Tag: perpetual war

Japan’s Disputed Islands May Cause a Headache for Washington

As if the world did not have enough geopolitical flashpoints, the dormant 150-year-old territorial dispute between Russia and Japan over the Kuril Islands has resurfaced.  The latest phase of the bilateral spat began in mid-August 2026 when Russian president Vladimir Putin visited four islands that the Kremlin had seized during the closing days of World War 2.  Sanae Takaichi, Japan’s prime minister, denounced Putin’s actions as “absolutely unacceptable” and the Foreign Ministry formally chastised Russia’s ambassador in Tokyo.  Moscow countered that Japan was making unfounded claims on Russian territory.

The 1951 San Francisco peace treaty formally ending the war between the Allies and Japan attempted to resolve postwar territorial disputes.  In that treaty, Tokyo renounced its claim to the Kurils but also contended that the four southernmost islands were distinct from the Kuril chain and, therefore, were still part of Japan’s territory.  Since the Soviet Union never signed the treaty at all, the Kuril issue remained unresolved.

The dispute has continued to be a volatile, emotional topic with populations in both countries.  Russia calls the islands the “Southern Kurils” whereas Japan refers to the four islands as the “Northern Territories,” and any use of the “wrong” name in public can trigger a surprisingly intense response in either country.  The topic appears to have greater salience, though, in Japan.  Large demonstrations have occurred periodically in Japanese cities to protest Russia’s ongoing occupation.  Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi reiterated that his country “strongly protests” Putin’s visit. He added that the “Northern Territories are Japan’s inherent territory both historically and from the perspective of international law.”

Bilateral animosity over the issue appears to be getting worse.  As Moscow’s relations with the Western powers deteriorated in recent years, Russia has bolstered its military presence on the Kurils.  Control of the islands gives Russia year-round access to the Pacific for its fleet based in Vladivostok, because the strait between the southern islands does not freeze in winter.

Putin used his trip not only to reassert Russia’s territorial claim but also to protest Japan’s ongoing sanctions against Russia over the invasion of Ukraine.  Indeed, Putin’s arrival coincided with large-scale Russian military exercises in the neighboring seas. Takaichi warned that the visit “has further hardened Japanese public sentiment toward Russia and has made it more difficult to restore bilateral relations in the medium to long term.”

There have been mounting signs of worsening relations between Moscow and Tokyo regarding the disputed islands and an array of other issues. On October 17, 2026, Russian officials informed Japan of new planned bombing drills on the Kurils.  On October 14, Russian authorities detained a prominent Japanese journalist on espionage charges.

Takaichi’s government already faces tense relations with China over another chain of disputed islands. Coast Guard vessels from the two countries have clashed near those islands, called the Senkakus in Japan and the Diaoyus in China, several times since Takaichi took office.   One ugly incident took place in December 2025, and an even more serious episode occurred in July 2026.  The uninhabited Senkaku island chain is both claimed and administered by Japan but is also claimed by China.  Located between Taiwan and Okinawa, the islands have long been a source of friction between Beijing and Tokyo because of their strategic location.  Both commercial and military interest in the area also has spiked because there may be substantial deposits of oil and natural gas reserves beneath the East China Sea.

There is a significant risk that the United States could become entangled in the disputes involving either the Kurils or the Senkakus.  That is especially true since there is a mutual defense treaty with Japan.  Thus far, U.S. leaders have tried to finesse the Senkakus territorial issue. Washington has stated publicly on several occasions that the United States continues to support Japan’s administration of the islands.  However, Washington has not taken an official position on the larger question of sovereignty. In practical terms, that stance means that Japan will control the Senkakus indefinitely. Any PRC attempt to forcibly dislodge Tokyo’s control would be considered an act of war against an official U.S. ally.

Washington’s position with respect to the dispute between Russia and Japan over possession of the Kurils is not ambiguous.  U.S. officials back Tokyo’s position that all the islands are Japanese territory.  “The United States remains unwavering in its support of its most important ally and in its recognition of Japanese sovereignty over the Northern Territories,” George Glass, The U.S. ambassador to Tokyo, said in August 2026, during Putin’s visit.  Using the Japanese name for the islands put additional emphasis on Washington’s stance.

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Poland Says It Out Loud: The Goal Is To Defeat Russia, And Europe Is Headed For A Wider War

The Foreign Minister of Poland, a country which borders on Russia and Belarus, said in an interview to CNN that Russia must not be allowed to come out on top, and Europe is preparing for a long war.

Foreign Minister of Poland Radoslaw Sikorski explained to CNN the point of view of Polish government regarding the war in Ukraine. Sikorski believes that the US has adopted a strategy of ending the war on whatever terms are necessary so that it can return to economic cooperation. “But you can end any war by surrendering,” Sikorski noted. “So the terms matter.”

He then accused US negotiators of another mistake: treating the conflict in Ukraine as a war about territory. In his telling, American negotiators think that if Ukraine surrendered the last two cities it holds in Donbas, Putin could save face and the war would come to an end. “There might be some kind of pause,” he continued. “But the Soviet Union minus Ukraine is Russia without great-power status. To be a global superpower, Russia needs Ukraine.”

He went on to recount a few historical battles and wars where Russia was defeated. He called it a myth, successfully planted in the West, that Russia always wins. “They lost the Crimean War. They lost the war against Japan. They emerged from World War I with their tails between their legs,” he said. “They lost their invasion of Poland. They lost Afghanistan. And they lost the Cold War.”

Read that again. A sitting NATO foreign minister is describing a war aimed at stripping Russia of great-power status, and he is describing it as winnable.

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U.S. Envoy Tells Israel to Stop Syria Operations as IDF Pushes Deeper Into Quneitra

U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Syria and Iraq Tom Barrack was asked at a security forum in Qatar on October 20 whether Washington should press Israel to halt its military operations in Syria. He replied, “It’s time to stop it,” though he expressed uncertainty about whether the United States should intervene. The following day, Barrack met Ahmed al-Sharaa and Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani at the People’s Palace in Damascus.

Between October 22 and 23, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) units entered al-Hurriya in Quneitra province and searched homes. They also demolished an abandoned house near al-Hamidiyah, shelled areas around the village and the Bir Ajam woodland, and arrested a shepherd near Hadar. Other Israeli forces, accompanied by a bulldozer and several military vehicles, advanced west of al-Zaroura farm and closed several roads.

In neighboring Daraa province, Israeli troops shot and killed Muath Salama Al-Baeer, a man with Down syndrome, during an overnight raid on the village of Jamla on October 22. According to the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), Israeli forces entered the village’s eastern neighborhood and deployed snipers on residential rooftops. Residents told the Associated Press that Al-Baeer was unarmed when he was shot.

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Myanmar Army: $476 and Two Sacks of Rice, the Cost of a Conscript’s Life

Burma’s (Myanmar’s) military junta has never disclosed how many people it has conscripted. When it activated the People’s Military Service Law in February 2024, the regime said it would draft 5,000 people per batch, or about 50,000 a year, from a pool of about 13 million eligible citizens. By September 2026, it had reached Batch 28.

The Myanmar Defense and Security Institute (MDSI), a research group founded by defected officers, estimates that more than 130,000 new soldiers have been recruited since the law took effect. The national quota was raised in April to 5,000 recruits weekly.

According to sources close to the regime, only about 631 of the first batch’s 5,155 recruits had been allowed to return home two years after their training began.

The law covers men aged 18 to 35, women aged 18 to 27, and professionals up to age 45. In practice, the burden falls on the poor, because wealthy families that receive a summons can pay poorer young men to serve in their place.

In Hpa-An, the Karen State capital, authorities mainly target casual laborers, masons, shop employees, and commuters. They also target internal migrant workers who fled fighting in the Ayeyarwady, Bago, Magway, and Sagaing regions. In Taunggyi, the Shan State capital, the junta abducted 140 men in a single week in November 2024, most of them drug users who were out at night.

In Mandalay, high school students have been entered into conscription lotteries, and ward administrators have threatened to arrest parents who fail to attend. Since January 2026, the junta has been compiling lists of women aged 18 to 27 in Hsihseng Township, southern Shan State.

The MDSI documented 23 child recruits, some as young as 15, at four training camps. Human Rights Watch reported that the military abducted and forcibly recruited more than 1,000 Rohingya men and boys from Rakhine State.

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Who Is Making Billions From the Iran War?

At a campaign rally over the weekend, President Trump dismissed Americans’ concerns over high oil and gas prices, claiming that it’s a small price to pay for the hundreds of billions of dollars “we” are making from these higher prices.

“We’re making a fortune,” he said. “Hundreds of billions of dollars. Trillions of dollars.”

People are paying a little bit more for gas, he explained, but it doesn’t matter because “we” are making so much money.

The question is, “Who is ‘we’?” We know it is not the American people. They are seeing wage stagnation, inflation, and more pain at the pump. An Economist/YouGov poll earlier this month found that inflation and prices are the top concern among Americans by a wide margin. And in second place were jobs and the economy.

The same poll asked Americans how they rate the state of the US economy and in first place – again by a long shot – was “poor.”

If “we” as in the American people were making hundreds of billions of dollars from the war, you would think these would not be their top two concerns.

But we understand what the President meant by “we.” He meant that part of the “private” sector directly or indirectly in bed with the government war machine. From oil companies to weapons manufacturers and everything in between, war and conflict drive up profits in well-connected corporations at the expense of the rest of us.

That is why we are in a constant state of war. Twenty years in Afghanistan and a similar length in Iraq. Endless bombing in places like Somalia. A twelve-year (and counting) proxy war with Russia in Ukraine. Military bases and covert operations across the globe.

And if we find that the largest military budget in the world does not deliver enough actual weapons to win a war? Well, that’s all good too: just double military spending and accuse anyone who objects of not being patriotic!

“Private” companies with enormous political power – many of them revolving doors between government and business – “make so much money” on war, as Trump would say. Whether these wars produce US wins, loses, or stalemates, these corporations in bed with government always win. The money-printing machine makes sure the money cycles into government-favored companies, while campaign contributions are made to the politicians who support the wars.

And if you don’t support the wars? You get the Thomas Massie treatment.

Endless war produces more corporatism, where the private sector does not exist to provide goods to compete in the free market, but to serve political power and strengthen governmental control over the population. Think of it as welfare for the rich at the expense of the poor. The result is tyranny.

This is the very reason our Founders intended to make it as difficult as possible to wage war. As well-educated students of history, they understood how the concentration of war-making power in the hands of one ruler or an oligarchy would impoverish the masses and lead to a moral and financial bankruptcy. They placed war-making power in the “people’s branch” – Congress – hoping that the people would hold their representatives accountable. We have strayed very far from what they intended and if we are to survive, we must reclaim that authority and responsibility.

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Panic over US probe into Kiev’s links to Mexican cartels

Ukrainian officials are reportedly panicking after US investigators uncovered links between Mexican drug cartels and Kiev, including paid drone training for cartel members. The probe threatens to further strain the already fragile relations between Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky and US President Donald Trump.

In a statement on Tuesday, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) said American law enforcement investigating the cartels had identified at least 80 members who learned to assemble and operate combat drones while serving with Ukrainian forces.

The payment for this “education” was transferred to officials close to Zelensky using proceeds from drug sales in the US, according to the SVR report obtained by RT.

The agency also noted that Zelensky’s office is aware that the presence of trained first-person-view (FPV) drone operators among drug cartels could ultimately threaten American officers combating drug trafficking along the Mexican border and damage relations with Washington.

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Britain’s Defense Secretary Sets A 1,000-Day Countdown To War

Britain’s Defense Secretary is telling the country to get ready for war, and he has put a date on it.

Defense Secretary Wes Streeting wrote in the Telegraph on October 24 that his “defining priority” is to make sure that Britain is ‘ready to fight and win a war’. “That is the only metric that counts,” he says. He sets out the danger that he sees, which is not of new hostility towards Britain but of new capability. “Our adversaries’ willingness to harm us is not new. What has changed is their capacity,” he writes. “By 2030 their force strength and war economy could put them in a position to attack. That gives us a little over 1,000 days to complete our mission: to be ready with our allies to fight and win. This Government will make sure it is mission accomplished.”

He writes that the “gravest dangers of the 20th Century are returning, armed with the technologies of the 21st.” Deterrence must come first, he says. “To prevent the worst, we have to prepare for it.” In the first place that means ramping up our capabilities to deter our adversaries from attacking us. And if that fails, then we must make sure that Britain is ready to fight a war. It is a “chilling” message, the Daily Mail says, as Russia increases threats against NATO members.

The warning is not being made in isolation. The “Be Ready” campaign, launched by the government this week, is urging households to store three days’ worth of food and up to nine litres of water, as well as other essentials like blankets, cash, a first-aid kit and a wind-up radio, The Independent reported. Prime Minister Andy Burnham has insisted that the measures are “sensible” and “not about panicking.” GB News reported that Labour has also outlined harsh criminal punishments for anyone who tampers with undersea cables or energy pipelines, and plans to grant telecommunications powers to remove or disable services during a national emergency.

Then there is the issue of money. Streeting says he is “100 per cent confident” that Prime Minister Andy Burnham and Chancellor John Healey will hit NATO’s target of 3.5% of GDP spent on defense by 2035. Healey resigned as Defense Secretary earlier this year over the lack of cash on offer. But on Wednesday, Healey is due to deliver his first Budget as Chancellor and it is expected that the National Wealth Fund will receive billions, with a chunk of cash set aside for the British Business Bank. Some of that money could be invested in UK defense companies, such as those that produce drones and military technology. The move is intended as a downpayment on his 3% ambition by 2030. However, Healey will not set out a fully funded plan of how he intends to reach the higher target until next year’s spending review. And the Shadow Defense Secretary, James Cartlidge, says that while the Conservatives welcome the extra cash, it must be part of a wider funded plan, with money for training and for stockpiling ammunition.

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Elon Musk Responds – Zelensky Bragged About Breaking Starlink Rules on X by Using It to Bomb Russia – Then Melts Down When It’s Shut Down

It is pretty clear at this point that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy can not be trusted.

Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky lashed out at Elon Musk and the US, after the Starlink service was interrupted in Ukraine earlier this month.

Starlink, which is controlled by Musk’s SpaceX, was being used by Zelensky to bomb Russia.

According to The London Economic, Zelensky wrote Musk saying it was a “big mistake” when Starlink was interrupted in Ukraine that will lead to “a lot of losses.”

Zelensky continued: “People will die if attacks continue and if Starlink will not work.”

On Saturday, Elon Musk responded to Zelensky on X social media:

“Using Starlink, a civilian commercial service, for offensive drone strikes to kill people has never been allowed, nor should it be.

“Starshield,” a different system, is controlled by the US government. What they decide to do is up to them.

Ukraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people. That loophole was closed last week.

Starlink remains critical to the defense of Ukraine, as it is the only system that cannot be jammed or blown up, at least for now. Were Starlink to be turned off, the Ukrainian front line would collapse immediately. This is NOT a threat, it is simply a statement of fact.

Starlink was also crucial to preventing Russia from overrunning Ukraine in the early days of the war, as all other means of communication were destroyed or jammed by Russia.

SpaceX has done more to defend Ukraine than any private company on Earth BY FAR.

That said, I have nothing but UTTER CONTEMPT for the virtue-signaling evil warmongers who push for endless slaughter and offer no realistic solution to the conflict. May you burn in hell.

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Russia Is No Threat to America

When you boil down the essence of the alleged Russian military threat to America’s homeland security it amounts to just plain barking idiocy; it’s so out to lunch as to be offensive to even a modicum of human intelligence.

As we have seen in Parts 1 & 2, any conceivable threat of a Russian nuclear attack on the American homeland is already in deep checkmate.

That’s because America’s bought and paid for strategic nuclear triad, which bears a de minimis annual operating, maintenance and replacement cost of just $75 billion per year, has upwards of 900 warheads lined up to survive a first strike; and to then deliver a civilization-ending retaliatory strike to the Russian homeland that would be the equivalent of 13,000 Hiroshima’s. It would kill and injure 90 million Russians or 65% of its entire population of men, women and children within hours.

Accordingly, no Russian leader – whether as rational as Putin or a military putsch down the road – would ever give an unprovoked nuclear first strike attack on America a second thought. It’s not remotely in the cards of any future history, and therefore provides zero reason for Washington’s meddling in Ukraine on Russia’s doorstep.

Moreover, the alternative theoretical threat of a conventional military assault on the home territory of America is even more ludicrous. Russia does not remotely have the naval firepower and air-and sea-lift capacities to get even a 500 soldiers to the New Jersey shores, let alone the million-man lethally armed, supported and continuously re-supplied combatant units that would be needed for an invasion of the US that could make a difference.

Again, they have not a single serviceable aircraft carrier, no fully equipped carrier battle groups and a decrepit surface Navy of aging cruisers, destroyers, and frigates, many of Soviet-era design and dispersed across separated fleets. Altogether this remnant of the Soviet era Navy amounts to 1.4 million displacement tons or just 17% of the 8.0 million tons of state-of-the-art surface and attack submarine combatants fielded by the US Navy.

For want of doubt, just consider what would happen to a Russian invasionary armada owing to the 50 cruise-missile equipped US attack submarines that would be lying in wait at the choke points far from the US shores. To wit, this isn’t November 1941 one when six Japanese aircraft carriers – Akagi, Kaga, Sōryū, Hiryū, Shōkaku, and Zuikaku – mbarked silently and unseen on the blue waters of the Western Pacific on the way to Pearl Harbor.

To the contrary, the only place in the world were Russia could assemble a expeditionary fleet of the requisite scale to attack America would be in Sevastopol on the Crimean peninsula. The latter has been its primary warm water port since it was purchased by Catherine the Great from the Ottoman’s in 1783, not stolen from Ukraine in 2014 as the Washington narrative falsely claims.

Here’s the thing. The US Navy usually has two to three carrier battle groups in the vicinity of the Mediterranean Sea and could mobilize more if needed to block the route from Sevastopol to Gibraltar shown below. And, even more lethally, it also has a double digit numbers of the current Los Angeles class, Seawolf-class and state of the art Virginia Class attack submarines that could conduct a shooting gallery exercise at all the choke points along the way. That is, at the Bosporus Strait in Turkey, the narrow passage around the boot of Italy and Sicily, and most especially at the mere 8-mile wide channel at the Pillar of Heracles (Gibraltar).

The truth is, no Russian military leaders would ever send their surface navy on this kind of suicide voyage from Sevastopol to Gibraltar. Unlike in 1941, Washington’s eye’s in the sky would know the minute that Russia began to assemble even a few boats for an armada to be launched from Sevastopol; and a president from either party, like JFK in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, would tell the Kremlin forthwith that the only purpose of such an naval armada would not be to rescue Russian fisherman stranded in Rio de Janeiro, but to attack the homeland of America.

Accordingly, Russia would be told that its Black Sea fleet would be sunk the minute it passed through the Bosporus or beyond, and that would be the end of the Russian invasion of America then and there. The Kremlin would either turn back the fleet in the Black Sea or find it incommunicado in the Davy Jones’ Locker, Mediterranean division.

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How Israel Used AI to Relentlessly Murder Palestinian Journalists and Their Families in Their Homes

It’s worse than we thought. In research that I have undertaken over the last few weeks based on information compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) about Palestinian journalists killed by Israel since October 2023, I’ve discovered that, of the 68 Palestinian journalists killed by Israel in the first three months of their genocidal campaign, the majority were targeted and killed while at home with their families. My research provides startling confirmation, never unearthed before, of the widespread use of Israel’s AI program, dubbed “Where’s Daddy?”, specifically for journalists, relentlessly targeting them when they were at home, with a complete disregard both for their required protection as civilians under international humanitarian law, and for the often extensive “collateral damage” inflicted on their families.

There is no doubt that Israel’s sustained genocidal assault on the largely civilian population of the Gaza Strip, now in its fourth year, has been the deadliest military conflict for journalists in human history.

As the journalist Nick Turse reported for Brown University’s “Costs of War” project in April 2025, “The war in Gaza has, since October 7, 2023, killed more journalists than the US Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War (including the conflicts in Cambodia and Laos), the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and 2000s, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, combined.”

Under international humanitarian law, as most noticeably enshrined in the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977, “Civilian journalists engaged in professional missions in areas of armed conflict must be respected and protected as long as they are not taking a direct part in hostilities.” (emphasis added).

The State of Israel, however, has nothing but contempt for international humanitarian law. As far as they are concerned, everyone who works for a media outlet that is, in any way, aligned with the military wing of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or any other militant faction in Gaza, is a terrorist, and can be targeted and killed, and anyone who works as a journalist but has previously had any suspected involvement with any of these military factions in any kind of capacity can also be targeted and killed.

Israel doesn’t recognize that, by the same application of its lawless logic, almost every journalist in Israel could be regarded similarly by the Palestinians, because military service is mandatory in Israel. Most crucially, however, it fails to recognize that, if an individual has, in the past, been a part of a Palestinian military faction in any way, that doesn’t apply endlessly as a justification for their targeted killing. If they don a press vest and begin reporting, international humanitarian law makes it clear, as noted above, that they cannot be regarded as a legitimate military target unless they are specifically “taking a direct part in hostilities.”

In a cynical, devious and sustained effort to erase these distinctions, Israel has targeted and killed journalists for what it regards as “suspicious activity” — using drones to secure footage or photos, for example, or using vantage points on buildings, both for the overview they provide, but also, often, to secure transmission signals in an environment in which internet and mobile phone signals are often notoriously unreliable.

It has also, increasingly, resorted to black propaganda, alleging, almost entirely without providing evidence, that the journalists it has killed were not journalists at all, but were military operatives masquerading as journalists, and it has sometimes targeted these journalists directly, texting or calling them to tell them to stop their work or threatening them that, if they don’t stop, they or their families will be targeted and killed.

One reason why Israel feels empowered to so comprehensively erase the distinctions between combatants and civilians is because, since the 1990s, western governments (including the US in 1997, the EU in 2003, and the UK in 2021) have obligingly designed the whole of Hamas as a terrorist organization — not just its military wing, but also the whole of the civilian administrative government in Gaza.

Since October 7, 2023, this has allowed to Israel to claim that, for example, doctors and medical staff can — if a devious enough excuse can be invented — be regarded as terrorists because they work for the Ministry of Health. This is a western-approved betrayal of the absolute prohibition on targeting doctors or hospitals, which Israel has thoroughly embraced, making risible and never-proven claims that the hospitals were Hamas control and command centres, and that the doctors, like the journalists, were not actually doctors at all, but were military operatives pretending to be doctors.

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