they convey the real danger domestic terrorism poses here and around the country.”

“The Base”—the literal translation of ” Al-Qaeda ” in English—is a white supremacy gang founded in 2018 that “openly advocates for violence and criminal acts against the U.S.” and purports to be training for a war to establish white ethno-nationalist rule in parts of the U.S., according to the Michigan Attorney General’s Office.

The group is “fundamentally anti-Semitic” and embraces Nazi ideology, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Membership is limited to nationalists of European descent, with the group valuing those with military experience.

According to the attorney general’s office, Watkins claims to be the leader of the group and reportedly ran a “hate camp” for members, where he led tactical and firearms training with the goal of “being prepared for the violent overthrow of the government.”

He and Gorman were charged in 2020 in connection with an incident where a family in Dexter was “terrorized” by two men who shined a light in their home, took photos of their property and posted the images online, the Attorney General’s Office said. They targeted the home, mistakenly believing it belonged to Daniel Harper, a podcaster who speaks out against white supremacists.

Watkins, Denton and Webb entered two vacant Michigan Department of Corrections properties in Caro in 2020 to assess whether they could be used as “hate camps,” the office added.

Webb pleaded no contest this week to gang membership, conspiracy to train with firearms for a civil disorder and felony firearm. A larceny in a building charge will be dismissed as part of the plea. His sentencing date is yet to be set.

Watkins in April pleaded guilty to conspiracy to train with firearms for a civil disorder and a gun charge in Tuscola County. A sentencing date is not yet set. He also pleaded guilty to gang membership in Washtenaw County for a different incident in 2019.

Denton pleaded no contest to felony firearm and conspiracy to train with firearms for a civil disorder in Tuscola County and was sentenced to two years for felony firearm and between nine months and four years for the conspiracy charge. Those sentences will run concurrently. Other charges against him were dismissed.

Gorman was sentenced to probation in February after pleading guilty to gang membership. The other charges against him were dismissed.

Nessel added: “I appreciate the thorough work done by our team and partner agencies to secure these convictions. Let them send the message that in Michigan, we will not hesitate to prosecute those who commit crimes in the name of overthrowing our government or perpetuating racist ideologies.”

It comes days after President Joe Biden called white supremacy a “poison” that has been “allowed to fester and grow right in front of our eyes” as he mourned with Buffalo families earlier this week, following a deadly mass shooting where authorities said a racist gunman targeted Black shoppers at a supermarket.

Five ways Ukraine war could end: From diplomacy to all-out nuclear war

by www.express.co.uk Leave a Comment

Ukraine: Zelensky shares video of destruction with US Congress

Sign up for our news briefing, including a daily special Russia-Ukraine edition

Invalid email

We use your sign-up to provide content in ways you’ve consented to and to improve our understanding of you. This may include adverts from us and 3rd parties based on our understanding. You can unsubscribe at any time. More info

In the latest developments, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky repeated his plea for a no-fly zone over Ukraine and called for further sanctions against Russia in an impassioned address to US Congress on Wednesday. Horrific reports are emerging daily, including one from the US embassy in saying Russian forces shot and killed 10 people standing in line for bread in the northern city of Chernihiv this week. Meanwhile, troops are allegedly holding 400 people, including doctors and patients “like hostages” inside a hospital in Mariupol.

So how might this war end?

1. Diplomacy

Peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow have failed to produce a breakthrough yet, though there are some early signs of hope.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said negotiations were becoming “more realistic”, while Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said there was “some hope for compromise”.

The Kremlin said the sides were discussing status for Ukraine similar to that of Austria or Sweden, both members of the European Union that are outside the NATO military alliance.

Ukraine’s chief negotiator said it would give Kyiv binding international security guarantees to prevent future attacks, while satisfying Russia’s long-standing call for Ukraine to be kept out of NATO and prevent the Westernisation of the region.

But analysts are urging caution. While today’s news looks promising, there is still a long way to go before the bloodshed ends, and experts have said the talks could yet fall apart.

Dr Domitilla Sagramoso, an expert on Russian foreign and security policy at King’s College London, told Sky News: “Ukrainians are going to continue fighting. Russia, in turn, has indicated a willingness to still use massive force.

“It’s good there are talks – it is early days. Let’s hope there is a breakthrough soon.”

She added: “Putin may try for a solution to save face because he will need to show a kind of achievement.”

There is also the possibility that talks might only halt the bloodshed temporarily, with some analysts saying any cracks in diplomacy might lead to a fresh outbreak of violence after a period of respite.

Zelensky and Putin

Five ways Ukraine war could end – from diplomacy to all-out nuclear war (Image: GETTY)

2. Victory for Ukraine

What once seemed like the most unlikely of outcomes has become a real contender on the list since the war began, as Ukrainians dug in, delivering a fiercer resistance to the Russian invaders than anyone could have predicted.

Last weekend, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the BBC that Ukraine could “absolutely” win the war, praising the “extraordinary resilience” of the Ukrainian people.

He added: “If it’s the intention of Moscow to try somehow to topple the government and install its own puppet regime, 45 million Ukrainians are going to reject that one way or the other.”

US President Joe Biden will announce a further $800million (£611million) package of military aid to be sent to Ukraine this week, as NATO rallies in support of the region – although a no-fly zone, long called for by Mr Zelensky, remains off the table.

Russian invasion of Ukraine map

Russian invasion of Ukraine map (Image: PA)

Not everyone shares Mr Blinken’s optimism. Some analysts have said it is only a matter of time before the far-superior weight of Russian firepower overwhelms the Ukrainian resistance.

Putin has reportedly called on just a fraction of the Russian air force available to him – when he calls this in, the potential for mass airstrikes will be devastating.

If Russia is successful in seizing key cities and blocking the access of aid, including food and fuel supplies, Ukraine could eventually be forced to surrender to spare hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Cormac Smith, a former British official who advised the Ukrainian government for two years, said that the more the West “cowed” then the “more likely Ukraine will eventually be overwhelmed militarily”.

He said the West’s decision to rule out a no-fly zone and its failure to provide arms quickly enough had emboldened Putin.

He said: “We need to put down a red line and it needs to be far ahead of nuclear strike.”

Trending

Russia-Ukraine military imbalance

A look at the Russia-Ukraine military imbalance (Image: EXPRESS)

3. Victory for Russia

Putin has said he will recall his troops and stop the war in an instant if his demands are met. This would constitute a true victory for Russia.

Under Putin’s demands, Ukraine would recognise Crimea as part of Russia, as well as the independence of the separatist-run east in Donetsk and Luhansk.

Ukraine would also change its constitution to guarantee it will never join NATO or the EU.

He would also see NATO reverse its eastward expansion, complaining Russia has “nowhere further to retreat to – do they think we’ll just sit idly by?”.

That would require NATO to remove its forces and military infrastructure from member states that joined the alliance in 1997 and not to deploy “strike weapons near Russia’s borders” – meaning Central Europe, Eastern Europe and the Baltics.

Refugees flee Ukraine

More than two million refugees have fled Ukraine since the conflict began (Image: GETTY)

4. World War 3

Even if all Russia’s demands were not met, an emboldened Putin, seeing a turn toward Russian victory, could decide to try to take more territory, by moving into NATO countries that border Ukraine.

NATO is boosting defences on its eastern flank, but Putin might use this as an excuse, blaming nations for shipping in arms to support the war in Ukraine, and thereby in direct conflict with Russia.

Last week, a British military source said that during times of war an enemy supply base could be considered a legitimate target, with fears that airfields in NATO countries used could come under attack.

Using that as a pretext for war, Putin could move forces across the border into Poland, Moldova, or try to take the Baltic States.

NATO would fight back – but by then there would be a wider war in Europe in which all bets are off.

Russia's nuclear arsenal

Russia’s nuclear arsenal mapped (Image: EXPRESS)

5. Nuclear war

The worst-case scenario for the globe: nuclear conflict.

Soon after Russia invaded Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin said he was moving his “deterrent forces” ‒ meaning nuclear weapons ‒ to “combat ready” status.

Some analysts have said that, if Ukraine continues to grind down Russian forces and eventually exhaust them, the West cannot rely on Putin’s “rationality”.

Western analysts have said that, while the chances of all-out nuclear war are low due to Mutually Assured Destruction, Putin might still be tempted to use a smaller tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine.

But others have said it could go beyond this, with the actions of an increasingly isolated and desperate man hard to predict.

How the hunt for evidence of Russia’s war crimes forced a family in Ukraine to bury a beloved son and husband twice

by www.cbsnews.com Leave a Comment

Kharkiv — The first Russian soldier convicted of war crimes in Ukraine asked his victim’s family to forgive him in a Kyiv courtroom on Thursday.

“I know that you will not be able to forgive me, but nevertheless I ask you for forgiveness,” Sergeant Vadim Shishimarin, 21, told the wife of the 62-year-old whom he admitted on Wednesday to killing in the early days of the war. Shishimarin faces up to life in prison.

Teams of war crimes investigators are hard at work across Ukraine gathering evidence they hope will lead to more prosecutions of Russia’s invading forces. CBS News went with one of those teams to a village near Ukraine’s decimated second city of Kharkiv and saw first-hand the heartache that both Vladimir Putin’s war, and the effort to document its grim realities, are inflicting on ordinary Ukrainian families.

Tamara clawed at the coffin inside the van. The mother’s naked grief was matched only by her daughter-in-law’s anguished tears. The women were gathered with other friends and family in their village of Malaya Rohan to bury the man they loved, for a second time.

“Why did you take my son?” Tamara, 83, railed against God. But there were no answers for her there by his coffin.

Just two days earlier, war crimes investigators came to Lyudmila Yerchenko’s home to exhume her husband’s body. They’re building a case to bring the people who killed him to justice.

Mikhayl Yerchenko, 60, was killed when Russian troops aimed their tank cannons at his village. He and Lyudmila’s humble backyard is now a crime scene.

The widow showed investigators where Mikhayl lay dying after both of his legs were blown off. He’d come out to feed their animals when he was hit by shrapnel, some of which still lay on the ground in their yard.

When Mikhayl died, the shelling was so intense that Lyudmila and her neighbors had to leave him there, alone in the yard for 24 hours. The next day they buried him hastily in a shallow grave.

As Lyudmila watched the investigators exhume her husband’s body, we found her grief almost unbearable to witness. It’s a scene playing out for countless families across Ukraine, but watching it without the filter of a television screen is utterly gut wrenching.

It’s hard to describe an exhumation. The smell of death lingers long after you’ve left the scene. But even worse is the heartbreak.

Beneath the blanket pulled from the earth lay Lyudmila’s husband of nearly 30 years. She adored him. His family said he was a big bear of a man with an easy smile and a good heart.

Leading the war crimes investigation team was Oleksandr Illenkov, the head of a nerdy team of civil prosecutors who’ve swapped their suits and ties for body armor.

“Sometimes it is dangerous,” he told CBS News. “Even now we heard some shelling from here… It’s not a problem. It’s our job.”

It was his 14th exhumation in nearly as many days.

They try to do their forensic examination quickly, so the families aren’t left waiting.

Two days after he was exhumed, at Mikhayl’s funeral, Tamara implored her son to wake up and come home. She spoke to him as if he was still alive.

She didn’t want to leave the graveside. No mother should ever have to see their child die.

Lyudmila remained brave and dignified as her husband was lowered into his final resting place, but neither of the women were ready to accept that he’s gone.

Opinion: Even Russia’s ruthless war in Ukraine can’t get Trump to give up his Putin fixation

by edition.cnn.com Leave a Comment

Michael D’Antonio is the author of the book ” Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success ” and co-author, with Peter Eisner, of the book ” High Crimes: The Corruption, Impunity, and Impeachment of Donald Trump .” The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

(CNN) Former President Donald Trump is resorting to a desperate, yet painfully familiar strategy in a bid to hurt President Joe Biden — and he’s trying to enlist the help of Russian President Vladimir Putin to do it.

Trump never changes, it seems. He only gets worse, and closer to the extreme point where his gross insensitivity could make him politically irrelevant.
In an interview with Just The News, the former President pushed an unproven claim about alleged business dealings in Russia by Biden’s son, Hunter. Trump also urged Putin to release any information he might have on the younger Biden’s business transactions — even though it’s far from clear that the Kremlin has access to any.

Seeking Russian help to attack a political foe is a familiar maneuver by Trump. He tried and failed to manufacture a scandal involving Biden’s son in 2019. The difference this time, though, is that Putin now is a reviled figure around the world due to his scorched-earth invasion of Ukraine.

Trump could not have chosen a worse moment to remind us that, for years, he cozied up to the Kremlin leader while alienating America’s allies and intelligence services. The former President’s latest misinformation scheme involves the same target, the Bidens. It also involves an old Trump ally, Putin, who Biden has recently called both a ” war criminal ” and a ” butcher .”
Read More

The entire charade can’t help but remind us of the earlier scandal in July 2019, when Trump attempted to strong-arm Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into investigating then-candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
Though Trump denied there was any “quid pro quo” in his ask of Zelensky, he then delayed the transfer of promised military aid, which Ukraine needed for its ongoing war with pro-Russian separatists in the eastern region of the country.

John Solomon, the journalist who reported on Trump’s most recent Putin comments to Just The News, played a key role in the 2019 scheme. He used his platform at The Hill to inspire Trump’s effort to use a foreign power to smear Hunter Biden.
By reprising his role as an outlet for Trump’s new anti-Biden scheme, Solomon demonstrates that Trump is up to his old tricks.
Is there any reason for the former President to make such risky moves at this time? It’s possible that he’s so hungry for attention that he’ll do anything to get it. However, it’s more likely that he wants to divert the gaze of the news media, which is currently focused on his worsening troubles with the courts and with the congressional committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol.
This week, The Washington Post and CBS News reported that official records show an over seven-hour gap in the White House phone logs on the day of the riot. The gap in the logs, which are supposed to note all of the President’s phone calls, suggests that someone might have tried to hide evidence of Trump’s activities on that bloody day. (A spokesperson for Trump told the Post and CBS News that the former President was not involved in maintaining the White House records and assumed all of his calls has been preserved.)
As CNN previously reported , Trump called Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy during the attack. None of these calls were present in the shared White House records.
In addition to the news about the suspicious records gap, Trump has been vexed this week by bad news from the courts.
In California, a judge hearing a case related to the January 6 attack declared that Trump ” more likely than not ” committed crimes in attempting to disrupt the congressional certification of the election. He also said that the Trump team’s effort to stop Congress’ certification of the 2020 election, which Biden won, constitutes “a coup in search of a legal theory.”
Get our free weekly newsletter

Sign up for CNN Opinion’s newsletter.

Join us on Twitter and Facebook

And in another development this week, a New York judge demanded the Trump Organization quit stalling and release documents sought in a civil investigation headed by the state attorney general.

Throughout his political life, Trump has sought to gain power in part by dominating the news agenda and demonstrating that he could defy convention. “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters,” was how he once put it.
Now, with the American people largely united against Russia, Trump’s appeal to Putin with yet another anti-Biden ploy seems tone-deaf. One cannot help but wonder if this is the moment when he begins to lose his once-iron grip on his loyal political base.

Plan to dredge Battle of Britain crash site in Michael Gove’s protected ‘blue belt’ branded ‘disgusting’

by www.mirror.co.uk Leave a Comment

A plan to dredge sand from a Battle of Britain crash site to use for building works has been branded ‘dishonourable and disgusting’ by campaigners.

Just last month, Michael Gove listed Goodwin Sands in Kent among plans to expand the ‘blue belt’ of protected Marine Conservation Zones.

Launching the scheme last month, Mr Gove said: “The UK is surrounded by some of the richest and most diverse sea life in the world. We must protect these precious habitats for future generations.”

But the Marine Management Organisation, an arms’ length body operating under Mr Gove’s Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), has approved a license to dredge 3 million tonnes of sand from the bay.

Goodwin Sands, just of the Kent coast, is home to rare sabilera reefs, sand eels and protected seals.

A Dornier 17 German bomber aircraft which crashed into the sea during World War Two raised by a salvage crew after spending over 70 years on the Goodwin Sands seabed (

Image:

REUTERS)

And it’s thought to be the final resting place of around 74 missing airmen, after around 60 aircraft ditched in the bay during the Battle of Britain.

David Brocklehurst, chairman of the Battle of Britain Museum, told the BBC it was a “tragedy.”

He said: “There are thousands of airman and seamen there, whose remains will be sucked up, and they are unlikely to ever be identified with this method… it’s dishonourable and disgusting.”

“It just shows a complete lack of understanding – how would they feel if it was their grandfather, or uncle?”

The Marine Management Organisation approved the application by Dover Harbour Board to dredge part of the site between September 2019 and September 2020.

The aggregate removed from the bay will be used in building work on Dover Harbour.

John Tuckett, head of the MMO said “sufficient measures were proposed to protect the marine environment, prevent interference with legitimate users of the seas and mitigate impacts to any other relevant matters”.

He added: “We understand the strength of feeling surrounding this development… We accept that not everyone will be happy with the decisions we make.”