Tag: perpetual war

US Military Officials Involved in Latin America Campaign Required To Sign Non-Disclosure Agreements

US military officials involved in the Trump administration’s military campaign in Latin America have been asked to sign non-disclosure agreements, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing US officials.

The report said the request is highly unusual, since US military officials are already required to keep secrets from the public, though it also acknowledged that the Pentagon has previously used NDAs under the leadership of War Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The news comes as members of Congress have complained about the Trump administration’s lack of transparency about the campaign, which has involved bombing alleged drug-running boats and a substantial military buildup, and a push toward a regime change war to oust Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

The US War Department has not provided any evidence to back up its claims about what the boats it has been bombing are carrying and hasn’t provided any information about the people it has been killing in strikes that amount to extrajudicial executions at sea.

In an interview on Sunday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who has been very critical of the bombing campaign, affirmed that Congress hasn’t received any information about the people the Pentagon has been targeting. “No one said their name. No one said what evidence. No one said whether they’re armed. And we’ve had no evidence presented,” Paul said. “So, at this point, I would call them extrajudicial killings.”

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Sen. Rand Paul Slams Strikes on Boats in Caribbean as ‘Extrajudicial Killings’

Senator Rand Paul blasted President Donald Trump’s strikes on alleged drug traffickers as unconstitutional and illegal. 

“A briefing is not enough to overcome the Constitution. The Constitution says that when you go to war, Congress has to vote on it. … The drug war, or the crime war, has typically been dealt with through law enforcement,” Paul said on Fox News Sunday. “And so far they have alleged that these people are drug dealers … and we’ve had no evidence presented. So at this point we would call them extrajudicial killings.” 

So far, the Department of War has bombed ten boats it claims are smuggling narcotics into the US. Nine of the strikes have been on vessels in the Caribbean, against alleged cartels linked to Venezuela. The White House has not provided evidence that the ships were carrying drugs. 

“So far, they have alleged that these people are drug dealers. No one said their name. No one said what evidence. No one said whether they’re armed. And we’ve had no evidence presented,” Paul said.

One survivor of a strike was released by Ecuador, finding he was not engaged in wrongdoing when the boat was attacked. One family member said a victim of a US strike was a fisherman, and not working for a cartel. 

Trump has discussed expanding the strikes into Venezuela and has given the CIA approval to conduct lethal operations against cartels. Secretary of State Marco Rubio claims that Venezuelan President Maduro is the leader of a cartel designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. 

If Trump elects to expand the war, he told reporters that he will brief Congress on the plans. He went on to say he did not have to discuss the matter with the Legislator and has not sought a Declaration of War. 

The Constitution explicitly grants Congress the authority to Declare War. However, the principle of preventing the President from unilaterally declaring war has been eroded over time. Congress has not declared war since World War 2 II. The last Authorization for Use of Military Force was passed in 2002 for the Iraq War. 

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Hegseth Announces 14 Killed In New, Largest Single Attack On ‘Narco-Terrorist’ Boats

Pentagon Chief Pete Hegseth has announced yet more strikes on alleged drug vessels operating off South America, in what’s becoming a weekly thing. This latest strike involved four total boats – in what looks to be the largest single set of strikes yet.

Unlike most of the some nine strikes recorded thus far, these fresh attacks were on the Pacific side of Latin America, and not directly off Venezuela’s coast. There’s been only one other prior instance, announced earlier this month, of such operations on the Pacific side.

The attacks against several vessels occurred Monday. Hegseth disclosed on Tuesday, “Yesterday, at the direction of President Trump, the Department of War carried out three lethal kinetic strikes on four vessels operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations (DTO) trafficking narcotics in the Eastern Pacific.”

“The four vessels were known by our intelligence apparatus, transiting along known narco-trafficking routes, and carrying narcotics,” Hegseth continued.

The death toll was high in comparison with other attacks which stretch back several weeks. Hegseth continues in his statement on X:

Eight male narco-terrorists were aboard the vessels during the first strike. Four male narco-terrorists were aboard the vessel during the second strike. Three male narco-terrorists were aboard the vessel during the third strike. A total of 14 narco-terrorists were killed during the three strikes, with one survivor.

All strikes were in international waters with no U.S. forces harmed. Regarding the survivor, USSOUTHCOM immediately initiated Search and Rescue (SAR) standard protocols; Mexican SAR authorities accepted the case and assumed responsibility for coordinating the rescue. 

This note about cooperation from Mexican authorities is interesting, and shows that not all regional governments are against the heightened Pentagon action off their shores – or else they are simply too scared of the Trump administration to say ‘no’.

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While Germany Talks War With Russia, Romania’s Globalist Regime Conducts Mass Surveillance On Its Own People — 8,600 Secret Warrants, Zero Oversight

Germany’s globalist political class is once again talking about going to war with Russia. Officials in Berlin have suggested that Europe should “prepare for conflict,” a statement that’s raised alarms across the continent. But while Germany rattles sabers, another European Union member is already at war, not with Moscow, but with its own citizens.

Romania, one of NATO’s key Eastern members, has quietly constructed an enormous internal surveillance system under the banner of “national security.”

Documents obtained under Romania’s Freedom of Information law reveal that from the 2024 presidential elections through September 2025, the country’s Supreme Court issued 2,843 national security warrants. Every single request was approved. None were denied.

A Nation Surveilled 

Each warrant authorized Romania’s powerful intelligence agencies to monitor phone calls, intercept emails, track movements by GPS, and even enter private homes—all without notifying the citizens involved.

Experts estimate that more than 55,000 Romanians may have been surveilled under these programs, their private lives cataloged in the name of ‘protecting the state.’

During the last three years alone, Romania’s top court signed off on 8,603 such mandates, covering the tail end of President Klaus Iohannis’s term, the interim leadership of Ilie Bolojan, and the start of Nicușor Dan’s presidency.

Across administrations, one thing never changed: zero judicial oversight.

Courts Rubber-Stamp Everything

According to official responses from both the General Prosecutor’s Office and the Supreme Court, not one surveillance request was ever rejected. Every application moved seamlessly from prosecutors to judges—and was instantly approved.

That’s not oversight—it’s obedience.

Unlike the United States’ FISA Court, which modifies or rejects a portion of surveillance requests each year, Romania’s allegedly independent judiciary appears to function as a rubber stamp for intelligence operations.

Even more concerning, Romanian officials admitted they don’t know—or won’t say—how many people were targeted. The Supreme Court said it “does not hold a statistic” on the matter. The Prosecutor’s Office said the data is “not public.”

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California Political Adviser Pleads Guilty to Being Foreign Agent of China

The former campaign adviser of a Southern California city council member pleaded guilty on Oct. 27 to acting as an illegal Chinese agent.

Sun Yaoning, also known as Mike Sun, worked as a campaign adviser in the 2022 city council race in Arcadia, a Los Angeles suburb.

He also operated a news website targeting the local Chinese American community, posting content supporting the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

If the judge accepts the sentencing recommendation, Sun, 64, could face up to 10 years in prison.

In the plea agreement, Sun agreed that he was a foreign agent for China from 2022 to 2024, promoting pro-CCP propaganda in the United States without alerting the U.S. Attorney General.

Campaign filings from the November 2022 election show that Sun worked as treasurer for the campaign of Eileen Wang, an Arcadia city council member.

At the time of the arrest in December 2024, Arcadia City Manager Dominic Lazzaretto said in a letter to the community that Sun had no affiliation with the City of Arcadia and that Wang had spoken with the FBI and was cooperating with investigators.

According to the plea agreement, Sun admitted to writing a report about his activities in support of the CCP.

“Overseas anti-China forces have been ceaseless, Taiwan independence, Tibet independence, Xinjiang independence, and Falungong have been active for a long time,” he wrote.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. As with the other areas mentioned above, the faith group has been a major target of the Chinese regime.

Sun proposed organizing counteractivities and requested $80,000 to fund a demonstration at a Fourth of July parade in Washington, according to the criminal complaint filed on Dec. 17, 2024, by the Justice Department in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

Sun also admitted to providing information to a Chinese official at the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles about activities in the area related to Taiwan. In April 2023, during a visit by then-Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, Sun took photos of protesters and sent them to the Chinese official.

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Zelensky Declares Expansion Of Long-Range Attacks On Russian Oil Refineries 

Days after urging European allies in Britain that Ukraine urgently needs sufficient long-range weapons to change the course of the war, President Zelensky has declared Monday that he intends to expand strikes against Russian refineries.

After a meeting with his staff Zelensky indicated, “We reviewed the effectiveness of our long-range strikes over a defined period and the results achieved. Russian oil refining is already paying a tangible price for the war—and will pay even more. We set tasks to expand the geography for the use of our long-range capabilities.”

This makes clear it’s no secret how Kiev would use Tomahawks missiles if it received Washington’s approval to get them; however, President Trump has appeared to resist so far.

The past couple of months have seen Ukrainian long-range drone strikes on Russian energy sites and oil depots become an almost nightly phenomenon. Drones are very hard to defend against, given their small size, so the UAVs often hit their targets as they are often sent in large waves.

Recently, media sources have said the Trump White House has been actively giving intelligence assistance to Ukraine related to these long-range attacks on Russian energy. Still, there’s as yet no indication Trump has approved Tomahawks.

The Ukrainians of lately been striking defense sector and manufacturing sites as well, sometimes with devastating and deadly effect. One recent ‘mystery’ blast more than a dozen people:

The death toll from an explosion at a Russian plastics manufacturing plant has increased to 13 people, the Chelyabinsk regional administration said Monday.

The blast occurred last Wednesday night at the Plastmass plant in the town of Kopeysk. The facility, known for producing artillery ammunition for the Russian military, is subject to Western sanctions.

It is unclear whether sabotage or other deliberate action caused the explosion.

But Russia has been hitting back hard, with a Monday an aerial attack on an important energy facility in Chernihiv region, resulting in a number of towns and settlements in the border area being without electricity.

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US Officials Disagree With Trump on Venezuela

In the waters of the Caribbean, a surprisingly large U.S. fleet sits with Venezuela in its sights. It includes over 10,000 troops, Aegis guided-missile destroyers, a nuclear-powered fast attack submarine, F-35B jet fighters, MQ-9 Reaper drones, P-8 Poseidon spy planes, assault ships and a secretive special-operations ship.

The fleet is built for war on Venezuela or its drug cartels, but it is engineered to put enough pressure on Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro to push him from power. The justification for the war is stopping the flow of drugs into the U.S. by Venezuelan drug cartels; the justification for the coup is that Maduro is the head of those cartels.

But U.S. officials – often those in the best place to know – have disagreed with all three aspects of the military action: the significance of Venezuela’s drug cartels in the flow of drugs, and especially fentanyl, into United States; the role of Maduro in those cartels; and the use of the military to fight them. For their disagreement, many of those officials have left or been forced from their jobs.

U.S. President Donald Trump has insisted that military force is necessary to stop “narco-terrorists” who are smuggling a “deadly weapon poisoning Americans. He has claimed that “every boat,” the U.S. military strikes off the coast of Venezuela is “stacked up with bags of white powder that’s mostly fentanyl” and “kills 25,000 on average – some people say more.”

But current and former U.S. officials disagree. While most of the boats the U.S. military has sunk have been in the passageway between Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago, U.S. officials say that that passage is neither used to transport fentanyl nor is it used to transport drugs to the United States. 80% of the drugs that flow through that passage is marijuana, and most of the rest is cocaine. And those drugs are headed, not to the U.S., but to West Africa and Europe. Most of the fentanyl that finds its way into the U.S. comes from Mexico.

The military strikes on Venezuelan boats cannot be justified by the war on drugs and “are unlikely… to cut overdose deaths in the United States,” according to officials. “When I saw [an internal document on the strikes],” a senior U.S. national security official said, “I immediately thought, ‘This isn’t about terrorists. This is about Venezuela and regime change’.”

According to U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, 90% of the cocaine that transits into the U.S. enters through Mexico, not Venezuela. And Venezuela is not a source of fentanyl. The dissenting American officials are in agreement with international bodies. The  2025 UNODC World Drug Report assesses that Venezuela “has consolidated its status as a territory free from the cultivation of coca leaves, cannabis and similar crops.” The report says that “[o]nly 5% of Colombian drugs transit through Venezuela.” The EU’s European Drug Report 2025 corroborates the UN report: it “does not mention Venezuela even once as a corridor for the international drug trade.”

U.S. intelligence also disagrees on the Trump administration’s claim that Maduro is at the head of the Venezuelan drug cartels. The Trump administration has insisted that “Maduro is the leader of the designated narco-terrorist organization Cartel de Los Soles.”

Again, though, U.S. officials disagree. A “sense of the community” memorandum dated April 7, 2025 that puts together the findings of the 18 agencies in the U.S. intelligence community released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence directly contradicts the Trump administration’s claim that Maduro is the leader of Tren de Aragua (TDA) drug cartel.

The memorandum clearly states that “the Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States.” It states that the intelligence community “has not observed the regime directing TDA.”

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The World Confronts the Genocide Washington Is Trying To Bury

On October 4th, 2025, in an interview with Axios, President Trump stressed that one of the main goals behind his Gaza plan was to restore Israel’s international standing. “Bibi took it very far and Israel lost a lot of support in the world,” Trump said. “Now I am gonna get all that support back.”

Under Trump’s plan, a supposed ceasefire took effect on October 10th. But Israel only withdrew from less than half of the Gaza strip, and killed at least 93 people in the next two weeks, after killing at least that many per day for the previous two years. Israel has only allowed 15% of the humanitarian aid called for in the plan to enter Gaza, and has kept the critical Rafah crossing from Egypt into Gaza closed. The daily life-and-death struggle to find food, water and shelter carries on unabated for two million people in Gaza.

While the reduction in the daily scale of Israel’s mass murder is obviously welcome, this is not a real ceasefire. Like previous Israeli ceasefires in Gaza, as in Lebanon, this is a one-sided ceasefire that Israel violates at will, on a daily basis, with no accountability.

This is only the first part of Trump’s plan for Gaza, and there is still no agreement on the other parts, such as the disarmament of Hamas, who provide the only government and police force in Gaza. They now have the added job of protecting their people from Israel-backed criminal gangs and death squads, some with links to ISIS, who prey on them from the Israeli-occupied areas, stealing aid supplies, assassinating local leaders and terrorizing the population.

Hamas is obviously not going to disarm under these conditions, and previously said it would only surrender its weapons once Palestine has an internationally recognized government with its own armed forces. On the other side, Israel has not agreed to other parts of Trump’s plan, such as its withdrawal from the rest of Gaza, nor to any plan for the future of Palestine.

In the United States, where corrupt politicians and corporate media take U.S. and Israeli lies at face value or even repeat them as statements of fact, some may believe that Trump’s plan has resolved the crisis in Palestine. The rest of the world is not so naive or easy to manipulate, but many other governments are also beholden to oligarchies that profit from trade, investment and arms deals with Israel, even as the public in those same countries reels in shock at Israel’s mass murder of Palestinians and U.S.-backed impunity for its crimes.

Trump’s Gaza plan, like much of his foreign policy, cynically exploits the greed and fear of political leaders and their oligarch patrons. Admitting that Israel has “lost a lot of support in the world,” he offers a shortcut back to “business as usual” for governments eager to protect – and even expand – profitable ties despite Israel’s ongoing atrocities and open contempt for international law.

In his first term, Trump brokered the “Abraham Accords,” normalization deals between Israel and Bahrain, the UAE, Morocco, and Sudan that included mutual recognition and expanded trade. He now has his eye on the big prize: Saudi Arabia.

But Arab-Israeli relations have long been contested. In the 1949 UN General Assembly vote on Israel’s admission, all Arab and Muslim countries except Turkiye (which abstained) voted against recognizing the state of Israel. Thirty-two mostly Arab and Muslim countries, including some of its closest neighbors, still either don’t recognize Israel or have no diplomatic relations with it.

Despite decades of hostility, Trump persuaded Israel and some of these countries to support his Gaza plan with the promise of future benefits from normalization and trade. But there is still a gaping chasm between Israel and these Arab and Muslim countries over Palestine. They say they will not recognize Israel unless Israel recognizes Palestine, with full sovereignty over East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

But the foundational basis of Netanyahu’s Likud Party is its plan for a Greater Israel, to be formed by annexing all of occupied Palestine “between the sea and the Jordan.” And on October 22, during Vice President Vance’s visit to Israel, the Knesset voted in favor of annexing the West Bank.

Trump unveiled his Gaza plan at the very end of the UN General Assembly’s annual high-level meeting in New York, where many world leaders spoke out for much stronger international action against Israel. The New York Declaration, which 142 countries voted for, was the result of a conference in July led by France and Saudi Arabia that promised “concrete, timebound, coordinated action” to enforce a ruling by the international Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2024 that the Israeli occupation of Palestine is illegal and must be ended “as quickly as possible.”

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The Rubio Doctrine: Neocons Are Back!

According to several recent news reports, the two major Trump foreign policy shifts last week are the handiwork of Marco Rubio, the President’s Secretary of State and (acting) National Security Advisor. As with all neocon plans, they will be big on promises and small on delivery.

First up, according to Bloomberg it was Rubio who finally convinced President Trump to take “ownership” of the US proxy war on Russia, and for the first time place sanctions on Russia. Up to this point President Trump chose to portray himself as a mediator between Ukraine and Russia. But with this move against Russia’s oil sector he can no longer credibly claim that this is “Joe Biden’s war.”

The Trump move followed a confusing few weeks since the Trump/Putin Alaska summit in August. After that meeting Trump dropped the neocon position that a ceasefire in the Russia/Ukraine war must occur before any peace negotiations. It was a sign that Trump was looking more realistically at the war. He also said he did not think Ukraine would win, which is pretty obvious.

A surprise call to Putin the day before Ukrainian president Zelensky was to arrive in town just over a week ago reinforced that position and Zelensky left Washington empty-handed. He was seeking Tomahawk missiles that could strike deep into Russian territory.

Then out of the blue President Trump last week announced through his Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that the US would be sanctioning Russia’s two largest oil companies until Russia declares a ceasefire in the war before negotiations. That won’t happen, but what it does mean is that Rubio and the neocons have successfully gotten Trump to step on the escalation escalator. That is what they always do. It will be much harder to back down now.

At the same time the US Administration was jumping deeper into the Russia/Ukraine war, a long-time neocon dream was suddenly back in play. Although in Trump’s first term a “regime change” operation was attempted against Venezuela, it failed spectacularly. But the neocons have long dreamed of overthrowing the Venezuelan government – they almost got their way back in 2002 – and suddenly after several weeks of extrajudicial murder on the high seas in the name of fighting the drug war, President Trump announced that land strikes on Venezuela would begin soon.

He did mention that he might brief Congress on his plans for war on Venezuela, not that Congress can be bothered to care much one way or the other.

The neocon old guard that still dominates Washington foreign policy is taking a victory lap. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham was on the Sunday shows beaming over the conversion of “no regime-change wars” President Trump to “regime change wars” President Trump.

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Leaked: How British Intel Infiltrates Lebanon

In a markedly revealing September 22nd interview with The National, US special envoy to Syria Tom Barrack made a number of stunning admissions about the state of play in Lebanon. Despite Western governments for months demanding Beirut disarm Hezbollah, he acknowledged the Resistance group had “zero” incentive to voluntarily do so, as “Israel is attacking everybody” across West Asia. As such, Hezbollah’s “argument gets better and better”, and its public support grows. Barrack went on to propose arming the Lebanese Armed Forces for the purpose:

“[The LAF] is a good organisation and it’s well-meaning, but it’s not well-equipped…Who are they going to fight? We don’t want to arm them so they can fight Israel…So you’re arming them so they can fight their own people, Hezbollah…our enemy…We need to cut the heads off of those snakes and chop the flow of funds. That’s the only way you’re going to stop Hezbollah.”

Barrack’s comments are a uniquely candid admission of Washington’s overarching strategy in West Asia. Namely, to construct intelligence, military, and security apparatuses in pliable puppet states for the purposes of internal oppression, posing no threat whatsoever to the Zionist entity, while Tel Aviv attacks “everybody” in the region with total impunity. Yet, efforts to bring Lebanon to heel, and neutralise Hezbollah’s influence in the country, have been ongoing for many years – with London secretly leading the charge.

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