Tag: perpetual war

Trump Fabricates a War to Cover Up Murder

The president made up some more lies about his murder spree in the Caribbean:

President Trump has decided that the United States is engaged in a formal “armed conflict” with drug cartels his team has labeled terrorist organizations and that suspected smugglers for such groups are “unlawful combatants,” the administration said in a confidential notice to Congress this week.

There is no such armed conflict. The president has dressed up his summary executions of alleged criminals by pretending that the U.S. is fighting a war with these groups, but these groups are not engaged in hostilities with our government. They aren’t carrying our armed attacks on our country or our military. Calling them terrorist organizations doesn’t authorize or legitimize the killing Trump has ordered. Branding noncombatants as combatants doesn’t make them lawful targets.

The administration has dubbed this a “non-international armed conflict” for the purposes of creating a fig leaf for the president’s murders. That is another lie. A non-international armed conflict is one where a state or a non-state group is fighting with an armed non-state group. To qualify as a non-international armed conflict, the non-state party or parties to the conflict must be organized and the violence between them and the state must be intense.

As we can see, there is no conflict of any kind happening. There is no one fighting back. Our military is simply blowing up boats full of civilians because the president feels like it.

Trump wants to use the language of the “war on terror” to excuse his serial murders of Venezuelan fishermen, but he doesn’t have a leg to stand on:

Noting that it is illegal for the military to deliberately target civilians who are not directly participating in hostilities — even suspected criminals — Mr. Corn called the president’s move an “abuse” that crossed a major legal line.

“This is not stretching the envelope,” he said. “This is shredding it. This is tearing it apart.”

Even if there were a conflict between the U.S. and an armed group taking place, the attacks on the boats would still be illegal.

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US Provides Lebanese Government With $230 Million in Military Aid as It Pushes Hezbollah Disarmament

The Trump administration has approved $230 million worth of military and security aid for Lebanon as it’s pushing the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah, Reuters reported on Friday.

The Hill reported that the US sent $230 million on September 30 as a last-minute action before the government shutdown so the funds wouldn’t expire. “It’s not a huge amount, but for a small country like Lebanon, that’s really significant,” a congressional aide told reporters on October 1.

A Lebanese source told Reuters that $190 million will go toward the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and $40 million is for the Internal Security Forces. On September 10, the US Department of War announced a $14 million weapons package for the LAF that it said would help “dismantle weapons caches and military infrastructure of non-state groups, including Hezbollah.”

In an interview released on September 22, Tom Barrack, the US ambassador to Turkey, who has also been involved in talks with Lebanon, said that the US was arming the LAF so it could fight its own people.

“We’re going to arm them so they can fight Israel? I don’t think so,” Barrack told The National. “So you’re arming them so they can fight their own people, Hezbollah. Hezbollah is our enemy. Iran is our enemy.”

Barrack’s comments came as critics of the US policy in Lebanon have been warning that the push to disarm Hezbollah could lead to a civil war. The US has also continued to strongly back Israel’s action in Lebanon, even though it has flagrantly violated the ceasefire deal signed in November 2024 and continues to conduct near-daily strikes. Since the truce deal was signed, Israel has killed hundreds of people in southern Lebanon, including at least 103 civilians.

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FBI Takes Down Money Laundering Network Tied To Venezuelan Dictator Nicolas Maduro – Two Men Indicted as DOJ Joins Pressure on Socialist Regime

FBI is gunning for Maduro, too.

Besides the major military deployment of assets to the Caribbean, with multiple reports warning of possible ground operations in Venezuela, other areas of the US government are also focused in curtailing the reign of terror of Nicolas Maduro, ‘the butcher of Caracas’.

The Treasury and the Department of Justice are also working against the international arms of the criminal cartels.

Fox News reported:

“The FBI says two men have been indicted in connection with an alleged money-laundering scheme tied to Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro’s children.

The indictments come after a years-long investigation that dates back to 2019 when the FBI’s Miami Field Office launched the probe based on indications that Arick Komarczyk opened U.S. bank accounts for Maduro’s children and their U.S.-based associates. Suspicious Activity Reports allegedly showed that Komarczyk received wire transfers from individuals and businesses in Venezuela, according to the FBI.”

Komarczyk and his associate, Irazmar Carbajal, allegedly moved $100,000 of suspected sanctioned money belonging to members of Venezuela’s regime.

The men are said to have moved about $25,000 into the U.S.

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Deterring The Next Quasi-World War: China–Russia–North Korea Versus US

Russian planes recently flew into Polish and Romanian airspace to test NATO’s resolve while the world veers toward a conflict in Asia—one that could be far worse than the situation in Ukraine—where true deterrence and resolve remain largely absent.

Let’s backtrack a little.

On Sept. 3, Beijing staged a military extravaganza to parade a full suite of fearsome weapons. Many journalists were awed, and some defeatist experts advocated Chamberlainian appeasement. Others, mostly China observers, tried decoding the seating plan of senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials atop Tiananmen Square for clues about the power struggles in Zhongnanhai.

However, what is often overlooked in the discussion about the event is that it represents the financing and support mechanisms behind a new type of quasi-world war. The ongoing Russia–Ukraine war is one example, and the potential invasion of Taiwan by the Chinese regime is another. Let’s explore this further.

The Xinhua images of the Sept. 3 event, featuring Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un consorting in solidarity, should be interpreted as a calculated response to the new tripartite model the West has devised for militarily supporting Ukraine. That model conveys that Kyiv identifies its military hardware needs, European allies provide the financing, and the United States produces and delivers the hardware.

The Beijing event showcased a parallel model: Moscow requests war materiel, including troops, China and North Korea supply them in exchange for cheap Russian energy, with India and a few other countries dipping in. Thus, even though the war’s actual fighting is confined within Ukraine and Russia, its financing involves a much wider array of adversarial states. The coalitional symmetry in this financing mechanism can prolong the bloody conflict indefinitely, which Russia and Ukraine, if left to their own devices, cannot achieve.

A way to stop the war is to break that symmetry, which seems to be the goal of U.S. President Donald Trump’s “secondary tariffs.” On Aug. 6, he doubled the headline tariff on India to 50 percent for buying cheap Russian oil. It is showing results. India reportedly bought much less Russian oil in August. Notably, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who attended the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting in Tianjin from Aug. 31 to Sept. 1, quietly skipped the Sept. 3 military parade.

Now, Trump is pressuring Europe to immediately end its remaining reliance on Russian energy and join him in a similar effort against Beijing, and has called for imposing up to 100 percent additional tariffs on China for buying Russian crude oil. The EU leadership is not yet entirely on board, but has proposed to advance its target of ending all energy imports from Russia from 2027 to 2026 or even sooner.

But whatever happens to the war in Ukraine, the world would not be okay even when Putin agrees to call it quits, because Xi has all the intentions to do a sequel. Xi’s primary interest in supporting Russia lies in an expected reciprocation from Moscow if China invades Taiwan. What would a China–Taiwan war look like?

The Russia–Ukraine war is already a quasi-world war. Despite the combat space being narrowly confined, it nevertheless involves the participation of approximately 50 countries on four continents in various capacities.

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Was Scandinavia’s Russian Drone Scare A False Flag To Crack Down On Russia’s Shadow Fleet?

It’s highly suspicious that Zelensky just claimed without any evidence that they were launched by Russian tankers and subsequently demanded that Europe close the straits to its shipping in response…

Unknown drones recently flew in close proximity to Danish and Norwegian airports, prompting speculation among some that they were Russia’s delayed hybrid retaliation against NATO for backing Ukraine’s drone flights in proximity to Russia’s own airports over the past few years.

No evidence has emerged in support of that hypothesis, but Zelensky still dishonestly passed off such claims as fact during his speech at the latest Warsaw Security Forum.

According to him, “there is growing evidence that Russia may have used tankers in the Baltic Sea to launch drones – the drones that caused major disruption in Northern Europe. If tankers used by Russia are serving as drone platforms, then such tankers should not be free to operate in the Baltic. This is de facto Russia’s military activity against European countries, so Europe has the right to close straits and sea routes to protect itself.”

His proposal for NATO to close the Danish Staits to Russian shipping on this pretext, which would amount to an illegal blockade that could thus legitimize offensive action by Russia in self-defense, was predictable given Ukraine’s and some of its patrons’ interest in escalating the bloc’s tensions with Russia. In fact, it might even be the case that this was the false flag that Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service twice warned could soon be staged by the UK and Ukraine, albeit ultimately taking a different form.

They assessed that those two might orchestrate potentially forthcoming provocations in the Baltic that would then be blamed on Russia in order to justify cracking down on its sanctioned energy trade that the West dramatically describes as being conducted by a “shadow fleet” transiting through that sea. While no US ship was targeted with Ukrainian-transferred Soviet/Russian torpedoes nor were such mines fished out of the Baltic, Scandinavia’s Russian drone scare still arguably fulfills the same role.

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Trump’s base (apart from the Zionists) is increasingly restive. Venezuela, Iran, Israel, Ukraine policies are deeply unpopular. The economy is becoming toast. How will he move to regain popularity?

Does President Trump think a new war or two can save him? Nope—his BS maneuvers bombing Iran were a joke, a fake show of strength that bought him absolutely nothing except loss of respect.

UKRAINE

His claim of concern for the waste of life in Ukraine led to no reasonable offers to end that conflict. Here is what the West did to Russia (and the US still leads the West) to provoke this war:

  1. Trashed the 2014 Maidan agreement
  2. Built up a large Ukraine army and transferred many arms to Ukraine subsequently
  3. Applied very strict sanctions on Russia
  4. Encouraged neo-Nazi elements in Ukraine to continually terrorize the Russian-speaking eastern regions, killing about 15,000 citizens
  5. Placed criminal, compromised Zelinsky (a comedian) in as President to do the West’s bidding
  6. Attempted to blow up all 4 Nordstrom pipelines that brought Russian gas to Europe, and managed to blow up 3 with 2 charges placed on one line

Well, the West, its NATO and the US have expended a huge amount of money and lives in hopes of grabbing Russia’s resources after chewing up most of the fat in their own countries. And look where it has gotten them. The crazed European leaders with open immigration, Net Zero, 15 minute cities, etc., in addition to election thefts and now sending troops to Ukraine, have destroyed their countries’ economies. And lost all shred of dignity and morality. They are desperate, cornered, and we fear where they will go from here. Will the US go with them?

ISRAEL

Meanwhile, the West encouraged Netanyahu to impose the final solution on Gaza—putting his country’s future at grave risk, encouraging antisemitism everywhere, and murdering and terrorizing millions of innocent civilians. Using the excuse of Hamas’ terrorism. But we can never forget that Israel funded Hamas or allowed Qatar to fund Hamas—it is one or the other, the facts are very clear—supposedly to keep Gaza from allying with the West Bank. But what if it was also to lay the groundwork for an October 7 excuse to empty Gaza of its 2 million inhabitants?

Why is Trump handing Israel the weapons to continue its “war” in Gaza? This is no war, it is a massacre. Simply look at the casualty figures if you disagree with me.

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Defending the Summary Execution of Suspected Drug Smugglers, Trump Declares an ‘Armed Conflict’

This week, President Donald Trump sought to justify his new policy of summarily executing suspected drug smugglers by declaring that his targets are “unlawful combatants” in an “armed conflict” with the United States. But that terminology, which Trump deployed in a notice to Congress, does not change the reality that he has authorized the military murder of criminal suspects who pose no immediate threat of violence.

So far, Trump has ordered three attacks on speedboats in the Caribbean Sea that he said were carrying illegal drugs, killing a total of 17 people. The first attack was a September 2 drone strike that killed 11 people on a boat that reportedly “appeared to have turned around before the attack started because the people onboard had apparently spotted a military aircraft stalking it.” On September 15, U.S. forces blew up another speedboat in the Caribbean, killing three people whom Trump described as “confirmed narcoterrorists from Venezuela.” Four days later, Trump announced a third attack that he said killed three people “affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization” who were “conducting narcotrafficking.”

Contrary to Trump’s implication, that designation does not turn murder into self-defense. “The State Department designation merely triggers the government’s ability to implement asset controls and other economic sanctions under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and other statutes,” Georgetown law professor Marty Lederman noted after the first attack on a suspected drug boat. “It has nothing to do with authorizing [the Defense Department] to engage in targeted killings…which is why the U.S. military doesn’t go around killing members of all designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations.”

According to White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly, Trump’s literalization of the war on drugs is fully consistent with international law. “The president acted in line with the law of armed conflict to protect our country from those trying to bring deadly poison to our shores,” she told The New York Times this week. “He is delivering on his promise to take on the cartels and eliminate these national security threats from murdering more Americans.”

That framing is logically, morally, and legally nonsensical. The truth is that Americans like to consume psychoactive substances that legislators have deemed intolerable, and criminal organizations are happy to profit from that demand. The fact that Americans who use illegal drugs sometimes die as a result—a hazard magnified by the prohibition policy that Trump is so eager to enforce—does not transform the people who supply those drugs into murderers.

If it did, alcohol producers and distributors, who supply a product implicated in an estimated 178,000 deaths a year in the United States, would likewise be guilty of murder. And by Trump’s logic, they would be subject to the death penalty based on nothing more than the allegation that they were involved in the alcohol trade.

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The U.S. Government Doesn’t Want You To Read This Report on Israel’s Business Deals

The U.S. government doesn’t want you to read what Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, has to say. In July 2025, the State Department announced that it was going to freeze her assets for her “lawfare that targets U.S. and Israeli persons.”

Albanese, the State Department press release noted, had “directly engaged with the International Criminal Court (ICC)” at The Hague “in efforts to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute nationals of the United States or Israel, without the consent of those two countries.” And she had “recently escalated this effort by writing threatening letters to dozens of entities worldwide, including major American companies across finance, technology, defense, energy, and hospitality, making extreme and unfounded accusations.”

A few weeks earlier, Albanese had submitted her report to the U.N. Human Rights Council, “From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide.” It accuses several global companies of profiting “from the Israeli economy of illegal occupation, apartheid and now genocide,” including Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Palantir, Caterpillar, and even Booking.com. (The report also mentions that companies have been asked for comment, which appears to be the “threatening letters” referred to by the State Department.)

Whether or not one accepts Albanese’s characterization of Israel’s actions, the report itself is an interesting read on the economics of war. The report details how some firms profit directly from providing the state with the tools to inflict violence while others take advantage of the state’s monopoly on violence to grab a monopoly on resources. Albanese calls for international sanctions, legal action, and consumer boycotts aimed at changing these companies’ behavior.

The U.S. government’s attempts to stop the report from being published in the 
first place make it especially worth reading.
Politicians have long wanted to erode Americans’ right to vote with their wallets, and they’ve used boycotts of Israel as a test case to introduce wide-ranging anti-boycott laws. By accusing the United Nations of “lawfare” for simply printing a report, the government is attacking the right of consumers and investors to hear information that lets them make politically conscious decisions.

The Palestinian rights movement has made boycotts a central pillar of its activism, but the actual choice of targets has often been sloppy and incoherent. Activists have gone after Coca-Cola and Pepsi as vague symbols of America and Starbucks over a union dispute that tangentially involved Palestinian symbolism. The infamous protests at Columbia University focused on cutting
indirect ties to weapons companies.

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Trump orders Israel to stop Gaza strikes after Hamas agrees to release Israeli hostages

President Donald Trump on Friday ordered Israel to stop bombing the Gaza Strip after Hamas said it accepted some elements of the president’s plan to end the nearly two-year war and return all remaining hostages who were taken during the deadly attack.

Based on the Statement just issued by Hamas, I believe they are ready for a lasting PEACE,” Trump said. “Israel must immediately stop the bombing of Gaza, so that we can get the Hostages out safely and quickly … this is about long sought PEACE in the Middle East.”

In a video Trump later posted on social media, he thanked multiple countries that helped him achieve the deal, including Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan, among others.

So many people fought so hard,” he said in the footage. “This is a big day. We’ll see how it all turns out. We have to get the final word down and concrete. Very importantly, I look forward to having the hostages come home to their parents and having some of the hostages, unfortunately, you know the condition they’re in, come home likewise to their parents because their parents wanted them just as much as though that young man or young woman were alive.”

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Plot to disrupt New York cell service larger than initially thought: Federal agents

A foiled plot to cripple the telecommunications system in New York was bigger than investigators first realized. Special Agent in Charge of the New York Field Office, Matt McCool, released a video in late September, sharing that federal agents were first tipped off about what the Secret Service says was a China-linked plot last spring.

But it was only recently uncovered during an investigation into threats to three people, including one with direct access to President Donald Trump.

The U.S. Secret Service began a protective intelligence investigation to determine the extent and impact these threats could have on protective operations,” McCool said in that September video posted on the U.S. Secret Service’s YouTube page.

Secret Service personnel, along with officers from multiple agencies, seized hundreds of servers and over 100,000 cellphone SIM cards from around New York. Enough equipment to send 30 million anonymous texts every minute, which would collapse the telecommunications system.

They found empty apartments with servers and server walls capable of making millions of phone calls in and around New York City,” said Donald Mihalek, an ABC News Contributor who was formerly with the Secret Service.

But this week, that number expanded. Law enforcement sources told ABC News that agents from Homeland Security Investigations found an additional 200,000 SIM cards in New Jersey.

These devices allowed anonymous encrypted communications between potential threat and criminal enterprises,” said McCool.

The U.S. Secret Service is still working to figure out a motive and whether or not there was a specific target. It’s also still not clear if the equipment was supposed to be triggered during the United Nations General Assembly, which took place in New York during the last full week of September.

So far, no arrests have been made but McCool did mention that forensic examination is underway. He also indicated there was cellular communication between foreign actors and individuals known to law enforcement.

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