🇺🇸 Governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem:

Ensuring the Security of God’s Chosen People

When I was growing up, my dad would always gather our family together and we would pray for Israel. It was instilled in me from a very young age that the Jews were Gods chosen people, that Israel was the Holy Land, and that we should always pray for them.

I brought those fundamental ideals with me when I was in the State Legislature, when I served in Congress, and now as Governor of South Dakota. Supporting the State of Israel and our Jewish community has always been extremely important to me. It’s important to support Israel for spiritual, historical, and national security reasons. I am continuing to stand with the Jewish people by signing historic legislation to protect them from antisemitism.

🔗 https://news.sd.gov/news?id=news_kb_article_view&sys_id=a2e998061b70c610b3b10d46624bcbd5

📎 Kristi Noem

🇺🇸 "Why did Katie Britt, a first-time-ever office holder, give the GOP's response to Joe Biden's State of the Union?"

🔗 Sam Parker

🇭🇹 Haiti is collapsing as we speak:

• Interior Ministry on fire
• Attacks on the international airport
• Gunfights outside the Presidential Palace
• Attempted breaches of the Ministry of Education and Supreme Court

The time for an international mission was yesterday.

🔗 Kareem Rifai

🇵🇱 Polish prime-minister, Donald Tusk on X:

The post-war epoch is gone. We are living in new times: in a pre-war epoch. This is why NATO and solidarity between Europe and America are more important than ever before.

🔗 Donald Tusk

🇮🇪 The Irish have voted against redefining the notion of 'family'

The first reaction of the Irish government was to admit that the Irish were not social engineered enough in order for the referendum to pass.

Taoiseach said government had not done enough to convince people to vote to amend ‘women in the home’ provision

Ireland is on course to reject proposed changes to references on family and women in its constitution, delivering a stinging rebuke to a government that had urged voters not to take a “step backwards”.

Early tallies from counting centres on Saturday indicated sizeable majorities had voted no in a double referendum to replace the “women in the home” provision.

“It’s clear at this stage that the family amendment and the care amendment referendums have been defeated – defeated comprehensively on a respectable turnout,” the taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, said as counting continued.

The government will accept the result, he said. “It was our responsibility to convince the majority of people to vote ‘yes’ and we clearly failed to do so.”

🔗 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/09/vote-referendum-modernise-ireland-constitution-women-home

🇦🇿❌🇦🇲 Azerbaijan demanded that Armenia withdraw its troops from 4 villages inside its internationally recognised borders.

🔗 https://en.apa.az/domestic-policy/azerbaijan-demands-immediate-liberation-of-4-villages-occupied-by-armenia-430583

🇻🇦🇺🇦 Pope says Ukraine should have 'courage of the white flag' of negotiations

Pope Francis has said in an interview that Ukraine should have what he called the courage of the "white flag" and negotiate an end to the war with Russia that followed Moscow's full-scale invasion two years ago and that has killed tens of thousands.

"But I think that the strongest one is the one who looks at the situation, thinks about the people and has the courage of the white flag, and negotiates," Francis said, adding that talks should take place with the help of international powers.

"The word negotiate is a courageous word. When you see that you are defeated, that things are not going well, you have to have the courage to negotiate," Francis said.

🔗 https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/pope-says-ukraine-should-have-courage-white-flag-negotiations-2024-03-09/

🇪🇬 Suez Canal currently operating at Panama Canal levels.

🔗 Rory Johnston

🇮🇱❌🇹🇷 Israeli prime-minister, Benjamin Netanyahu on X:

Israel, which adheres to the laws of war, will not receive moral preaching from Erdogan, who supports murderers and rapists of the terrorist organization Hamas, denies the Armenian Holocaust, massacres Kurds in his own country and elevates regime opponents and journalists.

🔗 Benjamin Netanyahu

🇾🇪❌🇺🇸 US and Coalition Defeat Houthi Attack in Red Sea Area

Following further engagements through the morning, U.S. and Coalition forces downed a total of at least 28 uncrewed aerial vehicles between 4:00 a.m. and
8:20 a.m. (Sanaa time) on Mar. 9. No U.S. or Coalition Navy vessels were damaged in the attack and there were also no reports by commercial ships of damage.

Lucas Tomlinson: Largest attack by Houthis in months despite nearly daily strikes by U.S. Navy since Jan. 11.

🔗 U.S. Central Command

📎 Lucas Tomlinson

🇷🇺🇺🇦🌐 ‘A lot higher than we expected’: Russian arms production worries Europe’s war planners — Guardian

As Ukraine has scrambled to source ammunition, arms and equipment for its defence, Russia has presided over a massive ramping up of industrial production over the last two years that has outstripped what many western defence planners expected when Vladimir Putin launched his invasion.

Total defence spending has risen to an estimated 7.5% of Russia’s GDP, supply chains have been redesigned to secure many key inputs and evade sanctions, and factories producing ammunition, vehicles and equipment are running around the clock, often on mandatory 12-hour shifts with double overtime, in order to sustain the Russian war machine for the foreseeable future.

The transformation has put defence at the centre of Russia’s economy. Putin claimed this month that 520,000 new jobs had been created in the military-industrial complex, which now employs an estimated 3.5 million Russians, or 2.5% of the population. Machinists and welders in Russian factories producing war equipment are now making more money than many white-collar managers and lawyers, according to a Moscow Times analysis of Russian labour data in November.

As Russia’s war in Ukraine drags into its third year, the massive Russian investment in the military, projected this year to be the largest as a share of GDP since the Soviet Union, has worried European war planners, who have said Nato underestimated Russia’s ability to sustain a long-term war.

One key indicator in the artillery war has been the domestic manufacture of shells, which experts put at 2.5m to 5m units a year. Riisik called the trends worrying, noting that production could run above 4m units in the next year or two. The import of more than a million shells already from North Korea, and a strategic stockpile of shells in the millions, gives Russia an additional cushion.

Much of this was baked into Russia’s military-industrial complex, a sprawling behemoth of nearly 6,000 companies, many of which rarely turned a profit before the war. But what it lacked in efficiency, it made up for in spare capacity and flexibility when the Russian government suddenly ramped up defence production in 2022.

“The Russians have been paying for this for years. They’ve been subsidising the defence industry, and many would have said wasting money for the event that one day they need to be able to scale it up. So it was economically inefficient until 2022, and then suddenly it looks like a very shrewd bit of planning.”

That differs significantly from western, especially European, arms manufacturers, who generally run lean operations that work across borders and are designed to maximise profit for shareholders.

“The war has led to an unprecedented redistribution of wealth, with the poorer classes profiting from government spending on the military-industrial complex,” said Denis Volkov, the director of the Levada Center, a polling and sociological research firm in Moscow. “Workers at military factories and families of soldiers fighting in Ukraine suddenly have much more money to spend. Their income has increased dramatically.”

Levada’s polling showed that 5-6% of those who “previously did not have enough money to buy consumer goods like a fridge now have moved upwards towards the middle classes”.

Russia will pay for that by boosting defence spending to nearly 11tn roubles (£95.7bn) next year, a 70% increase, which would surpass social spending for the first time since the Soviet Union. Putin is trying to finance the war, maintain social spending and avoid runaway inflation all at once, in what Alexandra Prokopenko, a Carnegie endowment scholar, calls an “impossible trilemma”.

For now, high oil prices are helping to cushion the blow. But the war is set to transform the Russian economy from within.

📝 Patricia Marins: Currently, Russian enterprises are producing 3 to 4 times more than the NATO bloc in almost every military item. Russia still has many problems, but production is not one of them.