Tag: perpetual war

Ukraine Energy Sector in Permanent Crisis Due to Relentless Russian Strikes – Daily Power Cuts Affecting All Regions

‘Hello, darkness, my old friend’.

Ukraine’s energy sector is living under extreme circumstances, as the constant Russian drone and missile attacks wreak havoc in the country’s power generation and transmission.

The biggest private energy provider is living in permanent crisis, according to its chief executive.

BBC reported:

“Most of Ukraine is suffering from lengthy power cuts as temperatures drop and Maxim Timchenko, whose company DTEK provides power for 5.6 million Ukrainians, says the intensity of strikes has been so frequent ‘we just don’t have time to recover’.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday that Russia knew the winter cold could become one of its most dangerous weapons.”

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Extrajudicial Killings From Barack Obama to Donald Trump

In May 2013, as President Barack Obama delivered a major foreign-policy speech in Washington, I managed to slip inside. As he was winding up, I stood and interrupted, condemning his use of lethal drone strikes in Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia.

“How can you, a constitutional lawyer, authorize the extrajudicial killing of people – including a 16-year-old American boy in Yemen, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki – without charge, without trial, without even an explanation?”

As security dragged me out, Obama responded, “The voice of that woman is worth paying attention to.” Perhaps my questions touched a chord in his conscience, but the drone attacks did not stop.

Just before that incident, I had returned from Yemen, where a small delegation of us met with Abdulrahman’s grandfather, Nasser al-Awlaki – a dignified man with a PhD from an American university, someone who genuinely believed in the values this country claims to represent. He looked at us, grief etched into his face, and asked, “How can a nation that speaks of law and justice kill an American child without apology, without even a justification?”

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United States Designates the Gulf Clan as a Terrorist Organization: A Forceful Shift in the War on Drugs

The United States Government announced the decision to officially designate the Clan del Golfo as a foreign terrorist organization, a measure that raises the level of confrontation against drug trafficking in Hispanic America.

The announcement, made by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, marks a profound shift in U.S. strategy by equating this criminal group with international terrorist organizations.

The Gulf Clan, considered the most powerful illegal armed group in Colombia, has for years been identified as responsible for large-scale drug trafficking to North America, as well as for systematic acts of violence that have affected entire communities.

This designation opens the door to far more severe legal, financial, and operational actions by Washington.

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Bill To Block Trump From Launching War With Venezuela Fails in the House

The House on Wednesday voted down a War Powers Resolution meant to block President Trump from launching a war with Venezuela without congressional authorization, as required by the Constitution.

The bill failed in a vote of 211-213, with nine representatives not voting. Just three Republicans joined Democrats in supporting the bill: Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY), Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA), and Don Bacon (NE). One Democrat, Henry Cuellar (TX), voted against the legislation.

The legislation would have directed the president to remove “United States Armed Forces from hostilities within or against Venezuela that have not been authorized by Congress.”

Before the Venezuela bill, another War Powers Resolution aimed at stopping President Trump’s bombing campaign against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific Ocean also failed. That bill failed in a vote of 210-216, with two Republicans (Massie and Bacon) voting in favor and two Democrats (Ceullar and Vicente Gonzalez (TX) voting against.

The votes came a day after President Trump declared a “complete and total blockade” on “sanctioned” tankers going into and leaving Venezuela, an action that’s widely considered an act of war under international law. President Trump and his top officials have also been clear that their goal is regime change.

“Do we want a miniature Afghanistan in the Western Hemisphere?” Massie, a co-sponsor of the bill, asked on the House floor before the vote.

“If that cost is acceptable to this Congress, then we should vote on it as a voice of the people and in accordance with our Constitution,” Massie continued. “And yet today, here we aren’t even voting on whether to declare war or authorize the use of military force. All we’re voting on is a War Powers Resolution that strengthens the fabric of our Republic by reasserting the plain and simple language in the Constitution that Congress must decide questions of war.”

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Why the Syrian Government Blames Its Own Security Personnel for the Attack on U.S. Soldiers

On December 13, 2025, a joint patrol of U.S. and Syrian forces near Palmyra, Syria, was ambushed by a suspected Islamic State (ISIS) gunman. The lone attacker opened fire on the convoy before being killed by American and partner forces. Two U.S. Army soldiers from the Iowa National Guard and an American civilian interpreter were killed in the assault, and three other U.S. service members were wounded.

The U.S. military and President Donald Trump blamed the Islamic State for the attack and vowed serious retaliation, a position initially echoed by Syrian authorities, who also announced the arrest of several suspects. However, a Syrian government spokesperson later acknowledged that the attacker was a member of state security forces who had been radicalized by ISIS.

Al-Sharaa, the country’s new leader, was formerly the founder of an extremist group that pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda. He is now seeking to rebrand himself as a legitimate statesman to secure sanctions relief, U.S. trade, and foreign investment. To that end, he has prioritized normalizing relations with the Trump administration through intelligence-sharing on ISIS and Iranian proxies, joint counterterrorism efforts, and broader international legitimacy.

He recently became the first Syrian leader hosted at the White House, and Syria formally joined the international coalition fighting ISIS just one month before the attack. Against that backdrop, the question is why the Syrian government admitted that a member of its security forces carried out the attack on U.S. soldiers.

The first reason is that it would have been difficult to claim otherwise because U.S. forces were present and witnessed exactly what happened. The second reason is that Syrian security personnel were also present and witnessed the entire incident. The attack targeted a joint U.S.-Syrian patrol, with members of the Syrian Internal Security Forces directly involved. Two Syrian service personnel were wounded, underscoring their proximity to the attack. Syrian forces were on site, responded to the gunfire, and killed the attacker.

Multiple Syrian officers were present as part of a “key leader engagement.” The Pentagon and CENTCOM stated that the attack occurred during a meeting between U.S. troops and Syrian Interior Ministry officials who had traveled from Damascus to coordinate with local counterparts in Palmyra.

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Source: Trump To Announce War With Venezuela Tonight

President Trump is expected to announce plans to launch a war with Venezuela this evening when he addresses the nation at 9:00 pm EST, a high-placed source on Capitol Hill has told Antiwar.com.

Also, earlier in the day, Tucker Carlson told Judge Andrew Napolitano that he has heard from a member of Congress that Trump is planning war.

“Members of Congress were briefed yesterday that a war is coming and it will be announced in the address to the nation tonight,” Carlson said on the Judging Freedom podcast.

On Tuesday night, President Trump announced a “total and complete” blockade on “sanctioned tankers” going into and out of Venezuela, which came after US forces boarded and seized a tanker carrying Venezuelan oil.

The Trump administration has made clear that its goal is to oust Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. It’s unclear what kind of military action the president is preparing to take, but according to earlier media reports, he has been briefed on several options, including strikes on government targets, sending in a special operations force to kill or capture Maduro, or deploying a larger force to capture airbases and oil fields.

Any attack on Venezuela without congressional authorization would be illegal under the Constitution. The House is expected to vote on a bipartisan War Powers Resolution today aimed at blocking Trump from launching the war.

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The Inconvenient Truths Within Trump’s New National Security Strategy

Recently, the Trump administration, as most administrations do at the beginning of their four-year term, issued a National Security Strategy—I guess we would call it a white paper—outlining the approach of the administration to foreign affairs and the protection of the security in the United States.

It’s written in a different style than past reports, different than the first term. And it has a lot of emphasis, as most do, on sections of the world. But what has caused the most controversy are two things.

Abroad, the report tells Europe that it’s experiencing “civilizational erasure,” and gives advice to the Europeans about what they must do to correct that, but in a manner of brotherly love or help, which the Europeans, of course, will see as condescending and interference into their internal affairs, except they want us to do it in the NATO part of the equation, but not the EU part. And that’s caused a lot of controversy.

The other is, the critics feel that it’s not critical enough of Russia and China. But if you read it very carefully, the whole point of its Pacific discussion is to bolster the alliances of Japan and South Korea, and to warn China to keep away from Taiwan and Australia.

And then, when we get to the economic domestic aspects of the National Security Strategy, it’s all aimed at China. It’s all aimed at China. It just says that we cannot be a successful, dominant power in the world, and we don’t want any other power to be dominant. And by inference, that’s Russia and China. But on matters of trade, under matters of natural resources, under matters of the South China Sea, it’s aimed at China.

And it does say explicitly that the old paradigm that previous, both Republican and Democratic, presidencies had adhered to, namely, the more money you invest from us and put it over there in China, and the more that you import their products here, even though you’re dealing with an asymmetrical trade system—and I think the report uses the word that it’s free but not fair—don’t kid yourself. That ensuing prosperity will not create a huge consumer class who desires freedom and liberty and then will become a force for the democratization of China. That’s not gonna happen.

Instead, that foreign exchange extravaganza will be put into the largest ship-building—and I mean military ship-building—the largest aircraft production, and the largest small arms and major arms industry in such a short time that we’ve ever seen. And that’s what China’s doing. And that is outlined.

The other controversy is: Why didn’t the National Security Strategy be more condemning of Russian President Vladimir Putin? It says that the Europeans have promised to spend 2% of their gross domestic product on military matters and have promised to increase that to 5%, which would be extraordinary.

And of course, the paper says that they should and they must be watched to keep their promises, but it doesn’t really condemn Vladimir Putin in the strongest of terms.

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A Story of a 1930s Uprising Against British Colonialism Is Key To Understanding Gaza Today

Anyone wondering why the British state and media, despite the latter’s pretension to serve as a watchdog on power, continue to cheerlead Israel’s genocidal slaughter of civilians in Gaza will find the answers in a new film.

It recounts not the current period of history, but a story from nearly 90 years ago.

Palestine 36, directed by the remarkable Palestinian film-maker Annemarie Jacir, illuminates more about the events unfolding for the past two years in Gaza than anything you will read in a British newspaper or watch on the BBC – if, that is, you can find anything at all about Gaza in the news since Donald Trump rebranded the killing and dispossession of Palestinians as a “ceasefire”.

And Palestine 36 does so, unusually for a Palestinian film, with a budget worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster and with a cast that includes names recognizable to western audiences, from Jeremy Irons to Liam Cunningham.

This is a major episode of British colonial history told not through British eyes but, for once, through the eyes of its victims.

The “36” of the title refers to 1936, when Palestinians rose up against British colonial tyranny – more usually, and deceitfully, referred to as a “British Mandate” issued by the League of Nations.

The problem for Palestinians was not just the systematic violence of those three decades of tyranny. It was that Britain’s role as a supposed caretaker of Palestine – an “arbiter of peace” between native Palestinians and mostly Jewish immigrants – served as cover for a much more sinister project.

It was British officials who ushered Jews out of Europe – where they were unwanted by racist governments, including Britain’s – to implant them in Palestine. There, they were actively nurtured as the foot soldiers of a coming “Jewish state” that was supposed to be dependent on Britain and assist in strengthening its imperial, regional agenda.

In effect, an overstretched British empire hoped over time to outsource its colonial role to a “Jewish” fortress state.

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Congress quietly moves US closer to military draft

A provision in this year’s NDAA will require the Selective Service System (SSS) to find a way to make registering for the draft automatic instead of letting 18-year-old males sign up themselves, which is current practice.

The SSS would have a year to try to construct a list of all potential draftees in the U.S. by pooling information from other Federal databases. “Automatic” draft registration will start a year after the 2026 NDAA is signed into law, unless the Selective Service is repealed before then.

This doesn’t mean that a draft is being activated right away, or that those registered will be sent induction orders — although preparing to do so is the sole purpose of making this list. This will, however, be the largest change in Selective Service law since 1980, and will move the U.S. closer to activation of a draft than at any time in the last half century.

To be sure, “automatic” registration is a response to a growing recognition that the current system is an abject failure in the face of pervasive noncompliance.

Few young men register voluntarily with the SSS, and almost none of them report their new addresses to the SSS each time they move. As a result, the current database is so incomplete and inaccurate that it would be “less than useless” for an actual draft, according to Bernard Rostker, who was Director of the Selective Service System from 1979-1981, testifying in 2019.The obvious congressional response would be to end the registration program and abolish the Selective Service System as a failure and unfit for its stated purpose, even if one supports a draft.

But neither Democrats nor Republicans seem willing to let go of their fantasies of a ready-to-go draftee list, which will allow them to plan for endless, unlimited wars without having to worry about whether enough Americans will be willing to fight them. Keeping conscription on a hair-trigger, like keeping nuclear weapons on a hair-trigger, allows these weapons to be used as part of the arsenal of U.S. military and diplomatic threats. Both have broad bipartisan support.

The idea of “automatic” draft registration originated within the SSS during the Biden Administration and was introduced in Congress in 2024 by a Democrat. But a database-driven process aligns perfectly with Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and its penchant for automated aggregation, matching, and use of data originally collected for unrelated purposes.

“Automatic” draft registration won’t make a draft any easier to administer or enforce. “Garbage-in, garbage-out” merging of lists compiled for other purposes will result in a list of potential draftees and their mailing addresses that’s just as incomplete and inaccurate as the current one.

The draft still isn’t a feasible option, and abolishing the SSS remains the only realistic course of action. The lesson of the last forty-five years of draft registration, and of the quiet but persistent noncompliance by generations of potential draftees, is that young Americans want to make their own choices of which wars, if any, they will fight. We should thank them for their service in countering military adventurism. We’ll need to keep reminding military planners that calling draft registration “automatic” won’t make young people submit to a draft without resistance.

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Susie Wiles Let’s Slip She Stands With Massie On War Powers & Venezuela

Trump chief of staff Susie Wiles said the following as part of the controversial Vanity Fair interview in reference to Venezuela policy: “If he were to authorize some activity on land, then it’s war, then (we’d need) Congress.”

But only last month when President Trump was asked about this issue, he said, “We don’t have to get their approval. But I think letting them know is good.”

All of this could come to a head if enough Congressional leaders, especially on the Republican side, decide to grow a spine and stand up to the White House’s foreign policy adventurism down south – which polls show is not supported by most Americans.

The House is expected to vote Thursday on a bipartisan War Powers Resolution. It aims to halt any potential attack on Venezuela after Trump has threatened that the US military hitting land targets would happen ‘soon’.

Introduced by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), the bipartisan bill has 31 co-sponsors, including three Republicans: Reps. Thomas Massie (KY), Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA), and Don Bacon (NE).

Massie has of course been at the forefront of Trump criticisms, and he’s again helping lead the charge on Venezuela pushback, amid the huge American presence in the southern Caribbean.

“The Constitution does not permit the executive branch to unilaterally commit an act of war against a sovereign nation that hasn’t attacked the United States,” Massie said in a statement upon the bill being introduced. ‘

“Congress has the sole power to declare war against Venezuela. Congress must decide such matters according to our Constitution.” This viewpoint is precisely what Wiles has voiced in her comments to Vanity Fair.

According to a brief summary of the Trump admin’s rationale: 

A central legal question is whether the administration can treat anti-cartel maritime strikes as a form of armed conflict falling within the President’s independent Article II power or within some existing statutory authorization.

CRS reports the Trump administration has asserted drug trafficking and terrorism “involving or associated with Maduro” threaten U.S. national security, and that it reportedly told Congress U.S. forces are in a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels – an assertion that other experts and government lawyers reportedly questioned. This framing signals the administration’s likely legal posture without requiring anyone outside government to guess at classified briefings.

Also, Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) is simultaneously seeking to reign in the drone strikes on alleged drug boats with his own war powers legislation. No Republicans have signed on to his initiative.

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