"For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths." Northwoods is a ministry dedicated to refreshing Christians and challenging them to search for the truth in Christianity, politics, sociology, and science
"I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life"
Father God, thank you for the love of the truth you have given me. Please bless me with the wisdom, knowledge and discernment needed to always present the truth in an attitude of grace and love. Use this blog and Northwoods Ministries for your glory. Help us all to read and to study Your Word without preconceived notions, but rather, let scripture interpret scripture in the presence of the Holy Spirit. All praise to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Please note: All my writings and comments appear in bold italics in this colour
New Zealand granted personhood to a mountain on Thursday. File Photo by Mark Evans/EPA-EFE
Jan. 31 (UPI) --The New Zealand government granted Mount Taranaki the same legal rights as a person after the country agreed to compensate its indigenous inhabitants for past colonization.
The mountain now owns itself with local tribes, iwi, and the government working in unison to manage it.
Local tribes have long considered the mountain as sacred and an ancestor. New Zealand officials said they want to confess to forced land confiscation during colonization.
"We must acknowledge the hurt that has been caused by past wrongs, so we can look to the future to support iwi to realize their own aspirations and opportunities," said Paul Goldsmith, the government minister who negotiated the deal.
The New Zealand legislature passed the Taranaki Maunga Collective Redress bill giving the mountain a legal name -- Te Kahui Tupua -- and protection for its land. It will no longer be referred to as Egmont, the name British explorer James Cook gave it in the 18th century.
New Zealand gave personhood to the natural features of the Te Urewera scared(sic) forest on North Island in 2014, the first country to ever do so. Guardianship of the forest was given to the Tuhoe tribe.
The country did the same in 2017 with the Whanganui River, turning over guardianship to the iwi while granting it personhood.
*Far-Right paramilitary groups are growing all over Europe but especially in countries with left-leaning governments and media. The reason for their growth is that ordinary Europeans can't see their governments doing anything about the insane havoc that Islam is causing in an otherwise peaceful continent. Media's complicity with governments has made it obvious that the continent's elite are either completely blind to the havoc, or have some interest in seeing it continue.
This frightening step by the Biden government is far more threatening than any far-right group anywhere in the world, because it means the USA can designate anyone, anywhere, as a terrorist because they might be a threat to Americans. How many Americans are in the Nordic countries? It doesn't matter! If there is just one, America can interfere with any country in the world. Is it colonizing Europe?
'Largest neo-Nazi group in Sweden' now designated as terrorist organization by U.S.
Nordic Resistance Movement also has branches in Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Finland
June 14 (UPI) --The U.S. State Department Friday designated the Nordic Resistance Movement and three of its leaders as Specially Designated Global Terrorists.
The State Department said Fredrik Vejdeland has been in the group's national leadership for 20 years and is the head of the group's national council.
Par Oberg is an NRM national council member and heads the group's parliamentary branch.
Leif Robert Eklund is on the NRM's national council and coordinates various Swedish NRM divisions, according to the State Department.
"NRM is the largest neo-Nazi group in Sweden, with branches in Norway, Denmark, Iceland, and Finland, where it has been banned since 2020," the State Department said in a statement. "NRM's violent activity is based on its openly racist, anti-immigrant, antisemitic, and anti-LGBTQI+ platform. The group's members and leaders have carried out violent attacks against political opponents, protestors, journalists, and other perceived adversaries."
According to the State Department the group was formed in 1997 and at first was called the Swedish Resistance movement, but later adopted the NRM name.
The State Department said, "The United States remains deeply concerned about the racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist threat worldwide and is committed to countering the transnational components of violent white supremacy. "
NRM members have collected and prepared weapons and explosives in furtherance of its goals, the State Department said.
The organization's members have organized training in hand-to-hand combat and knife fighting, according to the State Department.
The State Department said the group is being designated as terrorist "for having committed or attempted to commit, posing a significant risk of committing, or having participated in training to commit acts of terrorism that threaten the security of United States nationals or the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States."
As America is finessing its way into the colonization of Europe, France included, and Islam is taking a more violent track to conquer the great historical country, there's another player in the mix. Drug cartels are slithering their way into France in an effort to turn the country into a Narco State, as they have done with most of Central and South America...
Canteleu, France
Small-town French mayor and deputy go on trial for complicity in drug trafficking
The trial on Monday of a small-town mayor and her deputy for complicity in drug trafficking appears to illustrate the scale of France's drug dealing problem, highlighting how drug barons have encroached upon some rural French communities and even held sway over their elected representatives.
France is "submerged by drug trafficking", according to a particularly alarming investigative report delivered by a group of French senators on May 7.
Just one week later, a notorious French drug baron was freed by gunmen in a spectacular attack on a prison van that killed two police officers, wounded three others, and shocked the nation.
Now the story of a small-town mayor on trial for complicity with drug trafficking appears to illustrate the scale of France's drug dealing problem.
Nineteen people went on trial in Paris on Monday in connection with drug trafficking in the northern French town of Canteleu, home to 14,000 residents in the Normandy region.
The Canteleu affair began on September 25, 2019, when police officers stopped two men in an underground parking lot in the northern Paris suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis. One man had just supplied the other with 2 kg of 80% pure cocaine in exchange for €50,000 in cash. Yassine D., aged 34, was stopped at the wheel of a Citroën Berlingo registered to a kebab restaurant in Canteleu. The manager of that restaurant was none other than Colak, who was then Canteleu's deputy mayor in charge of economic development.
Canteleu, in Normandy, has been the centre of a vast drug trafficking operation run by the Meziani family for some fifteen years, according to the police.
On January 29, a drug dealer was arrested in the area, sparking the traffickers' wrath. Boulanger appeared to apologise to Colak over a wiretapped phone line: “They didn't tell me they were going to make the arrest so quickly.”
On February 7, a new arrest set off a firestorm between the traffickers and the mayor's team, who were accused of having “given the green light”. Once again, the mayor was asked where she stood: “I'm willing to work with them (...) You can say it comes from ‘people in the church’, just don’t say ‘it’s coming from the priest'.”
And he was getting paid by the taxpayers of Canteleu all the while.
Standing alone against drug barons
After a three-year investigation, Boulanger and Colak were indicted at the end of April 2022 for complicity in drug trafficking. They deny most of the charges against them. Since her election in 2014, Boulanger had publicly alerted national authorities to the rise in drug trafficking in her city, as reported in Le Monde. “Traffickers and troublemakers are steadily gaining ground,” she wrote in 2017 to the then French interior minister, Christophe Castaner.
Other letters followed, to no avail. The lack of response to her letters raises questions as to whether Boulanger gave in to pressure from traffickers due to a lack of support from the authorities.
At the time of her indictment, Boulanger, who has since resigned, read a statement to the judge in which she underlined her isolation as an elected official in her fight against crime. Presumed innocent, like her deputy, she is expected to explain herself more fully at her trial.
As for the Meziani family at the heart of the affair, one of the brothers, Aziz, is being tried in absentia. He has sought refuge in Morocco, where he has built a lavish villa and is reported to live a quiet life. And for good reason: Morocco rarely extradites French-Moroccan citizens.
Another brother, Montacer, did not appear in court on June 5. "Noting that Montacer Meziani's hospitalisation prevented his appearance in court," the court ordered a medical examination to determine whether he would be fit to stand trial by July 11, after which date he would automatically be released, the legal time limits authorising his continued pre-trial detention having expired.
But prosecutors fear that once out of prison, Montacer would find refuge in Morocco like his brother Aziz, the other presumed head of the network.
An older brother of Aziz and Montacer Meziani, who was sentenced in 2004 to ten years' imprisonment for drug trafficking in another case, is also presumed to be on the run in Morocco, the court recalled in its summary of the facts on Tuesday.
The only question here is who will be the first to colonize Europe? America or Islam. One of them will. One of them has to because there are no leaders in Europe sensible enough to rescue the continent from its invaders.
Anneke de Laaf
Old news of course, several years ago Washington instructed its European vassals to improve their infrastructure (yes, how ironic, considering the state of US infrastructure) to accommodate US troops movements.
The Netherlands plays a crucial part in the Yankee plans (thus becoming even more of a target than we already are 🤨). Unfortunately for Washington, the pace of infrastructure improvement here falls far short of eg. the Chinese pace, we often don’t even meet the Communist 5-year-plan. So I hope the Yanks aren’t planning this invasion any time soon, because they will be disappointed.
Of course if it does come to this Yankee war on Russia, troops movements will be irrelevant, there won’t be a frontline, there will only be wasteland - and death all around. I expect NATO knows this. So this is all just postering, to show Washington still calls the shots in Europe. As bullies do.
MOSCOW, June 4 – RIA Novosti. The North Atlantic Alliance is preparing a plan for the transfer of troops from the United States to Europe in the event of war with Russia, writes the British newspaper The Telegraph, citing sources.
“NATO is working on multiple “land corridors” to quickly move American soldiers and armored vehicles to the front lines in the event of a major land war with Russia in Europe,” the publication says.
It is assumed that the US Armed Forces will land at one of five predetermined ports and then will be transferred along prepared logistics routes, the publication’s interlocutors clarified.
According to the newspaper, NATO plans to land American forces in the Netherlands ‼️, from where they will be transported by rail through Germany to Poland. The alliance also wants to involve the ports of Norway, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Sweden, Finland and the Baltic countries.
Within the created transport corridors, troops will be able to move without “usually imposed restrictions,” the material states.
As Lieutenant General Alexander Sollfrank, head of NATO's Joint Support and Logistics Command (JSEC), told the newspaper, the experience of combat operations in Ukraine has shown that large logistics bases, like in Iraq and Afghanistan, are no longer relevant, because in the event of a conflict they will be quickly destroyed . In his opinion, the new plan has been prepared taking into account such risks and involves the creation of “sustainable” transport chains.
Vladimir Putin emphasized in an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson that Moscow is not going to attack NATO countries, there is no point in this. The head of state noted that Western politicians regularly intimidate their populations with an imaginary Russian threat in order to divert attention from internal problems.
Aggressive rhetoric of Western politicians
In the West, there has recently been more and more talk about direct intervention in the Ukrainian conflict. Thus, French President Emmanuel Macron stated that Paris does not exclude the possibility of sending troops to the combat zone if Russia breaks through the front line and Kiev asks for help. He also claimed that "many countries" agreed with his approach about possibly sending in the military.
At the same time, in early May, his words were denied by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. According to him, the alliance is not going to send troops to Ukraine, and Kyiv did not ask for this. The Secretary General stressed that he does not see an “imminent risk” of a Russian attack on allies in the bloc.
As the Corriere della Sera newspaper pointed out, at the July NATO summit they may approve a declaration that stipulates a refusal to directly intervene in the conflict in Ukraine. According to the publication, one of the key phrases in the draft of this document is “No boots on the ground.”
Against the backdrop of bellicose statements by Western politicians, exercises of missile formations of the Southern Military District began in Russia on behalf of Vladimir Putin . These maneuvers practice the use of non-strategic nuclear weapons.
June 4 (UPI) --A strike by Ukrainian forces on a Russian air-defense missile battery inside Russian territory was likely carried out using a U.S.-made weapons system, a leading American think-tank said Tuesday.
The attack on the Russian S-300/400 battery north of Belogorod city about 25 miles from the Ukraine border over the weekend was probably conducted with a High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, the Institute for the Study of War said in a post on X.
The Washington-based non-profit research group said the strike picked up on geolocation images of two destroyed launchers and a damaged air defense command post in a field near Kiselyovo village "was likely with HIMARS."
If confirmed, the strike would be the first time Ukraine has used U.S.-supplied weapons to strike at targets inside Russia since U.S. President Joe Biden cleared their use last week for limited strikes against military targets on Russian territory that pose an imminent threat amid Russia's offensive in Ukraine's northeast.
"Russian sources have increasingly claimed that Ukrainian forces are using HIMARS to strike Belgorod oblast since the United States partially lifted its restrictions on Ukraine's ability to use U.S.-provided weapons to strike military targets in Russian border areas with Kharkiv oblast," The Institute for the Study of War said.
"Russian sources will likely continue to characterise any successful strike in Belgorod Oblast as a HIMARS strike regardless of the system used."
The HIMARS launch system fires either Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System rockets or a single long-range Army Tactical Missile System missile making its use a potential breach of Biden administration's waiver which made it clear that its "policy with respect to prohibiting the use ATACMS or long-range strikes inside of Russia has not changed."
A Ukrainian government official alluded to the new permissions but did not explicitly state U.S. weapons were used.
"It burns beautifully. It's a Russian S-300. On Russian territory. The first days after permission to use Western weapons on enemy territory," read the caption to a photo posted on social media by government minister Iryna Vereshchuk.
ISW warned authorization to use Western-supplied weapons against Russia was "crucial for Ukraine to repel Russian glide bomb and missile strikes against Kharkiv city," backing plans by Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba to push Ukraine's Western partners harder to ease restrictions on how arms can be used and give the green light to hit targets inside Russia.
The call comes as Italy announced it would be providing Ukraine with a second Samp/T anti-ballistic missile air defense system -- Europe's answer to the U.S. Patriot Missile System -- which has the ability to track dozens of targets and intercept 10 simultaneously.
Meanwhile, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz insisted that firing German and other Western-supplied weapons at targets on Russian soil would not "contribute to escalation."
Germany, which has been highly cautious on the issue reversed its position last week in step with Washington, saying Ukraine could use weapons provided to it by Germany in the battle for Kharkiv province which has been raging for almost a month.
"We are certain that it will not contribute to an escalation because -- as (U.S. President Joe Biden) has also described -- it is only a matter of being able to defend a large city like Kharkiv," Scholz said Monday in comments to a German radio station.
The speculation about the HIMARS strike came a day after the Kremlin issued a stark warning about the risks of escalating the conflict and a ramping up of the threat to security posed by allowing Ukraine to fire U.S.-supplied weapons into Russia.
"I would like to warn American leaders against miscalculations that could have fatal consequences," said Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov.
