Tag: perpetual war

Ukraine & Europe Reject Trump’s Russia Peace Plan, Prepare Emergency Call

By all estimates, this is the first ever US-proposed peace plan which actually demands major concessions from Ukraine, but it also seeks to provide assurances for Kiev’s future protection modelled on NATO article five, according to Axios.

Among President Zelensky’s top objectives has long been to obtain a robust US and European security guarantee, and this new 28-point plan appears to give just that:

President Trump’s peace plan for Ukraine includes a security guarantee modeled on NATO’s Article 5, which would commit the U.S. and European allies to treat an attack on Ukraine as an attack on the entire “transatlantic community,” – writes Axios.

Such a pledge could be recipe for future war, however, and that’s precisely how Moscow might see it, especially if other pressing issues of territory or military NATOization on Russia’s doorstep aren’t resolved. The security guarantee would be for up to a decade and could be renewed, according to the draft.

There are also reports that the US is already advancing a very ambitious timeline – that it wants to see the plan signed by Thanksgiving, or as soon as next week.

There are even lines for signatures on the document, indicating places for Ukraine, Russia the US, and even NATO and the EU. It’s unclear just which representatives would sign from each country or bloc, and its as yet unclear whether Putin himself must sign.

A senior Kremlin official cited in Axios said he was “optimistic” about the plan’s prospects, arguing that it aligns more closely with Moscow’s views than previous diplomatic efforts. This is especially as a large portion of the Donbas will be recognized as under Russia’s control, and the size and capability of the Ukrainian army will be scaled back, which a commitment to no foreign troops on Ukrainian soil as well.

And yet, as predicted by many, Ukraine and its European backers stand ready to rejected the plan – though it’s still only in its draft form and hasn’t been seriously negotiated over by the warring sides. Newsweek reports:

European leaders are preparing an emergency call to discuss U.S. President Donald Trump’s controversial proposal to end the war in Ukraine.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz cancelled a scheduled appearance to join the discussion, which will also include Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, and French President Emmanuel Macron.

The 28‑point plan caught European capitals off guard. Leaders were not directly involved in the U.S. effort and learned the details only after the document was made public.

Indeed Ukraine wasn’t involved either, and the emerging complaint is that it too closely resembles earlier Russian talking points and proposals for ending the war.

EU High Representative Kaja Kallas said Thursday, “We have always supported a lasting and just peace, and we welcome any efforts to achieve it, but for any plan to work, Ukrainians and Europeans are needed.”

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US pushes Ukraine to sign peace deal by Thanksgiving — or lose intel, weapons access: report

The Trump administration is insisting that Ukraine’s government agree by the Thanksgiving holiday to a much-criticized plan to end Russia’s invasion — or it will cut off intelligence sharing and shipments of weapons to the beleaguered European nation, according to a new report.

The 28-point plan, details of which were reported by The Post on Thursday, was presented to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky by Army Secretary Dan Driscoll.

Reuters reported Friday that Kyiv has come under greater pressure from Washington to sign on to the deal than at any point in the 33-month-old conflict.

The framework calls for US recognition of the entire eastern Donbas region — which has been under attack by Moscow for 11 years — as Russian territory, while battle lines will be frozen in two other war-torn regions, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

Most controversially, Ukraine would have to limit its armed forces to 600,000 troops, enshrine permanent neutrality by pledging never to join NATO, and codify that ban in its own charter.

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U.S. Mercenary Firm Tied to Notorious Aid Scheme Is Recruiting for New Gaza Deployment

UG Solutions, a leading U.S. military subcontractor that provided security for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), is stepping up its recruitment efforts amid possible plans for several aid distribution sites to be set up in Gaza by next month, Drop Site has learned.

A former army officer who applied for a position as an “International Humanitarian Security Officer” at UG Solutions told Drop Site that a company official told him in a job interview at the end of October that 12 to 15 sites were being planned to open in Gaza and that the company was “going to need a lot more guys.” The former army officer spoke to Drop Site on condition of anonymity, citing security concerns.

The future of Gaza is at a critical juncture following this week’s Security Council vote to approve a U.S.-sponsored resolution authorizing an international stabilization force in Gaza, which would not fall under the command of the UN, but rather a so-called Board of Peace chaired by President Donald Trump. This committee would have sweeping authority over Gaza, including overseeing reconstruction, security, economic recovery, and coordinating the distribution of humanitarian aid.

The use of private military contractors in aid distribution in Gaza first began in May with GHF opening four distribution sites in Gaza guarded by security contractors, many of whom were U.S. military veterans recruited by UG Solutions. For the four and half months that GHF operated in Gaza, more than 2,600 Palestinians seeking food were killed and over 19,000 wounded by Israeli forces or security contractors at or near aid distribution sites. The sites were dismantled after a U.S.-brokered “ceasefire” agreement went into effect in Gaza on October 10.

The UG Solutions official who conducted the phone interview, Joel Reyes, told the former officer that deployment to Gaza was expected by early to mid December with deployments lasting 90 days. The officer was told the salary would be $800 per day for a “static guard” and $1,000 per day for “mobile guard” duty, plus a $180 per diem. When asked what the job entailed, Reyes told the recruit it was “pulling security.”

In response to inquiries about whether the claims of new aid sites in Gaza with a planned deployment for December were accurate, UG Solutions senior vice president of government affairs Jennifer Counter told Drop Site in an email that “UG Solutions is preparing for a wide range of potential scenarios in Gaza, ranging from an advisory role based on our experience from January 2025 to the present day, to a robust security presence in support of humanitarian aid delivery and possible technical assistance to the International Security Force.”

There are other indications of ramped up U.S. presence being planned in Gaza. On September 25, just one day after the $30 million GHF contract officially ended, a new U.S. contract with a company called Q2IMPACT was initiated, amounting to $7 million over five years to “monitor the efficacy of humanitarian aid in Palestine and Lebanon.” Rob Jenkins, the former head of USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives, and Sean Jones, a former USAID mission manager to Egypt, are senior advisers, according to Q2’s press releases.

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‘More Horrific Than Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo’: The Unsalvageable Depravity of Israel’s Prisons for Palestinians

On June 19, 2024, Khaled Mahajneh, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, became the first lawyer to visit a notorious detention facility for Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, located inside the Sde Teiman military base in the Negev Desert, one of several detention facilities established after October 7, 2023 to hold Palestinians seized in Gaza.

Speaking to +972 Magazine a week after his visit, Mahanjeh drew a pertinent comparison with the treatment of Muslim prisoners in the US’s post-9/11 “war on terror”, but concluded that Israel’s behavior was even worse.

“The situation there is more horrific than anything we’ve heard about Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo”, he said, adding, “I have been visiting political and security detainees and prisoners in Israeli jails for years, including since October 7. I know that the conditions of detention have become much harsher, and that the prisoners are abused on a daily basis. But Sde Teiman was unlike anything I’ve seen or heard before.”

Mahajneh “was initially approached by Al Araby TV, which was seeking information about Muhammad Arab”, also identified as Mohammed Saber Arab, “a reporter for the network who was arrested in March while covering the Israeli siege of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.”

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US calls on Ukraine to cede ‘territory,’ give up ‘some weapons’ for peace with Russia

The US is requesting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to accept a US-drafted deal to end the war with Russia that includes Kiev giving up “territory and some weapons,” Reuters reported on 19 November. Citing two anonymous sources familiar with the matter, the news agency stated that the proposals included reducing the size of the Ukrainian military, among other things.

US President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, is leading the US effort to draft the plan and is working closely with Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev, a US official stated.

The request came shortly before Russian drone and missile attacks overnight killed at least 25 people, targeting apartment buildings in the western Ukrainian city of Ternopil, according to Ukrainian officials.

The officials added that three children were among the dead, and that the number was expected to rise once missing people are accounted for.

About 80 others were injured in the attacks, which saw Russia fire 476 drones and 48 missiles at Ukrainian energy and transport infrastructure sites.

There appears to be no change in Russia’s conditions for ending the war. Moscow demands guarantees that Ukraine will not join NATO, and insists on the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from four eastern Ukrainian oblasts that Russia controls and claims it has annexed.  

On Wednesday, Axios reported that the new US plan calls for Ukraine to give up territory occupied by Russia in return for a US security guarantee for Kiev and Europe against future Russian attacks.

In response to the US plan, a European diplomat told Reuters that Trump may be trying to “push Kiev into a corner,” and that any successful proposal must take into account Ukrainian and European conditions.

The news agency added that according to another European diplomat, “the suggestion that Ukraine cut its army seemed like a Russian demand rather than a serious proposal.”

A US delegation led by Army Secretary Dan Driscoll is in Kiev and plans to meet Zelensky on Thursday, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The US proposal also comes as Zelensky seeks to address the fallout from a $100 million corruption scandal involving his close associates. On Wednesday, Ukraine’s parliament sacked the energy and justice ministers after the results of a major investigation were announced.

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Israel bombs Lebanon using banned cluster munitions

The Israeli military has used widely banned cluster munitions in its recent 13-month war on Lebanon last year, The Guardian reported on 19 November, citing photos of munition remnants found in the south of the country.

The British paper commissioned six different arms experts to view the photos, which appear to show the remnants of two different types of Israeli cluster munitions, the 155mm M999 Barak Eitan cluster munition and 227mm Ra’am Eitan guided missiles.

The M999 Barak Eitan releases nine submunitions, which explode into 1,200 tungsten shards, while Ra’am Eitan-guided missiles each hold 64 bomblets.

The cluster munitions were found in three locations in southern Lebanon, where Israeli bombing has been most deadly: the forested valleys of Wadi Zibqin, Wadi Barghouz, and Wadi Deir Siryan.

Cluster munitions are container bombs that release many smaller submunitions, or “bomblets,” over an area several hundred meters wide, killing anyone within the range.

However, up to 40 percent of the bomblets fail to explode, killing and maiming civilians accidentally encountering them for years or even decades after a war is over.

As a result, 124 nations have signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which forbids their use, production, and transfer. Israel is not a signatory to the convention.

“We believe the use of cluster munitions is always in conflict with a military’s duty to respect international humanitarian law because of their indiscriminate nature at the time of use and afterwards,” stated Tamar Gabelnick, the director of the Cluster Munition Coalition.

During the 2006 June war, Israel dropped four million cluster bombs on Lebanon in the final days before a ceasefire was reached. An estimated one million unexploded bomblets remained, killing 400 people since that time.

“Cluster munitions are banned internationally for a reason. They are inherently indiscriminate, and there is no way to employ them lawfully or responsibly, and civilians bear the brunt of the risk as these weapons stay deadly for decades to come,” said Brian Castner, the head of crisis research at Amnesty International.

During its war on Lebanon that began in October 2023, Israel has killed almost 4,000 people.

Israel continues to carry out near-daily strikes, in particular in Lebanon’s south, killing both civilians and Hezbollah members.

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Ukraine’s Corruption Scandal Might Pave The Way For Peace If It Takes Yermak Down

He’s Zelensky’s powerbroker so his downfall could undo the already shaky alliance between the armed forces, the oligarchs, the secret police, and parliament that keeps Zelensky in power, thus pressuring him into peace, especially if his warmongering grey cardinal is no longer pushing him to keep fighting.

It was earlier assessed here that Ukraine’s $100 million energy graft scandal might only result in a cabinet reshuffle at most, the sentiment of which RT chief Margarita Simonyan shared when writing on X “But we all know it won’t” in response to The Spectator predicting that it might bring Zelensky down. The events of the past week warrant a re-evaluation after members of the ruling party demanded the resignation of his powerful Chief of Staff Andrey Yermak on the grounds that he knew about this racket.

This coincided with Axios’ report that the US and Russia have been secretly working on a framework agreement for ending the Ukrainian Conflict, which Politico then reported could be agreed to “by the end of this month — and possibly ‘as soon as this week.’” The latter’s source also allegedly told them that “We don’t really care about the Europeans. It’s about Ukraine accepting”, which they said it might very well do since the plan will essentially “be presented to Zelensky as a fait accompli.”

Politico’s reporter elaborated that “They feel that Ukraine is in the position right now, given the corruption scandals that have been plaguing Zelenskyy, given where the battle lines are at this moment, that Ukraine is in a position where … they feel they can get them to accept this deal.” Accordingly, it can be reassessed that this corruption scandal championed by the US-backed “National Anti-Corruption Bureau” might facilitate an end an end to the conflict, especially if Yermak goes down as a result.

He’s considered to be Zelensky’s powerbroker so his downfall could undo the already shaky alliance between the armed forces, the oligarchs, the secret police, and parliament that keeps Zelensky in power.

Zelensky’s imprisoned former ally Igor Kolomoysky claimed that Timur Mindich, Zelensky’s longtime business partner at the center of this scandal who fled the country to avoid imminent arrest after being tipped off, is “a classic fall guy.”

This suggests that Yermak might be the one who managed everything.

Extrapolating upon this hypothesis, that would explain why the EU is downplaying this corruption scandal, spinning it as supposed proof that Ukraine’s state institutions are working properly, and actively trying to counter the spread of facts in relation to it. Yermak is Zelensky’s grey cardinal and suspected of being the reason why the Ukrainian leader continually rejects peace. If he goes down as a result of this scandal, then peace might finally be possible. He could also take down his European partners too.

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Corporate Media Parrot Dubious Drug Claims That Justify War on Venezuela

Since August, the US has been amassing military assets in the Caribbean. Warships, bombers and thousands of troops have been joined by the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, in the largest regional deployment in decades. Extrajudicial strikes against small vessels, which UN experts have decried as violations of international law, have killed at least 80 civilians (CNN, 11/14/25).

Many foreign policy analysts believe that regime change in Venezuela is the ultimate goal (Al Jazeera, 10/24/25; Left Chapter, 10/21/25), but the Trump administration instead claims it is fighting “narcoterrorism,” accusing Caracas of flooding the US with drugs via the Cartel of the Suns and Tren de Aragua, both designated as foreign terrorist organizations.

Over the years, Western media have endorsed Washington’s Venezuela regime-change efforts at every turn, from cheerleading coup attempts to whitewashing deadly sanctions (FAIR.org, 6/13/22, 6/4/21, 1/22/20). Now, with a possible military operation that could have disastrous consequences, corporate outlets are making little effort to hold the US government accountable. Rather, they are unsurprisingly ceding the floor to the warmongers.

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Trump’s New Islamic Extremist “Allies” — Syrian and Qatari Regimes

Is the ghost of Dick Cheney (CFR) haunting the Trump administration? During the George W. Bush administration, Vice President Cheney and a coterie of CFR neocon war hawks known as “The Vulcans” (Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Stephen Hadley, Robert Gates, and Paul Wolfowitz) dragged America into a series of “forever wars” and “regime change” interventions. Accompanying these misadventures was the continuation of the policies of previous Democratic and Republican administrations’ musical-chair alliances, in which yesterday’s “terrorist” becomes today’s “noble ally” (and then tomorrow turns on us and is again designated a terrorist).

Donald Trump pledged that he would cease these disastrous policies. However, his recent policies with regard to Syria and Qatar call that pledge into question. Are Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth channeling the Cheney/Vulcan spirit? It seems so.

The recent White House reception for Syrian “President” Ahmed al-Sharaa was odd, to say the least. Our government had previously designated him as a terrorist, with a $10 million bounty on his head.

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Australia’s weapons programs exposed in defence industry cyber attacks

A series of cyber attacks on defence industry supply chain contractors has exposed threats to Australia’s weapons programs, security analysts say.

Over the past week, it was revealed that a hacker group shared material about Australia’s $7 billion Land 400 military program after allegedly breaching several Israeli defence companies.

The Cyber Toufan group posted images and details on Telegram about the Australian Defence Force’s (ADF) next-generation Redback infantry fighting vehicle.

Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems is involved in the project, supplying the vehicle’s high-tech turrets.

Another group claimed responsibility for a cyber attack on IKAD Engineering, a key player in the Australian defence industry.

The J Group ransomware gang alleges it infiltrated the company’s systems for five months in what it described as a “staycation in the defence supply chain”.

The hackers claimed they obtained information relating to Australian naval contracts, including the Hunter Class frigate and Collins Class submarine programs.

IKAD Engineering chief executive Gerard Dyson confirmed the incident, saying an “external third party” had gained unauthorised access to a portion of its internal IT systems

He said so far only “non-sensitive project information” had been impacted, along with employee files, adding that IKAD did not have direct connections into ADF systems. 

Cybersecurity experts warned even non-sensitive data could have strategic value, and the attacks should be a “wake-up call”.

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