Tag: perpetual war

The US Has Given Ukraine The Most Aid To Date

To date, the United States has been the biggest supporter of Ukraine in terms of aid, according to data from the Ukraine Support Tracker compiled by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).

EU institutions (including the European Commission and the Council), followed by Germany and the United Kingdom have been the next biggest contributors.

As Statista’s Anna Fleck shows in the following chart, financial assistance (such as loans and grants), humanitarian aid (like food and medical supplies), and the value of weapons and equipment delivered is enormous.

This included in-kind donations to the Ukrainian military and financial support tied to military purposes.

When looking solely at military aid, including weapons and defense-related financial support, Germany ranks second, contributing an estimated €16.5 billion.

The United States remains the largest military backer, however, having delivered weapons and military funds totaling approximately €115 billion between January 24, 2022 and June 30, 2025.

In early March 2025, U.S. military aid was briefly paused, but resumed on March 11 after Ukraine signaled openness to a potential ceasefire.

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Israel Plans to Move Hundreds of Thousands of Palestinians from Gaza: Report

Israel is considering a plan that would relocate Gaza residents to South Sudan, according to a new report.

The report from the Associated Press, which is based on unnamed sources, indicates that the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is eager to build upon a concept voiced in February by President Donald Trump to shift much of the Palestinian population of Gaza elsewhere.

The concept of depopulating Gaza has been condemned by Palestinian leaders. Egypt dislikes the idea, fearing it could lead to a refugee influx along the border it shares with Gaza. Israel has discussed the idea with other nations, but nothing has moved beyond the talking stage.

However, Joe Szlavik, the founder of a lobbying firm, said South Sudan officials have spoken to him about the concept, and said an Israeli delegation is expected to visit South Sudan at an unknown date.

Szlavik said the costs of the relocation would be borne by Israel.

Without mentioning any specific nation, Netanyahu said he supports relocating Gaza’s Palestinians.

“I think that the right thing to do, even according to the laws of war as I know them, is to allow the population to leave, and then you go in with all your might against the enemy who remains there,” Netanyahu said, according to the Associated Press.

“Give them the opportunity to leave! First, from combat zones, and also from the Strip if they want. We will allow this, first of all inside Gaza during the fighting, and we will also allow them to leave Gaza. We are not pushing them out but allowing them to leave,” he said.

“President Trump has long advocated for creative solutions to improve the lives of Palestinians, including allowing them to resettle in a new, beautiful location while Gaza rebuilds,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said, according to The Wall Street Journal.

She noted that until Hamas allows peace to return to Gaza, no plan can take place.

“However, Hamas must first agree to disarm and end this war, and we have no additional details to provide at this time,” she said.

Some Israeli officials have long backed relocating Gaza’s population.

“Encourage migration! Encourage migration! Encourage migration!” National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has said.

“Honestly, this is the most moral and correct solution. Not forcibly, but tell them: We are giving you the option to leave to different countries. The land of Israel is ours.”

Forcible displacement is banned by Geneva Convention.

For Gaza residents who want to leave, there is uncertainty over what comes next.

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Putin Proposes, in Return for the Control of the Donbas Region, to Freeze the Frontlines in Ukraine’s Southern Kherson and Zaporozhie, No More Russian Territorial Conquests: REPORT

Russia is reportedly easing their territorial demands for peace.

In the few hours since the historic Alaska meeting between Donald J. Trump and Vladimir Putin, myriads of articles have been written in the MSM, mostly trying to discredit the US-Russia peace negotiations, as well as planting false information about what happened behind the scenes.

However, some reports have arisen that bear all the markings of actual intel, suggesting that Putin is asking for a little less for peace than a year ago.

I first found this suggestion five days ago in the Italian Corriere Della Sera, which interviewed Russian scholar Dmitry Suslov, deputy director at the Higher School of Economics and a long-time foreign policy adviser to the Kremlin.

“I remember that a year ago Moscow had asked the Ukrainians for the complete withdrawal from all four annexed provinces, while now it is only asking for that from the Donbas. A crucial part of the agreement is Ukraine’s commitment not to join NATO.”

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Israeli unit tasked with smearing Gaza journalists as Hamas fighters – report

A special unit in Israel’s military was tasked with identifying reporters it could smear as undercover Hamas fighters, to target them and to blunt international outrage over the killing of media workers, the Israeli-Palestinian outlet +972 Magazine reports.

The “legitimisation cell” was set up after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack to gather information that could bolster Israel’s image and shore up diplomatic and military support from key allies, the report said, citing three intelligence sources.

According to the report, in at least one case the unit misrepresented information in order to falsely describe a journalist as a militant, a designation that in Gaza is in effect a death sentence. The label was reversed before the man was attacked, one of the sources said.

Earlier this week, Israel killed the Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif and three colleagues in their makeshift newsroom, after claiming Sharif was a Hamas commander. The killings focused global attention on the extreme dangers faced by Palestinian journalists in Gaza and Israel’s efforts to manipulate media coverage of the war.

Foreign reporters have been barred from entering Gaza apart from a few brief and tightly controlled trips with the Israeli military, who impose restrictions including a ban on speaking to Palestinians.

Palestinian journalists reporting from the ground are the most at risk in the world, with more than 180 killed by Israeli attacks in less than two years, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Israel carried out 26 targeted killings of journalists in that period, the CPJ said, describing them as murders.

Israel has produced an unconvincing dossier of unverified evidence on Sharif’s purported Hamas links, and failed to address how he would have juggled a military command role with regular broadcast duties in one of the most heavily surveilled places on Earth. Israel did not attempt to justify killing his three colleagues.

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Pentagon effectively confirms ‘Golden Dome’ will breach Outer Space Treaty

On January 27, US President Donald Trump announced that the construction of the “state-of-the-art ‘Iron Dome’ missile defense shield” will begin “immediately” and will be made “right here in the USA 100%”. Since then, apart from a name change to avoid confusion with a homonymous Israeli system, there’s been little concrete information on the project. However, last week, the Pentagon presented more details about the upcoming “Golden Dome”, revealing that it will be a four-layer missile defense system and that it will also include a space-based component (the other three are ground-based, including eleven short-range batteries planned for deployment in the continental US, Alaska and Hawaii). Reuters cited a presentation of the project, titled “Go Fast, Think Big!”, shown in Huntsville, Alabama, last week to around 3,000 representatives of the American Military Industrial Complex (MIC).

The revelation didn’t really show much more than what was already known about the US strategic missile defenses. The slides revealed there would be early warning satellites for detecting missile launches, tracking and “boost-phase interception”. The “upper layer” would be composed of the Next Generation Interceptors (NGI), Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and “Aegis” systems, with a new missile field “likely in the Midwest”. This would be followed by the “under layer” composed of “Patriot” systems, new radars and a “common launcher for current and future interceptors”. The space-based “boost-phase interception” capability is particularly curious. Although the slides didn’t really reveal how this would be accomplished, common sense implies that this is either deliberate disinformation (like the SDI was) or the Pentagon is actively pursuing space-based weapons.

Reuters noted that “one surprise was a new large missile field – seemingly in the Midwest according to a map contained in the presentation – for Next Generation Interceptors (NGI) which are made by Lockheed Martin” and “would be a part of the ‘upper layer’ alongside Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and ‘Aegis’ systems which Lockheed also makes”. The NGI is supposed to be the next iteration of GBI (Ground-Based Interceptors), which is part of the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD). This system is a nationwide network of radars, interceptors and other assets that the US planned for decades, even unilaterally withdrawing from the 1972 ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) Treaty back in 2002, so it could pursue the project. This arms control agreement served to prevent the US and USSR/Russia from being incentivized to endlessly enlarge their thermonuclear arsenals by limiting the number of deployed ABM systems.

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On Ukraine war, Euro leaders begin to make concessions — to reality

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky huddled with European leaders yesterday in advance of Donald Trump’s highly touted meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska. The call, which Trump joined as well, was viewed as Europe and Ukraine’s final chance to influence the American president’s thinking ahead of the U.S.-Russia summit in Anchorage.

With Ukraine’s position on the battlefield progressively worsening and Trump renewing his push for a ceasefire, European leaders have begun to make concessions to reality. Most strikingly, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said yesterday that the frontline should be the starting point for territorial negotiations, echoing NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte’s recent comment that there may be a need for de facto recognition of Russian occupation of Ukrainian land.

Moreover, in response to Putin’s proposal last week to agree to a ceasefire in exchange for Ukraine’s withdrawal from the rest of Donetsk region, Europe and Ukraine have insisted that any land swaps must be reciprocal. While European leaders remain firm that the norm of territorial integrity must be upheld in principle, these moves clearly embody a shift from the more uncompromising stance they embraced through the first three years of the war.

That said, some aspects of Europe’s stance remain delusional.

Prior to their meeting with Trump yesterday, Ukraine and its European partners agreed on a series of principles for negotiations with Russia. Among these remains the long outdated notion that Russia cannot have a veto over Ukraine’s NATO accession, even though the Trump administration has already ruled this prospect out. Even Trump’s much more transatlantically friendly predecessor Joe Biden was not prepared to take any tangible steps to make Ukrainian membership in NATO a reality.

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Feds concealed names of Nazi collaborators over hurt feelings, Russia-Ukraine war

Federal agencies hid names of Nazi collaborators who entered postwar Canada, fearing disclosure “might cause them harm,” a B’nai Brith Canada executive stated. The group seeks to overturn secrecy orders on old files, according to Blacklock’s.

“We’re talking about records from the 1940s and ‘50s about individuals who have long since been dead,” said Richard Robertson, director of research for B’nai Brith. “One of the exemptions that is continuously being used against us is [that] it might cause them harm if we release this information.”

Ottawa withheld names of Nazi collaborators despite pleas from Conservatives, New Democrats, and Canada’s Jewish diaspora since the 1980s, claiming it would aid Russia’s war in Ukraine.

B’nai Brith claims archivists illegally withheld Nazi blacklists under the Access To Information Act, seeking sealed documents from a 1986 war crimes inquiry. “We’ve been fighting this battle for quite some time.” 

The Jewish group accuses Library and Archives Canada of unlawfully withholding information for decades. They seek full disclosure of communications with foreign states concerning a blacklist of 98 known Nazi Party members and 738 German POW laborers who immigrated to Canada in 1946.

To date, disclosures only include a February 1, 2024 summary of confidential records about the arrival of suspected war criminals, according to Nazi War Criminals. It found that Nazi collaborators entered Canada with inadequate background checks. 

Director Robertson questioned the ongoing concern for potentially offending a deceased former Nazi, asking, “At what point do we stop caring about the impact this might have on a person who’s been deceased for several decades?”

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The intelligence community – our protector or the perpetrator?

There is a peculiar alchemy in the world of intelligence work. Spend long enough marinating in the culture of suspicion, and reality itself warps. Every handshake is a coded exchange, every silence conceals a plot, and every stranger is a potential assassin in disguise. In this worldview, the universe is an endless chessboard of threat and counter-threat — and the only sane response is to move first, hit harder, and never, ever let the other side see you blink. It is a mindset that breeds not guardians, but paranoiacs with security clearances; not peacekeepers, but professional arsonists armed with plausible deniability.

The public is told these agencies are our shield — the last line between us and anarchy. We are sold an endless parade of threats, each requiring more secrecy, more surveillance, and more latitude for shadowy actors to do “what must be done”. The problem is that the line between protector and perpetrator has long since dissolved. The very institutions that claim to keep us safe are often the ones creating the dangers they then heroically “save” us from.

Domestically, their aim is less about defending liberty than managing the population. The FBI’s COINTELPRO operation wasn’t dismantling terror cells; it was dismantling dissent. Civil rights leaders, anti-war activists, and union organisers were wiretapped, infiltrated, and in some cases blackmailed into silence. Martin Luther King Jr, whose crime was speaking too effectively against injustice, was subjected to surveillance so obsessive it bordered on psychosis. Across the Atlantic, Britain’s Special Demonstration Squad embedded officers into protest groups for decades, with some maintaining romantic relationships under false identities. When the truth emerged, it was less James Bond and more EastEnders meets Kafka.

The same tactics persist in modern form. Peaceful protests find themselves salted with plainclothes agents who mysteriously seem to be the first to throw a brick, conveniently inviting a police crackdown. Whatever did happen to Ray Epps? In Canada’s 2022 trucker protests, there was no need for water cannons — the financial system itself became the weapon, freezing bank accounts and cutting people off from their own money for the crime of political disobedience.

If their behaviour at home corrodes democracy, their conduct abroad burns entire nations to the ground. The CIA and MI6’s fingerprints can be found in coups and covert operations from Tehran to Tegucigalpa. In 1953, Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh was overthrown not for tyranny, but for the heresy of nationalising oil. In 1954, Guatemala’s Jacobo Árbenz met the same fate after challenging the stranglehold of United Fruit. Chile’s Salvador Allende was replaced in 1973 by Pinochet—a dictator whose “economic miracle” was fertilised with blood and electrocution.

The pattern is too consistent to be coincidence. In the 1980s, the CIA armed Afghan mujahideen in their jihad against the Soviets, among them a young Osama bin Laden. A generation later, the United States would spend trillions allegedly fighting the monster it had helped to train. And in 2003, a dodgy dossier on Iraq’s mythical weapons of mass destruction became the casus belli for an invasion that killed hundreds of thousands, destabilised the region, and paved the way for ISIS.

The 21st century has not brought restraint. The 2014 Maidan uprising in Ukraine was no spontaneous people’s revolt; leaked phone calls revealed U.S. officials selecting preferred leadership like items from a takeaway menu. Ukraine is now the front line in a NATO–Russia proxy war, its cities shelled and its young men fed into the grinder of geopolitics. In 2022, the Nord Stream pipelines were blown apart — a surgical strike on Germany’s energy supply. Officially, no one knows who did it. Unofficially, the silence from Washington speaks volumes.

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Trump Said It: “There’s No Better Word Than Stupid.”

For anyone who still thinks Donald Trump does not represent the interests of what is called “the deep state” but is actually the shallow or official US state, it is time to think again. If he is not a figurehead for those alleged hidden forces, then he will agree to a Russia-Ukraine settlement on Russia’s fundamental terms – that is, a mutual security agreement that stipulates the pulling back of US/NATO forces encircling Russia, etc. – when he meets with Putin in Alaska today.

There will be no further delay.

This, however, is extremely unlikely. Trump knows little but bullying and the use of the English language as a hammer. “I’m very highly educated,” he has said, without a scintilla of irony, “I know words, I know the best words. But there’s no better word than stupid.”

On the latter assertion he is right: there is no better word than stupid when it’s applied correctly.

During his campaign for the presidency, Trump used words more than fifty times to say that he would end the war in Ukraine “within twenty-four hours” of assuming the presidency. He could have accomplished this on day one by issuing an executive order (beside all he did issue), stopping all military aide to Ukraine, but he didn’t. Seven months of game-playing have elapsed and the war goes on with Trump’s backing laced with doubletalk about how he is seeking peace in Ukraine, is a man of peace, is bringing all American troops back home, and of course he gave a grateful ah-shucks when his brother-in-genocide, Benjamin Netanyahu, showed him a letter nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize.

He fully supports the destabilization of Russia, overtly or covertly, as have his predecessors, and this in incompatible with any deal Russia can agree to when he meets with Putin in Alaska.

This past weekend, and starting up again late Tuesday in the more conservative corporate media, August 12th as I write, CNN, The NY Times, and the Washington Post, three prominent establishment media (organs of propaganda) published their usual reminders to all presidents that they are watching:

CNN: “Trump-Putin summit in Alaska resembles a slow defeat for Ukraine”

The New Tork Times: “After Almost Losing Trump, Putin Gets His Ideal Summit”

Max Boot op ed, the Washington Post: “Putin is setting up Trump for another Munich”

For these media know that the Russians are coming still, as they have been for nearly a century, so don’t swim too far out into the Atlantic or Pacific, for they are waiting with Jaws to seize you. They are red and ravenous and have huge teeth.

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