Tag: perpetual war

Ukraine Asks Lockheed For Patriot Production Licenses While Its Inner Circle Faces Corruption Charges

Ukraine has asked Lockheed Martin to let it manufacture America’s most advanced air defense interceptor, the Patriot missile, on Ukrainian soil. At a meeting in Kyiv on October 19, Volodymyr Zelensky described to Orlando Sanchez Jr., President of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, a request to ‘jointly produce’ the interceptor under ‘production licenses’, and said Ukraine hopes to buy some ballistic-missile interceptors outright. He also requested that F-16s be repaired in Ukraine. Sanchez said Lockheed is ready to deepen cooperation.

As of now, the meeting hasn’t produced any figures (quantities and/or dollar values) or timeframes, which is the only reason this story is not bigger. Transferring the missile technology of America’s most advanced air defenses to a government that is currently struggling to contain its own corruption scandals is the ask on the table.

The corruption unearthed by Ukraine’s anti-corruption bureau NABU in its Operation Midas investigation is a matter of public record. NABU says the outfit ran as a massive criminal organization, taking kickbacks of 10% to 15% from contractors to the state nuclear operator Energoatom, and laundering roughly $100 million. The alleged organizer of the gang was Timur Mindich, a long-time business associate of President Zelensky’s from their days at Kvartal 95 studio. Andriy Yermak, then head of the President’s Office, who stepped down on the day investigators searched his apartment in November 2025, was charged with large-scale money laundering in May 2026. He has been denying any wrongdoing on his part. The same case also led to charges against a former energy minister.

This would be a massive transfer of highly protected technology to a government whose inner circle stands accused of skimming wartime funds. American taxpayers have been underwriting this war. Nobody serious is asking whether corruption reaches Kyiv’s top offices. The question is whether Washington wants to hand this same system the blueprints to some of the most guarded and protected technology that Raytheon and Lockheed Martin have to offer.

Ukraine has also reopened its arms exports. Reuters reported in February that Kyiv was opening up wartime technology sales to raise cash, and Zelensky has framed the policy as “controlled” sales of surplus production. Recent defense cooperation agreements have been signed by Ukrainian officials with countries of the Gulf. A country that is shopping its military industry abroad for cash while still at war is unlikely to keep licensed Patriot production in a locked safe once it has the technology. The next buyer would be whoever pays most.

It is after all the Pentagon’s own Inspector General who highlighted serious problems with the US DoD’s attempt to track more than $1 billion in high-risk defense equipment, including Javelin and Stinger missiles, sent to Ukraine over the past years. If Washington struggled to track shoulder-fired weapons, it should not be exporting the manufacturing know-how for Patriot interceptors.

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Florida Issues NO-BOND ARREST WARRANT for Communist Dictator Raúl Castro, 95, on First-Degree Murder Conspiracy Charge Over Killing of Four Americans

Florida is coming after communist Cuban dictator Raúl Castro, and this time, the 95-year-old brother of Fidel Castro is facing a state arrest warrant in connection with the deaths of four men nearly three decades ago.

A Miami-Dade County judge has issued a NO-BOND arrest warrant for Castro on a state charge of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, stemming from the February 24, 1996, shootdown of two unarmed civilian aircraft operated by the Miami-based humanitarian organization Brothers to the Rescue.

The warrant was signed Friday, October 16, following an investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. It comes as Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier intensifies efforts to hold the former Cuban leader accountable for the deadly attack.

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Putin Proposes Summit With Trump And Xi To Negotiate End Of Ukraine War; Zelensky Not Invited

Amid an escalating war that appears to get farther from any hope of a ceasefire, let alone peace, late on Sunday the WSJ reported that Vladimir Putin has proposed that he, President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping meet next month to talk about Ukraine in an attempt to negotiate an end to the four-year conflict that would favor Moscow.

Citing people familiar with the discussions, the WSJ notes that the plan represents an effort by Putin to capitalize on warming ties between Trump and the Russian leader that have alarmed Ukraine and its allies in Washington and Europe. Such a summit – one notably without the involvement of Zelensky who appears to have terminally alienated Trump in recent days – would be “unprecedented and send alarm bells ringing in European capitals and beyond.”

According to a former Russian intelligence officer briefed on the matter, Putin floated the idea in an Oct. 9 phone call with Trump. That conversation also produced a deal for the U.S. to buy Russian diesel fuel and facilitate its sale on the global market. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that discussions were taking place over a potential meeting.

“There is no clear understanding yet regarding the meeting itself or its potential agenda, although all three parties acknowledge the hypothetical possibility of such a meeting taking place,” he told The Wall Street Journal.

A senior US official said that while Trump hadn’t agreed to such a summit, he said that the president could be receptive to the idea, given his desire to fulfill a campaign promise to settle the war. Trump had said it would be finished on “day one” of his new term, but he is now approaching nearly two years in office.

The Kremlin has suggested holding the trilateral dialogue on the sidelines of the coming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, the people familiar with discussions said. That gathering takes place on Nov. 18 and 19 in Shenzhen, the southern Chinese tech hub.

A potential three-way dialogue on Chinese soil would mark a big step for Xi in his efforts to elevate China’s role as a diplomatic power broker, said analysts who study China. Russian officials proposed the idea to Beijing through diplomatic channels and the Chinese side has indicated it wouldn’t object if Trump is on board.

“China wants to be seen as the pivot of the great powers, and potentially as a mediator between the U.S. and Russia,” said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, a Washington think tank.

While Putin had unsuccessfully proposed a trilateral summit to both Trump and Xi on previous occasions, this time, however, it comes during a reversal of Moscow’s fortunes with Washington.

Trump just notched a deal with Putin to get Russian diesel in a bid to lower fuel prices that have slowed the American economy and hurt Republican prospects ahead of the midterm elections. On Friday, Trump halted implementation of sanctions that were to be imposed on Russia under a bipartisan bill he signed last month, drawing criticism from lawmakers, including some of his allies.

The senior White House official said Trump made the decisions after seeing few other good options to lower prices.

At a time when Diesel prices are soaring, in part due to limited Russian exports amid a constant drone campaign waged by Ukraine against its refineries, Trump has shown renewed frustration with Zelensky, saying the Ukrainian leader must stop strikes on Russian refineries and suggesting that the country needs a new president. U.S.-led efforts to broker an end to the war, meanwhile, have been largely stalled.

In a post on Truth Social on Sunday, Trump took aim at Zelensky, following Ukraine’s strike on an oil terminal in Putin’s hometown of St. Petersburg earlier in the day. He accused the Ukrainian leader of targeting Russian diesel refineries and said he “doesn’t want to end this war, and probably never did.” The president said he was holding off on imposing sanctions because he didn’t want to drive Russia away from the bargaining table. “I WANT THIS WAR END!” he wrote.

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China urges Israel to rethink its policies

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has urged Israel to halt and reverse the establishment of settlements in the occupied West Bank, describing the Palestinian issue as the “greatest historical injustice of this century,” according to a ⁠statement released by Beijing following his meeting with Israeli President Isaac Herzog.

The two officials met on Thursday on the sidelines of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) summit in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Wang said achieving peace and reconciliation in the Middle East remained a cornerstone of Chinese foreign policy, stressing that a two-state solution was the only viable path toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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Army Chief Warns Britons Must Make Sacrifices For Coming War

General Sir Roly Walker, Chief of the Army General Staff in the UK, has declared that Britons will be required to make sacrifices for their country in a coming war.

He addressed around 700 soldiers at Catterick Garrison and laid out the coming reality in plain terms. “You didn’t know this, but our nation is going to need you,” he said. “There was a time that our nation didn’t want to think of a time when it would need its soldiers to fight in a war. Indeed, very soon, the political leaders of this country will start to have a frank conversation with the citizens of this country about just what is going on and where the risk lies.”

He continued that citizens “have got to consent to sacrifices to prioritise defence and security” and that they will be asked “to play a part in the defence and security of this country.” Ultimately, he said, the public must “back us, to back you to do the one thing that you do that nobody else gets to do and that is to take the fight to the enemy.”

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Hegseth travels to University of Tenn. for ‘Send Me Tour,’ touts ‘peace through strength’

As part of his nationwide “Send Me Tour,” United States Secretary of War Pete Hegseth traveled to Knoxville, Tennessee, where he addressed Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) cadets and administered the oath of enlistment to new recruits ahead of the Tennessee-Alabama football game.

The “Send Me Tour” is a national military outreach and enlistment initiative launched by U.S. defense officials to engage with prospective enlistees, speak to military cadets and administer oaths of enlistment to new service members, according to the U.S. Department of War.

Addressing audience members at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville on Saturday, Hegseth spoke to both new enlistees and cadets from ROTC before a football game between the Tennessee Volunteers and the Alabama Crimson Tide.

The war secretary also administered the oath of enlistment to young men and women joining all military service branches and the Tennessee National Guard.

“For 251 years, Americans raised their right hand and said, ‘send me;’ send me to fight the redcoats, send me to fight the Nazis, send me to fight the communists, send me to fight the Islamists,” he said. “And now, you’ve said, ‘send me’ to defend [your] nation, to fight against whatever threatens our shores, our interests and our people.”

Hegseth said those stepping up to serve are true peacemakers who preserve “peace through strength” and ensure the safety of the American homeland.

“If there’s one entity that should win the Nobel Peace Prize every single year, it actually should be the United States military,” he said. “Peace through strength: the reason our people live free, the reason we get to play football games like this one today, are because we are stronger than any other nation in the world.”

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The Biggest Winners And Losers From The Petrodollar’s Decline

The Iran war is straining US weapons stockpiles and raising doubts about Washington’s ability to protect the Persian Gulf.

If that weakens the petrodollar and pushes oil producers away from the US financial system, two assets face clear headwinds: the US dollar and US Treasuries.

The petrodollar system helped create structural demand for both.

If oil exporters sell more energy outside the dollar system, fewer oil dollars need to flow back through Wall Street and into Treasury securities.

At the same time, the US government needs to borrow staggering sums to finance its deficits, military commitments, entitlement programs, and interest expense.

That means rising supply of Treasuries could collide with weakening structural demand.

Watch the 10-year Treasury yield.

The 10-year Treasury yield is perhaps the most important financial benchmark in the global fiat system, as it drives valuations and market trends worldwide. It is widely – and erroneously – regarded as the risk-free rate of return.

The 10-year Treasury yield can be thought of as a key barometer of the US dollar-based fiat system – a critical measure akin to its beating heart.

Bond yields move inversely to bond prices. When bond prices fall, bond yields rise.

A rising 10-year Treasury yield signals trouble for the US dollar because it means investors are selling Treasuries, which pushes up the US government’s borrowing costs. That is why the 10-year Treasury yield is a major pain point for the US government.

The 10-year Treasury yield was 3.97% in late February 2026. Now it is around 5.26%, an increase of roughly 129 basis points. 129 bps might not seem like much, but with over $40 trillion in debt and growing, every basis point matters.

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Trump’s Threats to Annihilate Iran

Of all of the things that Donald Trump has said publicly since returning to the White House, his threats to annihilate Iran are arguably the worst. This is not only because the repeated statements are deeply immoral and illegal – deliberate killing of civilians is a war crime – but because they represent the kind of irresponsible rhetoric that will lead us into a global apocalypse and collapse of not just the Persian nation but human civilization as a whole. It is not possible to excuse, justify, or condone this kind of rhetoric. The only question is what to do about it.

As much as some well-meaning people might want to see nuclear weapons as instruments that ended World War II and have kept the peace ever since, the exact opposite has actually been true. Nuclear weapons brutally murdered a couple of hundred thousand civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and injured and sentenced to years and decades of illness and suffering many hundreds of thousands more. As we have written before, multiple alternatives existed to end the war in 1945. In many ways, the false narrative of the atomic bombings averting an invasion and saving lives has enabled the perpetuation of nuclear weapons, bringing the risks to humanity’s survival to levels previously unimaginable. Turning a brutally violent beginning of the nuclear age into something positive has managed to complicate and obfuscate an issue that should never have been complicated. Nuclear weapons are and have always been immoral. Their possession should be illegal.

Although the end of World War II coincided with the advent of nuclear weapons, and we have technically not fought another world war since, this is merely a correlation. Other significant changes in our world, including the founding of the United Nations, technological and scientific progress, and globalized trade, took place over that same time period. In addition, one has to wonder, whose peace we are talking about. Since 1945, over 20 million people have died in armed conflicts around the world, with up to 50 million more indirect deaths stemming from those conflicts. Today, there are nearly 100 armed conflicts across the planet according to the Geneva Academy, and 25 international armed conflicts involving more than one nation state.

All along, in addition to the deaths and suffering in war zones across the planet and the horrific toll exacted by poverty and inequality, humanity has been waiting almost helplessly for another nuclear weapon to explode by accident, miscalculation, or intention, likely triggering a full-blown nuclear war in which tens or even thousands of nuclear weapons are used. The past eight decades have witnessed numerous incidents in which human wisdom and decency or just plain luck interrupted a course of events that seemed inexorably leading to nuclear war. Nuclear weapons have not brought the peace. Quite the opposite  –  they threaten what little of it we have each and every day.

And yet, for all of his threats on Truth Social and most recently in the halls of the United Nations, Trump has also stated that nuclear weapons “could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over,” calling for “denuclearization.” In fact, two days after his unacceptable statement to “drive [Iran] into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness” at the UN General Assembly in September, Trump suggested to President Xi in DC that there be a nuclear summit between China, Russia, and the United States.

Trump did so knowing full well that Xi’s government’s participation in arms control negotiations is contingent upon China achieving rough parity with the nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia. This should be pursued not by China continuing to expand its arsenal to the gargantuan size of the U.S. and Russian arsenals, but by the U.S. and Russia reducing theirs to the size of China’s, and adopting China’s demand for an across-the-board no-first-use policy.

Since his latest threat, delivered in the world’s premier diplomatic space unlike his earlier Truth Social rants, including the one on April 7 that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” Trump actually seemed to welcome Iranian destruction of Los Angeles and San Diego at an election rally. Even if he now unconvincingly claims that the original clips, which suggested that such destruction was a small price to pay, were taken out of context and the small price to pay was about the price of gas, it is not reassuring to have the US President talking about nuclear bombs exploding over American cities. Never mind that Iran neither has the nuclear weapons nor the ability to send missiles toward US soil. Nuclear Armageddon seems to be on Trump’s mind.

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South Korea’s Hedging Strategy

Republic of Korea (ROK) leaders are having to navigate an increasingly challenging policy course to avoid having their country become entangled in an array of dangerous security problems, both in East Asia and elsewhere in the international system.

The most recent example involved Seoul’s actions in Ukraine.  In late September 2026, the Kiev regime transferred two North Korean prisoners of war, who had been fighting with Russian forces, to South Korea.  That move was highly confidential, lest it put the ROK government in a highly compromising position.  Disclosure of the information could not only cause a rift in Seoul’s delicate relations with Moscow, but could also create a dangerous confrontation between the two rival Korean states.

Instead of maintaining the required discretion and confidentiality, however, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky announced the transfer to the world during a speech before the United Nations General Assembly. Zelensky also sharply criticized North Korea and its leader, Kim Jong-un, for deploying troops on Russia’s behalf. South Korean media then reported that the two captured soldiers had expressed their desire to defect to the ROK. Tensions between North and South Korea promptly spiked.

So did the anger of the ROK administration toward Zelensky.  South Korean President Lee Jae Myung immediately accused Ukraine of violating a nondisclosure agreement between Seoul and Kiev about the transfer. Ukraine flatly denied making such a deal.  The ROK’s risks of being drawn into the maelstrom of the Russia-Ukraine war seemed to rise.

Seoul already was resisting pressure from Kiev to sell sophisticated weapons to Ukraine. Zelensky’s government has asked the ROK on several occasions, most recently in early August 2026, to send air defense missiles and other crucial systems. Seoul has repeatedly declined those requests.  Zelensky’s clumsy conduct regarding the North Korean prisoners of war episode is not likely to enhance Kiev’s prospects going forward.

Yet NATO members, including the United States, have long been pressing the ROK to approve such arms sales.  Indeed, Seoul has faced such calls since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.  It has not been easy for ROK leaders to resist that pressure, but they have done so to this point.

Lee’s stance on the Ukraine arms sale issue is consistent with his government’s overall policy to try to reduce tensions with North Korea.  He has even gone beyond endorsing President Trump’s willingness to hold a summit meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un before the end of 2026.  In a major speech in late September, Lee called on the United States to ease its onerous, longstanding economic sanctions against Pyongyang, and to accept a freeze on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program rather than continue Washington’s hoary insistence on the abolition of that program.

South Korea is making a concerted effort to avoid becoming entangled in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, to promote a possible rapprochement between Washington and Pyongyang, and to ease the ROK’s own tensions with North Korea.  Lee and his advisers are also attempting to steer a middle course with respect to the mounting animosity between Japan and the People’s Republic of China.  Both Beijing and Tokyo seek Seoul’s backing regarding a number of disputes.  One emotional spat is the territorial dispute between Japan and the PRC over control of the Senkaku (Diaoyu) islands, which has led to several provocative deployments of maritime vessels in the past year.

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Zelensky Warns That 20 Million Ukrainians Would Pour Into EU If Russia Wins

Is that a threat?

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told EU leaders on Friday that if his country loses the war to Russia, as many as 20 million Ukrainians could be forced to flee to Europe.

Such numbers would make the 2015 European migrant crisis look like a walk in the park.

“Russia is killing us,” Zelensky said while speaking at a summit of European Union leaders. “They [Russia] don’t want to stop” and Ukrainian are being pushed out of their homeland, he said.

“What will happen if we fall? I don’t know, 20 million Ukrainians will come to Europe,” Zelensky declared.

Earlier this week, Zelensky indicated he felt ‘betrayed’ by President Trump as relations with Washington spiral, particularly over the diesel deal with Putin and White House pressure for Ukraine to stop hitting Russian oil refineries.

Trump has also late this week in a Newsmax interview said that Ukraine should hold a new national election, and added provocatively that that even Putin is easier to deal with than Zelensky.

Indicators inside Ukraine show support for Zelensky’s war policy is slipping…

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