Meanwhile, aggressive displays of Palestinian support and antisemitism are welcomed all over the Western world. And in the UK, you may go to jail for complaining about it.
Friends and family searched for missing hajj pilgrims on Wednesday as the death toll at the annual rituals, which were carried out in scorching heat, surged past 900.
Issued on:
Relatives scoured hospitals and pleaded online for news, fearing the worst after temperatures hit 51.8 degrees Celsius (125 Fahrenheit) in Mecca, Islam's holiest city, on Monday.
About 1.8 million people from all over the world, many old and infirm, took part in the days-long, mostly outdoor pilgrimage, held this year during the oven-like Saudi summer.
An Arab diplomat told AFP that deaths among Egyptians alone had jumped to "at least 600", from more than 300 a day earlier, mostly from the unforgiving heat.
That figure brought the total reported dead so far to 922, according to an AFP tally of figures released by various countries.
Mabrouka bint Salem Shushana of Tunisia, in her early 70s, has been missing since the climax of the pilgrimage on Saturday at Mount Arafat, her husband Mohammed told AFP on Wednesday.
Because she was unregistered and did not have an official hajj permit, she was unable to access air-conditioned facilities that allow pilgrims to cool down, he said.
"She's an old lady. She was tired. She was feeling so hot, and she had no place to sleep," he said. "I looked for her in all the hospitals. Until now I don't have a clue."
Facebook and other social media networks have been flooded with pictures of the missing and requests for information.
Those searching for news include family and friends of Ghada Mahmoud Ahmed Dawood, an Egyptian pilgrim unaccounted for since Saturday.
"I received a call from her daughter in Egypt begging me to put any post on Facebook that can help track her or find her," said one family friend based in Saudi Arabia, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to anger Saudi authorities.
"The good news is that until now we did not find her on the list of the dead people, which gives us hope she is still alive."
Searing heat
The hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam and all Muslims with the means must complete it at least once.
Its timing is determined by the Islamic lunar calendar, shifting forward each year in the Gregorian calendar. For the past several years the mainly outdoor rituals have fallen during the sweltering Saudi summer.
According to a Saudi study published last month, temperatures in the area are rising 0.4 degrees Celsius (0.72 degrees Fahrenheit) each decade.
In addition to Egypt, fatalities have also been confirmed by Jordan, Indonesia, Iran, Senegal, Tunisia and Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region, though in many cases authorities have not specified the cause.
A second Arab diplomat told AFP on Wednesday that Jordanian officials were looking for 20 missing pilgrims, though 80 others who were initially reported missing were located in hospitals.
An Asian diplomat told AFP there were "around 68 dead" from India and that others were missing.
"Some (died) because of natural causes and we had many old-age pilgrims. And some are due to the weather conditions, that's what we assume," he said.
Saudi Arabia has not provided information on fatalities, though it reported more than 2,700 cases of "heat exhaustion" on Sunday alone.
Last year more than 200 pilgrims were reported dead, most of them from Indonesia.
Each year tens of thousands of pilgrims attempt to perform the hajj through irregular channels as they cannot afford the often costly official permits.
This has become easier since 2019 when Saudi Arabia introduced a general tourism visa, said Umer Karim, an expert on Saudi politics at the University of Birmingham.
"Before, the only people who could have done that were residents of the kingdom, and they know the situation," he said. "For these tourist visa guys, it's like being on the migrant route without any idea of what to expect."
One of the Arab diplomats who spoke to AFP on Wednesday said many of the dead Egyptians were unregistered.
Even pilgrims who have official permits can be vulnerable, including Houria Ahmad Abdallah Sharif, a 70-year-old Egyptian pilgrim who has been missing since Saturday.
After praying on Mount Arafat, she told a friend she wanted to go to a public bathroom to clean her abaya, but she never came back.
"We've searched for her from door to door and we have not found her until now," said the friend, who also spoke on condition of anonymity.
"We know many who are still searching for their family members and relatives and they are not finding them, or if they are finding them they are finding them dead," the friend added.
(AFP)
*Good religious ritual. Allah must be proud!
Just Monday we were discussing the “new phase” of the Neocon’s war on Russia. That phrase was coined by Doug Macgregor in an interview with Glenn Diesen, in which Macgregor stated that Ukraine is no longer capable of offensive action, and that the “new phase” he foresaw would feature American involvement at an even deeper level. What Macgregor had in mind was this. The Neocons are desperate to get Russia to accept a “frozen conflict”, i.e., defeat and abandonment of the goals of the Special Military Operation (SMO). Their scheme for accomplishing that pie in the sky goal is to use long (or longish) range strike weapons to inflict damage on Russia proper (mostly in Crimea?), while pressuring Zelensky to forget our past aid guarantees, forget “as long as it takes”, and reach out to the Russians. Among all the difficulties of this scheme it’s hard to disagree with Zelensky’s publicly expressed opinion: The Russians will certainly recognize this as an admission of defeat by NATO and its Ukraine proxy—and will laugh it off.
The impracticality of it is also demonstrated by events last night. “Ukraine”—which is to say, NATO personnel directing NATO supplied missiles using US ISR assets—launched a huge missile/drone strike at Crimea. Russia’s world leading air defenses handled it all, which doesn’t bode well for the campaign:
Nighttime drone raid on Crimea At night, after a missile attack on Crimea, Ukrainian formations carried out a mass drone attack on the peninsula. Air defenses worked for more than an hour and a half, and the roar in the sky practically did not subside. The AFU attacked in waves: two groups of drones took off from Bilhorod-Dnistrovsky and headed towards the Saki airfield and Sevastopol, and two more groups flew from Kherson Region to Tarkhankut.
The Ministry of Defense announced the destruction of 19 drones in the NW and W of Crimea, as well as near Sevastopol. However, eyewitnesses report a larger number of targets shot down by air defense and suppressed by electronic warfare from Tarkhankut to Ivanovka and Razdolnensky District. These reports are indirectly confirmed by the Russian MoD's morning report, which claimed 75 drones destroyed in the past 24 hours - the highest number over the whole SMO. Nonetheless, Russian air defense, electronic warfare and border service rifle groups successfully repelled the attack. Statements that the airfield in Novofedorovka was damaged are false, since there were no fires or detonations that would have been visible if targets were hit.
Back in DC, there appears to be a full scale civil war breaking out behind the scenes. The political wing of the Ruling Class is increasingly desperate to be rid of the grifting Biden Crime Family—a readily foreseeable eventuality, given that this wing has an election that they want to win. On the other hand the Permanent War wing is increasingly engaging in finger pointing and blame assignment, featuring anonymous CIA analysts maintaining “we told you so” to the Neocons and their DIA lapdogs. The bottom line here is pretty much the same as Macgregor expressed it. The CIA has recruited David Ignatius and Seymour Hersch to state for public consumption that the Neocons and their hapless frontman Zhou have no clothes. As Hersch puts it:
“The war is over. Russia has won. There is no Ukrainian offensive anymore, but the White House and the American media have to keep the lie going.
“The truth is if the Ukrainian army is ordered to continue the offensive, the army would mutiny. The soldiers aren’t willing to die any more, but this doesn’t fit the B.S. that is being authored by the Biden White House.”
But how long can this continue? Will the house of cards collapse if the Russians finally go on the offensive?
Some time ago, during the summer, we discussed the thesis put forward by Michael Vlahos, that the Ukrainian army was reaching the breaking point. It seems clear, now, that Deep State insiders know this is true, and the only option left is to try to gaslight the Russians into acting against their interests. Rational people know that won’t work.
An interesting sidelight to all of the above is that the Neocons appear to have recruited the Polish government to assist them in the campaign to get Zelensky to reach out to Russia (I say “Russia”, because I doubt Putin would speak to Zelensky). We discussed this yesterday. Now, in the background is a legitimate political problem for the Polish government. Ukraine is underselling Polish farmers with their cheap grain exports. The core of support for the Polish ruling party, Law and Justice (PiS), is the rural population, so naturally they need to show their supporters that they’re looking out for their interests. Another factor is the unpopularity of the millions upon millions of Ukrainians who have flooded into Poland—which has led to a dramatic drop in Polish support for Ukraine. All of this playing out against the backdrop of the approaching Polish elections. Just yesterday we read about the Polish president stating that Poland had no more weapons to send to Ukraine. Today, the party leader weighed in:
Rybar Force
@rybar_force
Kaczyński stated: "Poland will continue to support Ukraine in its fight against Russia, but there was no clause in our agreement that we would liquidate Polish agriculture due to the protection of Ukraine".
The PiS government has clearly found an excellent topic to divert attention from the corruption scandal and the migration issue. The authorities' rhetoric has focused entirely on national security and domestic policy.
10:08 AM · Sep 21, 2023
More ominously for Ukraine, however, was the suggestion by Polish president Andrzej Duda that Poland could block all aid to Ukraine that flows through Poland. He also likened Ukraine to a “drowning man”.
Duda got upset that Zelensky wanted to sue Warsaw for blockading Ukrainian grain and cancelled their meeting on the sidelines of the UN general assembly. More than that he compared Ukraine with a dangerous drowning man who could pull you down into depths with him.
Duda made it known to Zelenskiy, who is also in New York, that if the Ukrainian authorities continue the confrontation with Warsaw, then Poland can block the transit of military equipment, weapons, ammunition and everything else to Ukraine.
Now, probably the lion’s share of all aid to Ukraine does, in fact, flow through Poland. More specifically, it flows through the city of Rzeszów, near the Ukraine border. The US has a major military presence in Rzeszów, where our largest command and control center is located. Rzeszów is now the epicenter of US military operations directing the war on Russia:
Putin's war turned this little Polish airport upside down. It rose to the challenge.
Rzeszów’s airport, guarded by Patriot batteries, is now a heavy weapons hub. It’s also a hub for medical evacuations from Ukraine, for NATO personnel. Every time Russia hits a command center in Ukraine you’re likely to hear also about Medevac flights to Rzeszów.
All that being the case, who thinks the Poles threatened to cut off the flow of aid to Ukraine all on their own? Me neither. It seems pretty clear that the Poles are providing a thin cover for the US, as it pressures Zelensky to knuckle under: ‘Hey, sorry, it was the Poles who cut off your aid—nothing we can do about it!’
This is all a dangerous game for NATO, too. Other NATO countries, looking at Poland, will begin to ask, Why should Poland be allowed to look after its own interests but not us? This seems a clear indication of how desperate things are starting to look. And Russia is looking on with interest.
The Neocons and the Deep State are putting up a brave front. They’re trying to pressure Russia in Syria and Armenia. But Russia has played the North Korea card—undoubtedly with Chinese approval. My guess is that that cancels out any number of Neocon cards. The French have been forced to pull out of Niger—the strategic resources of the Sahel region are far more important to NATO and the EU then anything that Armenia can offer. No doubt there will be bumpy stretches ahead, but right now the future is looking bleaker for the Neocons. Oh, and Speaker Kev is having trouble drumming up more aid money for Ukraine. I presume that will happen, but going into 2024 this could become a big issue. I hope Trump gets his act together on that, instead of blathering about doing a deal in one day.
On the strictly military equipment front nothing is looking great, either. We know about the recruitment shortfalls and the preparedness issues. Who knew that the F-35 has to be abandoned by its pilot in “bad weather conditions.” Yeah, that’s the story I saw. But then there’s the hypersonic dilemma:
US Army's Hypersonic Missile Hit With Fielding Delay As China And Russia Lead Global Arms Race
Compare that with the first two items at this blog, which details that Russia now has cruise missiles that can hit anywhere in the northern hemisphere from inside Russian air space. Well, that’s not actually news, but the fact that Russia has adapted these missiles to lauch from multiple additional platforms is a major development.
Who’s idea was this war, anyway? Not too bright. Meanwhile, Blinken still claims to be intent on pivoting to war on China, once boy genius gaslights Putin into backing down from victory. Yeah.
Putin has his own ideas on increasing pressure:
The_Real_Fly
@The_Real_Fly
RUSSIA IMPOSES A FULL BAN ON GASOLINE AND DIESEL EXPORTS - GOVERNMENT.
8:23 AM · Sep 21, 2023
And just like that...
Putin decided the ECB needs a few more rate hikes pic.twitter.com/J1XJicVrGZ
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 21, 2023
... with one simple signature, Putin has assured that any ECB hopes of an end to rate hikes have been dashed for good.
