Tag: perpetual war

‘Massive’ Overnight Drone Strikes Cause Widespread Power Outages in Ukraine

The latest in a sustained Russian campaign of massive drone and missile attacks on Ukraine´s energy infrastructure brought power outages and restrictions in all the country´s regions Thursday, officials said, with the Ukrainian prime minister describing Moscow´s tactic as “systematic energy terror.”

The strikes, which were the latest in Russia´s almost daily attacks on the Ukrainian power grid as bitter winter temperatures approach, killed at least three people, including a 7-year-old girl, according to authorities. Children between 2 and 16 years of age were among the 17 injured.

Russian launched more than 650 drones and more than 50 missiles of various types in the attack, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

Ukrainian cities use centralized public infrastructure to run water, sewage and heating systems, and blackouts stop from them working. Months of attacks have aimed to erode Ukrainian morale as well as disrupt weapons manufacturing and other war-related activity almost four years after Russia´s full-scale invasion of its neighbor.

“Russia continues its systematic energy terror – striking at the lives, dignity, and warmth of Ukrainians on the eve of winter. Its goal is to plunge Ukraine into darkness; ours is to keep the light on,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko said.

“To stop this terror, Ukraine needs more air defense systems, tougher sanctions, and maximum pressure on (Russia),” she added, referring to fruitless U.S.-led diplomatic efforts to make Russia enter negotiations for a peace settlement.

Strikes in the southern Zaporizhzhia region injured 17 people, including a 2-year-old girl, regional authorities said. Rescuers pulled a man from the rubble of a building, but he did not survive, according to Ivan Fedorov, head of the Zaporizhzhia regional administration. A second person was also killed in Zaporizhzhia.

A 7-year-old girl died in hospital from her injuries in Ukraine´s central-west Vinnytsia region, regional governor Nataliia Zobolotna said.

Two energy infrastructure facilities were damaged in the western Lviv region, near the border with Poland, local authorities said.

The Polish military said that it scrambled Polish and allied NATO aircraft as a preventive measure due to the Russian attack on Ukrainian territory. The Polish regional airports in Radom and Lublin were closed to ensure the military freedom of operation, the Polish Air Navigation Services Agency said.

Keep reading

Russia Successfully Tests Unmanned Underwater Vehicle 2M39 Poseidon – Capable of Triggering Radioactive Tsunamis

On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed a successful test of the ‘2M39 Poseidon’ days after a trial of the new Burevestnik cruise missile, which was followed by nuclear launch drills.

Putin described the Poseidon as a nuclear-powered super-torpedo designed to create radioactive tsunamis and wipe out coastal cities.

President Putin says Russia successfully tested its nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed unmanned underwater vehicle, the 2M39 Poseidon.

According to the Telegraph, The Poseidon has its roots in Soviet plans for a weapon that would be able to render coastal cities on the shores of the United States uninhabitable.

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev says its new ‘Poseidon’ nuclear torpedo capable of triggering radioactive tsunamis “can be considered a true doomsday weapon.”

Keep reading

Shocking scenes as huge crowds of ultra-Orthodox Israelis protesting against military conscription throw bottles at female reporter before boy, 15, falls to his death during demonstration

A massive rally of ultra-Orthodox Jewish Israelis protesting against military conscription today turned violent as the crowd threw bottles at a female reporter and a teenage boy fell to his death. 

A packed crowd of an estimated 200,000 people, mostly men, clogged the roads around the Route 1 highway leading into Jerusalem today. 

Photos showed many had climbed atop roofs of buildings, a gas station and onto cranes.  

Video footage showed the agitated crowd stalking a female reporter from Israeli news outlet V1 who was covering the event before chucking glass bottles at her.  

Crowds of men set fire to pieces of tarpaulin as hundreds of police officers cordoned off several roads across the city. 

Demonstrators packed onto the tops of buildings, petrol stations, bridges and balconies above a sea of fellow protesters, some of whom held signs declaring: ‘Better to go to prison than to the army.’

A helicopter flew overhead as people gathered to take part in collective prayers. 

The Israeli ambulance service said a 15-year-old fell to his death and police said they had opened an investigation into the incident.

Keep reading

China’s Plan to Sink U.S. Navy Aircraft Carriers Comes Down to 3 Words

China has developed a formidable, multi-layered anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) system, effectively creating a “defensive bubble” designed to deter the U.S. Navy and potentially sink aircraft carriers.

-This system integrates numerous threats, including “carrier-killer” ballistic missiles, new hypersonic anti-ship weapons, quieter submarines, and an emerging “drone wall” of unmanned systems.

-Together, these layers create vast ocean areas that are too dangerous for U.S. aircraft carriers to operate in during a conflict.

-This A2/AD strategy could successfully prevent the U.S. from intervening effectively in a potential invasion of Taiwan.

Keep reading

How China could use U.S. farmland to attack America

Chinese entities have been acquiring land in key locations near U.S. military bases, sparking national security concerns about possible spying — or even a potential attack.

Former national security official David Feith laid out the potential risk in an interview with 60 Minutes. Feith worked on U.S.-China policy for the State Department in the first Trump administration, and until April, worked in Trump’s second administration on the National Security Council. While there, he grew increasingly alarmed by where China owns America’s farmland. 
 
“The ability to own large tracts of land, especially close to sensitive U.S. military and government facilities, can pose an enormous problem given the nature of technology today, which is that hostile actor from all across the world can very easily exploit access to land, access to buildings and warehouses, access just to a shipping container or two and do enormous damage, either in intelligence terms or in military terms,” Feith told 60 Minutes.

Feith cited Ukraine’s recent drone attack in Russia as an example. In June, the Ukrainian military attacked Russian nuclear-capable bombers with remotely operated drones it had smuggled into the country.

For China, Feith explained, owning farmland in the United States gives America’s geopolitical rival more operating room for potential strikes.

“It’s an entirely new way of war,” he cautioned.

Keep reading

Russia Says It Will Respond If the US Starts Testing Nuclear Weapons

Russia on Thursday warned that it would respond if the US began testing nuclear weapons, comments that came after President Trump said in a post on Truth Social that he had ordered the US War Department to start tests.

It’s unclear from President Trump’s post if he meant the testing of nuclear-capable missiles, something the US regularly does, or actually detonating nuclear bombs, which the US hasn’t done since 1992. The president said that he ordered the Pentagon to “start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis” as other countries.

Russia has recently tested a nuclear-capable missile and a nuclear-capable underwater drone, but there have been no known recent detonations of nuclear weapons by any nation. Since the 1990s, all nuclear-armed states, except North Korea, which last detonated a nuclear bomb in 2017, have maintained a moratorium on detonating nuclear weapons.

“The United States is a sovereign nation and has the right to make sovereign decisions,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in response to Trump’s post. “However, I would like to recall President Putin’s repeatedly stated position: if anyone breaks the moratorium, Russia will respond in kind.”

The US and Russia are signatories to the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), but it hasn’t been ratified by all parties, including the US. Russia ratified the CTBT in 2000 but revoked it in 2023, saying it was “mirroring” the US position. Both powers have ratified the 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which is in force and prohibits all nuclear test detonations except for those conducted underground.

Peskov also said Russia hasn’t received any notification from the US about a future nuclear weapons test and that Moscow wasn’t aware of any other country that has recently detonated a nuclear bomb. “In his statement, President Trump mentioned that other countries are purportedly involved in testing nuclear weapons. Until now, we were unaware that anyone was engaged in the testing,” he said.

Keep reading

Pentagon Tells Congress It Doesn’t Know Who It’s Killing in Latin American Boat Strikes

US War Department officials don’t know the identities of the 61 people who have been extra-judicially executed in US military strikes on boats in the waters near Venezuela and in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, POLITICO reported on Thursday, citing House Democrats who attended a classified briefing on the campaign.

“[The department officials] said that they do not need to positively identify individuals on these vessels to do the strikes, they just need to prove a connection to smuggling,” said Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA). “When we tried to get more information, we did not get satisfactory answers.”

While the Trump administration has cited overdose deaths in the US related to fentanyl to justify the bombing campaign, lawmakers were told in the briefing that the boats that have been targeted were allegedly smuggling cocaine, though the Pentagon has not provided evidence to back up its claims about what the vessels were carrying.

“They argued that cocaine is a facilitating drug of fentanyl, but that was not a satisfactory answer for most of us,” Jacobs said.

The briefing on Thursday came after the Pentagon shut out Democrats from another briefing it held with Republicans a day earlier, which left Democratic senators fuming. Democrats who attended Thursday’s briefing said Pentagon lawyers were pulled from the meeting at the last minute.

“Am I leaving satisfied? Absolutely not. And the last word that I gave to the admiral was, ‘I hope you recognize the constitutional peril that you are in and the peril you are putting our troops in,’” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) told reporters after the briefing, according to CNN.

Jacobs said that, based on what she was told, even if Congress authorized the bombing campaign, it would still be illegal. “[T]here’s nothing that we heard in there that changes my assessment that this is completely illegal, that it is unlawful and even if Congress authorized it, it would still be illegal because there are extrajudicial killings where we have no evidence,” she said.

Keep reading

America’s $30 Trillion Publicly Held Debt Is 42 Times Larger Than It Was in 1980

In 1980, America’s publicly held debt reached more than $712 billion (about $2.8 trillion in 2025 dollars), or roughly 25 percent of annual U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). Today, that figure is a little over $30 trillion, or around 100 percent of GDP. And as the federal debt grew 42 times larger over that span, the economy grew only tenfold. You can’t expand the numerator four times faster than the denominator for 45 years without courting economic danger.

That’s where we find ourselves. The U.S. is at peace, and despite President Donald Trump’s claims, there’s no national emergency. And yet we’ve only seen debt as a higher share of GDP during the years of 1945, 1946, 2020, and 2021. Then, Republicans and Democrats knew to scale back. Now, debt explodes during emergencies and continues to grow in peacetime.

In 1946, after World War II, debt-to-GDP was 106 percent. It declined to just 25 percent by 1980, not only because of inflation and economic growth but because of real fiscal discipline. With budgets nearly balanced, the fruits of a booming private sector could actually reduce the burden. Beginning in the Reagan era, discipline gave way to a new normal of chronic budget deficits.

Three forces made the shift possible.

First, and the main cause of the mess we are in, is that the entitlement state became enormous yet untouchable. The Social Security reforms of 1983 are a rare example of bipartisan structural reform of a major entitlement program in U.S. history. Since then, despite economic and societal changes, the program has never been reformed. Never mind that it faces insolvency and the potential for automatic benefit cuts of more than 20 percent in 2033. The same is true of our other major debt driver: Medicare. And Medicaid is growing far beyond its original intent.

Democrats, occasionally helped by Republicans, have worked to expand welfare programs meant for lower-income people to those in higher and higher income brackets. The most recent and extreme example is the COVID-19–era expansion of the Obamacare tax credit to wealthier taxpayers, a significant share of whom enjoy early retirement. The fight over its continuation is what the government shutdown is about.

Second, Republicans discovered that promising tax cuts without offsetting spending cuts was politically painless so long as one claims that they “pay for themselves.” There is one rare and recent exception: this year’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which included $1.5 trillion in spending reductions over 10 years to offset some of the tax cuts. It’s not enough, but it’s something. Meanwhile, the Democrats love to claim that debt wouldn’t be a problem if the rich paid their “fair share.” They already do pay an enormous amount in taxes. But the numbers still don’t add up.

Finally, the Federal Reserve, starting under then-Chairman Alan Greenspan in 1987, learned how to anesthetize the political pain of budget deficits by keeping interest rates artificially low and monetizing debt. Politicians concluded that they could borrow endlessly without suffering political consequences. The problem is that this only works insofar as investors don’t worry that they will be paid back with inflated dollars.

That illusion has vanished. Interest costs have surged from $372 billion annually just a few years ago to nearly $1 trillion today, surpassing what we spend on defense or Medicaid. Within a decade, yearly interest payments are projected to nearly double, reaching $1.8 trillion. Even without new programs, the built-in deficit would keep rising and outpace economic growth. And Washington keeps adding more deficit spending.

Keep reading

US Bombs Somalia for Three Consecutive Days

The US has launched three more airstrikes in Somalia over three consecutive days, according to press releases from US Africa Command, as the Trump administration continues to bomb the country at a record pace.

AFRICOM said that it launched an airstrike on October 26 that targeted al-Shabaab about 25 miles north of the southern port city of Kismayo. That same day, the US-backed Somali government said a “precision airstrike” killed an al-Shabaab leader, though the town it said he was targeted in, Bu’ale, is more than 100 miles north of Kismayo, so it’s unclear if it was the same strike.

AFRICOM offered no other details about the strike as it stopped sharing casualty estimates and assessments on potential civilian harm earlier this year. “Specific details about units and assets will not be released to ensure continued operations security,” the command said.

The command also announced two separate strikes in Somalia’s northeastern Puntland region, launched on October 27 and October 28. AFRICOM said both strikes targeted the ISIS affiliate in the region and were launched about 53 miles southeast of the Gulf of Aden port city of Bosasso, and shared no other details.

Puntland is not under the control of the US-backed federal government, so the US backs local forces in the region. AFRICOM previously announced airstrikes in Puntland on October 24 and October 26 as Puntland’s security forces said they were intensifying operations against ISIS fighters hiding in caves in the Cal-Miskaad mountains.

Puntland officials claim that the ISIS militants are largely defeated, something they’ve been saying for months. But local sources told Garowe Online that the militants are still entrenched in the area and have resorted to guerrilla tactics and are constantly moving between caves and valleys.

The US has dramatically increased its airstrikes in Somalia this year, and the latest three strikes bring the total number of US bombings in the country this year to 89. The Trump administration has shattered the previous annual record for US airstrikes in Somalia, which President Trump set at 63 back in 2019. For context, President Biden launched a total of 51 airstrikes in Somalia throughout his four years in office, and President Obama launched 48 over eight years.

Keep reading

Ex-Army Sergeant Sentenced to 4 Years for Offering Secrets to China

A federal judge sentenced a former Army intelligence sergeant to 4 years in prison on Tuesday for offering national defense secrets to China. Sergeant Joseph Daniel Schmidt, who had top secret clearance, served in western Washington at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, where he worked in military intelligence.

According to court documents, he served in the Army from January 2015 to January 2020. Schmidt was discharged after a mental health episode in late 2019.

The judge said he considered Schmidt’s mental health as well as the seriousness of the crime in sentencing him to 4 years in prison. Schmidt’s public defender requested that he be sentenced for time served, arguing that the crime was the result of schizophrenia. Schmidt mistakenly believed he was “subject to a mind control network operated by the FBI and [was] hoping to warn the Chinese government about the Program,” according to the public defender Dennis Carroll.

In the Army, Schmidt led a team that de-briefed and interrogated potential intelligence sources. His work gave him access to intelligence collection and reporting systems. After being discharged, he kept a device that gave him access to secure military computer networks. He later offered the device to Chinese authorities for them to access the secure system.

“He used his training to provide sensitive information to the Chinese security service. He knew what he was doing was wrong—he was doing web searches for such things as ‘Can you be extradited for treason,’” said Assistant United States Attorney Todd Greenberg in a statement.

In February 2020, Schmidt flew to Turkey. Court documents state that while there, he searched online about defecting from the United States. He also emailed the Chinese consulate offering to share information with a Chinese official in person.

Keep reading