Tag: perpetual war

Report: Trump Weighs Options for Launching a War With Venezuela

The Trump administration has developed a series of options for launching attacks on Venezuela, The New York Times reported on Tuesday, as the US continues its military buildup in the region.

The report said that one option would involve bombing Venezuelan military facilities with the goal of collapsing military support for Maduro in hopes that it would get the Venezuelan leader to flee. But critics of the approach argue that it would likely have the opposite effect, rallying the military around its embattled leader.

The second option would be to send special operations forces, such as Navy SEALs or the Army’s Delta Force, into Venezuela to kill or capture Maduro. Such an operation would put the US troops involved in the attack at serious risk since Maduro has the support of his military and a civilian militia that the Venezuelan government says has millions of members.

The third option would involve sending a much larger force into Venezuela to capture airfields and some of Venezuela’s infrastructure and oil fields. The Washington Examiner has reported that US military planners believe the forces in the region are now sufficient to seize and hold key strategic facilities such as ports and airfields on Venezuelan territory.

The Times report said that President Trump is reluctant to back an operation that would put US troops at risk or come with the chance of failure, and for that reason, other plans are being developed that would involve naval drones and long-range weapons. A decision isn’t expected until the aircraft carrier USS Gerald Ford, which just left the Mediterranean, arrives near Venezuela.

If Trump orders an attack on Venezuela, it would almost certainly lead to a full-blown war or a quick decapitation of the government, which would likely plunge the country into chaos. The Times report cited Trump aides who said far more planning has gone into striking at the Maduro government than on what it would take to govern Venezuela should the operation succeed.

Trump aides said that the president has expressed reservations about attacking Venezuela and that he’s asking what the US could get out of it, with a focus on Venezuela’s vast oil resources. The push to launch a war in Venezuela is being led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also serves as Trump’s national security advisor, and Stephen Miller, the president’s chief domestic policy advisor.

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Thousands of Unexploded Bombs Dropped by Israel Have Turned Gaza into a Minefield

Mohammed Nour returned with his family from Khan Younis to Gaza City on October 13th, three days after the ceasefire went into effect, along with thousands of other Palestinians. “As soon as they announced the truce, we came back immediately,” Nour told Drop Site. “From the moment Gaza City opened, we were among the first to return, because of everything we had suffered in the south.”

The family set up a tent just behind Al-Shifa hospital in an area that—like much of the city— was filled with large mounds of rubble and debris following Israel’s concentrated aerial bombardment and shelling. “It was around 10 or 11 a.m. I told the kids, ‘Go bring some cardboard, some wood, and a bit of plastic so we can light a fire.’ We wanted to cook something for the kids to eat,” Nour said. “We had just arrived and had nothing to burn and light a fire.”

His 11-year old son, two nephews, and two other boys their age walked about 10 meters from the tent and began searching through the rubble. “As soon as one of the kids pulled a piece of wood, something exploded. The children were thrown into the air—all of them,” Nour said. “I suddenly saw people flying—I didn’t even realize they were our children. I ran toward them and found my son hanging on the fence, and my sister’s son and my brother’s son—all of them hanging there,” he added. “Their condition was terrible, terrible.”

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A Life Undone by War

Not long ago, I received a Facebook “friend” request from Jean, an individual I had known in grammar school. It was nice to hear from her, that she was in good health, and doing well. Over the subsequent weeks, we exchanged pleasantries, read each other’s posts, and caught up somewhat with how our lives had progressed over the past 50 or so years.

The pleasantries were rather short-lived, however, as Jean rather quickly became disenchanted, perhaps annoyed is more accurate, with my “preoccupation” with politics, social issues, and the “fact” that my Facebook commentaries and analyses – “rants” she called them – were, in her opinion, “unhealthy, self-destructive, and downright anti-American.” She expressed what I took to be a heartfelt concern for my well-being, that I was such a sad and angry man, unhappy with my life and my country, and obsessed with a war some 50 years gone. She knew I had been a Marine in Vietnam, had heard over the years that I had been affected by the experience, but only now realized the severity of my condition – a Facebook diagnosis.

“As a friend,” she counseled me that I should stop with the politics, protests, and dissent, put the war behind me and go on with my life. None of this, of course, was new to me, and, I would guess, to many others who had participated in war. So, I politely thanked her for her concern and advice, and continued with my protests, dissent, and “rants” about politics, issues of social justice, and war.

Not long afterward, however, having grown frustrated, I guess, with my unwillingness to follow her advice and make the necessary “positive” changes in my life, she wished me well. After a final expression of concern for my well-being (she was aware of the 17.6 veterans who committed suicide each day), Jean terminated our interaction, “unfriended me” in Facebook jargon.

She was right, of course, at least about how the war had seriously impacted my life, how I had become both sad and angry. Sad that upon returning home to the “world,” I no longer fit in. How I felt alone, alienated from friends and family members and how for the longest time, I was unable to maintain a relationship or keep a normal job. She was right as well about my being angry. Angry about how I felt used by my country, lied to about the necessity and justice of the cause for which so many lives were devastated. Angry that the hopes and dreams I had for my life were never realized, and, most tragic, angry that many of our leaders and fellow citizens learned nothing from the debacle… and we are doing it all again.

She was wrong, however, in her assumption that in a life amidst the chaos and unrest, I hadn’t tried to achieve a sense of normalcy and well-being. Damn, I had tried a whole lot. Perhaps Jean was right, however, and my inability to heal was the result of a choice that I made, to recognize and accept responsibility and culpability for the crimes perpetrated upon the Vietnamese people. That I had no right to “come home” when so many others were never afforded the opportunity; the 3.8 million Vietnamese, the 58,281 fellow Americans whose names are inscribed on the Wall of Remembrance in D.C., and the over 50,000 Vietnam Veterans who died by their own hand.

Eventually, I realized a truth that many of those who think themselves untouched by war are unable or unwilling to understand. War never goes away.

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Russia May Send Hypersonic Missiles to Venezuela as Defense Against Regime Change: ‘America May Be in For Some Surprises’

Russia has opened the door to supplying hypersonic missiles to Venezuela as a deterrent against a possible U.S. invasion.

Alexei Zhuravlyov, deputy chairman of Russia’s parliamentary defense committee, warned that “America may be in for some surprises” if it attempts to remove the Maduro dictatorship from power.

“I see no obstacles to supplying a friendly country with new developments such as the Oreshnik or, let’s say, the well-proven Kalibr missiles,” Zhuravlyov told the Russian news site Gazeta.Ru.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed that the Oreshnik missiles possess such overwhelming power that launching several of them with conventional warheads would unleash destruction comparable to a nuclear strike.

The Oreshnik was first deployed in the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro in November 2024, in retaliation for Ukraine’s use of Western-supplied long-range weapons, including British and American Storm Shadow missiles, against targets inside Russia.

The warning comes after Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro pleaded for military assistance from both Moscow and Beijing amid reports that President Trump is planning an operation to remove him from power.

In his letter to the Kremlin, Maduro requested additional Sukhoi Su-30MK2 fighter jets, describing them as “the most important deterrent the Venezuelan national government had when facing the threat of war.”

Over the weekend, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the Kremlin condemns “the use of excessive military force in carrying out anti-drug tasks.”

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Ukraine’s ‘Busification’ — forced conscription — is tip of the iceberg

“Busification” is a well-understood term in Ukraine and refers to the process in which young men are detained against their will, often involving a violent struggle, and bundled into a vehicle — often a minibus — for onward transit to an army recruitment center.

Until recently, Ukraine’s army recruiters picked easy targets. Yet, on October 26, the British Sun newspaper’s defense editor, Jerome Starkey, wrote a harrowing report about a recent trip to the front line in Ukraine, during which he claimed his Ukrainian colleague was “forcibly press-ganged into his country’s armed services.”

This case was striking for two reasons; first, that the forced mobilization of troops is rarely reported by Western mainstream media outlets. And second, that unlike most forced conscriptions, this event took place following the alleged commandeering of the Western journalists’ vehicle by three armed men, who insisted they drive to a recruitment center.

There, Starkey reported, “I saw at least [a] dozen glum men — mostly in their 40s and 50s — clutching sheafs of papers. They were called in and out of side rooms for rubber-stamp medicals to prove they were fit to fight.”

The process has drawn criticism after high-profile incidents where men have died even before they donned military uniforms. On October 23, Ukrainian Roman Sopin died from heavy blunt trauma to the head after he had been forcibly recruited. Ukrainian authorities claim that he fell, but his family is taking legal action. In August, a conscripted man, 36, died suddenly at a recruitment center in Rivne, although the authorities claim he died of natural causes. In June, 45-year-old Ukrainian-Hungarian Jozsef Sebestyen died after he was beaten with iron bars following his forced conscription; the Ukrainian military denies this version of events. In August, a conscript died from injuries sustained after he jumped out of a moving vehicle that was transporting him to the recruitment center.

Look online and you’ll find a trove of thousands of incidents, with most of them filmed this year alone. You can find videos of a recruitment officer chasing a man and shooting at him, a man being choked to death on the street with a recruiter’s knee on his neck. Many include family members or friends fighting desperately to prevent their loved one being taken against his will.

If videos of this nature, on this systemic scale, were shared in the United States or the United Kingdom, I believe that members of the public would express serious concerns. Yet the Western media remains largely silent, and I find it difficult to understand why.

In November 2024, Ukraine’s defense minister Rustem Umerov claimed that he would put an end to busification. It is true that Ukraine has been taking steps to modernize its army recruitment and make enlistment more appealing to men under the age of 25. Yet, there is little evidence that those efforts are having the desired effect. And after a year, busification only appears to be getting worse, yet remains widely ignored by the Western press.

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450,000 U.S. Soldiers Diagnosed with Traumatic Brain Injury Since 2001

When I was living in Menlo Park, California in the years 2011-2015, I got to be pals with an affluent, patriotic man who was a benefactor the VA hospitals in Palo Alto and Menlo Park. He introduced me to a psychiatrist with whom I got to be pals, and on a few occasions I was given permission to accompany him when he visited his patients.

By far the most common injury I saw was what neurologists call a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). According to the National Institutes of Health (Occupation and Risk of Traumatic Brain Injury in the Millennium Cohort Study) rom 2000 to 2021, an estimated 449,026 active-duty U.S. service members experienced a TBI. These injuries were often caused by combat-related incidents, such as explosive blasts, and are considered a “signature injury” of post-9/11 conflicts.

The vast majority of these injuries are considered mild, but a “mild” diagnosis is cold comfort for those suffering from the syndrome and their family members, as mild symptoms include:

  • Headache
  • Dizziness
  • Nausea and vomiting
  • Fatigue
  • Sensitivity to light or noise
  • Blurred or double vision
  • Balance problems
  • Cognitive: Confusion or difficulty concentrating, memory loss or problems with recall, Difficulty with attention or problem-solving, and slowed thinking or processing speed.
  • Emotional: Irritability or mood swings, anxiety or depression, difficulty sleeping, and changes in appetite.
  • Other: Ringing in the ears, loss of consciousness (briefly), and seizures (rare).

The following 2023 news segment presents a pretty good overview of the epidemic. Note that, as of this posting, it has only received 235 views.

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Dark clouds Over Moldova

The recent elections in Moldova have shown there are no changes in terms of democratic rights in that country. Everything that happened in the referendum on constitutional changes and presidential elections in 2024 was repeated.

Until the votes from the diaspora arrive, the election result shows the opposition to the ruling majority gathered around Maia Sandu is leading by a couple of percentage points. But, when the votes from the diaspora arrive, the final outcome changes, and the “narrow majority” goes to the side of the current government.

The government’s rating has further declined over the past year, and now they have resorted to additional political engineering: the number of polling stations in Transnistria was halved, bridges over the Dniester were closed on election day so that voters would not accidentally go to “separated” polling stations, “media noise” was increased to the maximum, and “special operations” were conducted with the aim of convincing the public that it was a fateful vote between the promising EU and the sinister Russia.

In total, compared to the second round of the presidential elections a year ago, the opposition won about 30,000 votes more, and the ruling party even 150,000 votes less (Maia Sandu in October 2024 in the presidential elections had 930,000 votes, and now the result of her list is about 780,000).

In addition, the government’s result was influenced by the “meddling” of George Simion from Romania in the Moldovan elections. The anti-system presidential candidate from Romania, who “jumped” into the race after the brutal elimination of Calin Georgescu, somehow he got revenge against opponents from Brussels by “pushing” Vasile Costiuc’s party called Democrația Acasă (translated – Democracy at Home) into parliament. Until yesterday, the party, which pollsters did not find above one percent, won 5.6 percent of the vote thanks to a social media campaign led by Simion.

This may represent a hint that in Moldova Euroscepticism is taking shape on completely different grounds than before, i.e. that it is not all about the constructed polarization “EU or Russia”. This is a new and significant detail for the Moldovan political system.

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The Administration Just Admitted War Powers Don’t Cover Trump’s Caribbean Murder Spree

“A top Justice Department lawyer,” the Washington Post reports, “has told lawmakers that the Trump administration can continue its lethal strikes against alleged drug traffickers in Latin America — and is not bound by a decades-old law requiring Congress to give approval for ongoing hostilities.”

That law is the War Powers Resolution, which requires the president to inform Congress within 48 hours of commencing military hostilities, and to cease those operations within 60 days unless Congress authorizes their continuation.

The first admitted US military strike on a boat in the Caribbean occurred on September 4; under the War Powers Resolution those strikes (which have killed dozens) would necessarily end on November 4 unless Congress says “sure, keep on going.”

But it’s more complicated than that, and not just because White House Office of Legal Counsel chief T. Elliot Gaiser claims the War Powers Resolution only applies when US troops are “in harm’s way,” and that the drone strikes  in question pose no such danger.

The big issue with the War Powers Resolution is that it’s unconstitutional. Not for the reason most administrations claim — that it limits an imagined presidential power to wage war at will and on whim — but in the other direction.

The US Constitution assigns the power to declare war exclusively to Congress. Not after the president has done whatever he wants for 60 days, but from the very beginning. Aside from immediate defense against direct attack, a president waging war prior to or outside of a congressional declaration is an impeachable “high crime.”

Some argue that the passage of time and advancement of technology imply a necessary expansion of presidential war powers: He must be able to act in the moment and not wait around on a dawdling Congress. It’s actually the other way around.

In 1941, it took 29 hours and 30 minutes from the first explosions at Pearl Harbor for Congress to declare war on Japan. That was before members of Congress could hop on planes to return to Washington — or, for that matter, boot up their laptops for Zoom meetings.

Since Congress has used remote and proxy technology before (during COVID), the infrastructure is already there for Congress to act quickly if its members believe a war is called for. Absent something on the level of a nuclear holocaust, the president could receive full war authority within single-digit hours.

But let’s take Gaiser at his word for a moment: If the drone strike campaign in the Caribbean isn’t war, what is it?

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The War Party Is Out of Ideological Ammunition

Tucker Carlson haters lie because they have to lie. Mark Levin, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and company get on their stages and behind their microphones and claim that he’s some vicious anti-semite, attempting to make any association with him permanently toxic and destructive to others’ reputation and standing.

As Levin said in his speech at the Republican Jewish Coalition summit this past weekend, this used to work, and they’re doing their level best now. They’re probably scaring the hell out of their own sincere supporters as well, just for the effect. But their problem is that everyone knows Tucker Carlson. He’s been on television forever. He used to be with Bill Kristol and The Weekly Standard crowd; CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, etc. He’s from a somewhat high-falutin WASPy background, with genteel-type manners. (Took him forever to quit wearing that damn bow tie.) Now, as everyone knows, he’s decided he’s going to make up for supporting Iraq War II by opposing all the next ones. But we’re supposed to believe instead that he’s turned into some sort of Aryan Nations prison gang leader? It’s like calling Donald Trump a Russian agent – or white supremacist for that matter. Donald Trump, as in the Donald Trump from TV? GTFO.

As you may know, I got the chance to meet and hang out with Tucker for a couple of days this last July, where he let me complain about the American neoconservative-led War Party for three hours on his show. Israel and their Likud Party’s role in America’s disastrous Mideast policy was obviously a major part of the discussion. I’ve been good on Israel-Palestine since at least the late 1990s, and especially after the neocons lied us into Iraq War II in 2002 and 2003 for them, as detailed in my book Enough Already, and many others. And I’ve got a chip on my shoulder about it still, quite frankly. I may have said “Israel” more times than anyone in that funny supercut of people saying it on his show that was being passed around a couple months ago. But I’m not anti-Jewish in the slightest. Anyone who cannot differentiate between Richard Perle and his gang and people who are not them, for example, are either dummies who weren’t part of the discussion in the first place or disingenuous accusers putting words in people’s mouths.

But I had dinner and talked with Tucker late into the night, and we of course discussed exactly these issues off the air as well. It’s just a damned lie that he hates Jewish people or wants anyone else to or has ever tried to convince anyone else to. You can watch his show on YouTube and X, you know. (We’ve become friends in the time since, and the same holds.) On the contrary, the War Party is so upset at Tucker because they know he is a decent and sincere person, and they know we all know that too. And they know that every time he expresses his concern about America being implicated in Israel’s horrific violence, he is then giving “license” to other decent not-too-far-to-the-right-actually people to join him in breaking with their support as well.

The Israelis and their amen corner have had a powerful narrative that all good rightwingers are Zionists until you go all the way to the avowed-fascist, anti-Semitic factions. Tucker proves every day that that is not true. So all they can do is try to lamely insist that he’s included. As anyone who actually watched Tucker’s interview with Nick Fuentes – rather than just shrieking about it – could tell you, he, again, made his own views very clear, and they were not hateful in any way. He in fact insisted it was against his Chrisitian religion to hate anyone or to identify individual people as collectively guilty for anything – which is also the same reason he opposes being made to help fund and support Israel’s slaughter of innocents in Palestine.

For anyone honestly confused, and not just trolling, I could also add this context that you may not understand: Tucker had previously denounced Nick Fuentes on his show, called him a gay, fed, COINTELPRO-type op against him and the antiwar right to make us look like racist types. But then he lost that fight pretty badly. Fuentes already had a huge audience, and in fact, there’s no real reason to believe he’s a plant at all. So Tucker had swung and missed and had to eat a bit of crow, by having him on to explain himself.

People are also mad that Tucker did not bring up all the meanest things Fuentes ever said to put his feet to the fire about them, but I read that instead as Tucker giving the younger man a bit of room to back away from some of that and come towards him, rather than pandering in any way or just performatively beating him over the head. Tucker made his views clear, and they were the same ones from before.

Tucker Carlson and the non-interventionist movement are going to win this fight because our enemies in the War Party are already all out of ammo. All they have is lies and smears. And they just do not work anymore.

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Nigerian President Denies Existence of a Christian Genocide and Denounces Trump’s Threat of Military Intervention

Nigeria has rejected President Trump’s threat of military intervention to protect the country’s Christian population.

As Christians continue to be massacred at the hands of Islamist militias in the northern region of the most populous African country, Trump has sounded the alarm and said he may even use military force to protect them.

“If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

However, the Nigerian government has pushed back on this idea and denied that the persecution of Christians is even taking place.

Politico reports:

The U.S. cannot unilaterally carry out any military operation in Nigeria over its claims of Christian persecution in the West African country, a Nigerian presidential spokesman told The Associated Press on Sunday.

The military threat from Donald Trump is based on misleading reports and appears to be part of “Trump’s style of going forceful in order to force a sit-down and have a conversation,” according to Daniel Bwala, a spokesman for Nigerian President Bola Tinubu.

…

“When it comes to matters of military operation in Nigeria, this is a matter that two leaders have to agree on,” he continued. ”It is not something unilaterally you can do especially since that country is a sovereign state and that country is not aiding and abating that (crime).”

Tinubu has also rejected the designation and promised to work with the U.S. government and foreign partners ”to deepen cooperation on protection of communities of all faiths.”

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