Tag: perpetual war

Ben & Jerry’s Co-Founder Ben Cohen ARRESTED for Disrupting Senate Hearing During RFK Jr.’s Testimony with Pro-Gaza Protest

Ben Cohen — the far-left co-founder of the notoriously woke Ben & Jerry’s ice cream company — was ARRESTED Wednesday during a Senate hearing for causing a major disruption with a deranged pro-Gaza protest while Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was testifying.

Cohen disrupted the proceedings with an unhinged pro-Gaza protest, accusing Congress of “killing poor kids in Gaza” and bizarrely linking Medicaid funding to the Israel-Hamas conflict, according to NBC News.

Capitol Police were forced to remove Cohen and six other protesters after their outbursts derailed the hearing.

The scene quickly descended into chaos after one protester shouted, “RFK kills people with AIDS,” before Cohen stood up and launched into a tirade blaming the U.S. for the deaths of Palestinian children.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who chaired the hearing, swiftly ordered the removal of the disrupters.

“Members of the audience are reminded disruptions will not be permitted while the committee conducts its business. Capitol Police are asked to remove the individuals from the hearing room,” Cassidy announced while Cohen was forcibly removed by a Capitol police.

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UN Peacekeepers Post Hit by Direct Fire From Israeli Troops in southern Lebanon

UNIFIL peacekeepers continue to struggle with active Israeli military operations in southern Lebanon, issuing a statement today expressing concern about Israel’s increasingly aggressive military posture. One of the peacekeepers’ outposts near Kfar Chouba came under direct fire from Israeli troops across the border.

The fire was the first direct fire by Israeli troops against an UNIFIL post since the ceasefire went into effect in November. The post was hit, but officials said the peacekeepers are all safe after the incident.

Israel repeatedly targeted UNIFIL sites during the war in 2024, often damaging or destroying property. Shortly before the ceasefire went into effect in late November, an Israeli drone attacked a bus carrying UNIFIL peacekeepers, injuring six of them.

There have been incidents of UNIFIL patrols being targeted by Israeli forces since the ceasefire went into effect. French UNIFIL personnel found Israeli spy devices near the border village of Rmieh, and Israeli troops shot at them to drive them away, though no peacekeepers were actually hit and injured in that incident.

Yesterday, an Irish UNIFIL patrol operating near Maroun al-Ras reported being targeted by laser sights by nearby Israeli troops. No shots were fired, but the UNIFIL said such targeting was “unwelcome.”

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Ex-UK Special Forces break silence on ‘war crimes’ by colleagues

Former members of UK Special Forces have broken years of silence to give BBC Panorama eyewitness accounts of alleged war crimes committed by colleagues in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Giving their accounts publicly for the first time, the veterans described seeing members of the SAS murder unarmed people in their sleep and execute handcuffed detainees, including children.

“They handcuffed a young boy and shot him,” recalled one veteran who served with the SAS in Afghanistan. ”He was clearly a child, not even close to fighting age.”

Killing of detainees “became routine”, the veteran said. “They’d search someone, handcuff them, then shoot them”, before cutting off the plastic handcuffs used to restrain people and “planting a pistol” by the body, he said.

The new testimony includes allegations of war crimes stretching over more than a decade, far longer than the three years currently being examined by a judge-led public inquiry in the UK.

The SBS, the Royal Navy’s elite special forces regiment, is also implicated for the first time in the most serious allegations – executions of unarmed and wounded people.

A veteran who served with the SBS said some troops had a “mob mentality”, describing their behaviour on operations as “barbaric”.

“I saw the quietest guys switch, show serious psychopathic traits,” he said. “They were lawless. They felt untouchable.”

Special Forces were deployed to Afghanistan to protect British troops from Taliban fighters and bombmakers. The conflict was a deadly one for members of the UK’s armed forces – 457 lost their lives and thousands more were wounded.

Asked by the BBC about the new eyewitness testimony, the Ministry of Defence said that it was “fully committed” to supporting the ongoing public inquiry into the alleged war crimes and that it urged all veterans with relevant information to come forward. It said that it was “not appropriate for the MoD to comment on allegations” which may be in the inquiry’s scope.

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Trump envoy reveals NATO troop deployment plans for Ukraine

Washington is in talks with its European NATO allies about deploying military contingents to Ukraine as part of a possible post-conflict settlement, US President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Keith Kellogg, has said.

A group of European NATO member states has for months been seeking to muster a force to be deployed to Ukraine as part of a so-called “coalition of the willing,” purportedly in a post-conflict peacekeeping role. Russia has repeatedly warned it would treat any foreign troops on Ukrainian soil as legitimate targets, saying such a move could escalate the conflict.

Speaking to Fox Business on Tuesday, Kellogg said troops from France, Germany, the UK, and Poland could be part of what he described as a “resiliency force.”

“This is a force referred to as the E3, but it’s actually now the E4 – when you include the Brits, the French, and the Germans, and in fact, the Poles as well,” he said. Kellogg added the troops would be positioned west of the Dnieper River, placing them “outside the contact zone.”

“And then to the east you have a peacekeeping force, and what it would look like with a third party involved with that. So, you can actually monitor a ceasefire; we have this thing pretty well planned out,” he said.

The remarks come as preparations are underway for possible direct talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul. Kellogg and Steve Witkoff, another senior envoy for US President Donald Trump, are reportedly expected to attend. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday proposed conducting negotiations without preconditions in Türkiye on May 15.

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France can’t give Ukraine any more arms – Macron

France has reached the limit of its military support for Ukraine, French President Emmanuel Macron has said.

In a televised interview with TF1 on Tuesday, Macron defended his administration’s handling of the Ukraine conflict, saying the French have done “the maximum we could” to help Kiev, given that the country’s military was not set up to conduct a protracted, high-intensity land war.

”We gave away everything we had,” Macron said. “But we can’t give away what we don’t have, and we can’t strip ourselves of what is necessary for our own security.” He noted that France’s approach, coordinated with those of other Western donors, aims to avoid direct confrontation with a nuclear-armed power.

France has committed more than €3.7 billion ($4.1 billion) in military assistance to Ukraine since the escalation of the conflict in February 2022, according to the Kiel Institute’s aid tracker. Macron highlighted efforts to scale up the domestic defense industry to continue supplying arms.

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One Side Routinely Uses Human Shields in Gaza—But Not the Side That’s Usually Blamed

Since the earliest days of the post–October 7 US/Israeli genocide in Gaza, corporate media outlets have claimed that Hamas uses Palestinian civilians as human shields. Protocol 1 of the Geneva Convention characterizes the practice thusly:

The presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield, favour or impede military operations.

In other words, when civilians are used to shield military targets, attacking those targets can be legal under international law, but the attacker, as Al Jazeera (11/13/23) noted, still has to adhere to

the principles of distinction and proportionality: An army has the duty to target only the enemy, even if this means facing greater risks to minimize civilian casualties; and to weigh the military value of each attack against the civilian casualties that are likely to result from it.

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Israel’s Crimes on the West Bank

In 1948, the newly proclaimed Israeli government seized 78 percent of Palestinian land and expelled more than half of the population (750,00 people) from their villages and towns.

This act disregarded United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 (1947), which called for the termination of the colonial British Mandate and the partition of Palestine into a Palestinian and a Jewish state. This process came to be known as the Nakba (Catastrophe).

The Palestinians gathered in Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the neighbouring Arab states in the hope that they would soon be able to return to their homes. Indeed, U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194 (1948) noted that “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid.”

Nothing of the sort ever happened — Palestinians are still waiting for that “earliest practicable date.”

In September 1948, Palestinians hastily organised the All-Palestine Government in Gaza, a largely nominal attempt to exercise sovereignty over their stolen lands. Many of its officials, including Prime Minister Ahmed Hilmi Pasha Abd al-Baqi (1882–1963) and Foreign Minister Jamal al-Husseini (1894–1982), came from elite Palestinian families, their political vision shaped by the distress of their great ruin.

Following the 1949 Armistice Agreements — signed between Israel and its neighbouring states Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria after the 1948 war — most of the territory that was not occupied by Israel came under the control of Jordan and Egypt. Jordan controlled what is now the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip was administered by Egypt.

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Hungarian PM Orbán: Ukraine’s EU Membership Would Mean War in Europe

Hungary is standing its ground as the European Union’s globalist ‘leaders’ push forward with plans to fast-track Ukraine’s membership.

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, perhaps President Trump’s closest allies in Europe, and key figures in the Hungarian government have issued their clearest and most urgent warning yet: admitting a war-torn Ukraine into the EU isn’t just reckless—it’s a one-way ticket to economic ruin, societal upheaval, and potentially full-blown war on European soil.

Hungary’s position isn’t new, but the stakes have never been higher. Prime Minister Orbán told public radio last Friday that Ukraine’s accession would amount to “economic suicide” for Europe. Speaking bluntly, he said the EU’s liberal leadership—led by corrupt, unelected Brussels bureaucrats like Ursula von der Leyen—is hurtling toward a catastrophe without consulting the people of Europe.

“As a neighboring country, we believe that if Ukraine is admitted to the European Union, it will mean war,” Orbán declared earlier this week at a conference of EU parliamentary speakers in Budapest. He reminded attendees that the EU has never accepted a country at war—and for good reason.

Hungary rejects Brussels’ obsession with endless military aid, calling instead for peace and realism. “The longer the war lasts, the more lives will be lost,” Orbán emphasized.

The prime minister’s sentiment was echoed by Máté Kocsis, leader of the Fidesz faction in Hungary’s National Assembly. “This will be an irreversible decision,” he said, adding: “One that will shape the fate of Hungarians for the next 100 to 150 years.”

Kocsis made it clear that Ukraine, as a country without a functioning democratic process, cannot be a legitimate candidate. “The minimum condition for accession talks is a democratic election,” he said. That requires peace—not more war.

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Trump, Saudis secure $600B investment deal to include billions in US defense weapons

President Trump on Tuesday secured a $600 billion commitment from Saudi Arabia to invest in the United States along with a multibillion-dollar defense partnership following a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh.

The investment, according to a White House fact sheet, will strengthen energy security, defense, technology and access to global infrastructure and critical minerals. It includes a $142 billion defense and security deal that equips Saudi Arabia with state-of-the-art war equipment provided by dozens of U.S. firms.

The equipment includes air and missile defense and air force and space advancements.

The White House called the deal “historic and transformative for both countries” and said it brings in “a new golden era of partnership.”

Days after Trump’s inauguration, the crown prince first announced the Arab nation would invest $600 billion in the U.S. over the four years of Trump’s second term. The White House is detailing those investments following the meeting in Saudi Arabia.

As part of the deal, Saudi Arabian company DataVolt is moving forward with plans to invest $20 billion in artificial intelligence data centers and energy infrastructure in the U.S., and top companies such as Google, Oracle, Salesforce and Uber, among others, are investing $80 billion in technologies in both countries.

Also included in the deal are infrastructure projects American companies Hill International, Jacobs, Parsons, and AECOM are taking on in Saudi Arabia, including at King Salman International Airport, to total $2 billion in U.S. services exports.

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Israeli cabinet votes to formalize annexation of occupied West Bank territory

In a landmark and highly controversial decision, Israel’s cabinet voted on 13 May to take full responsibility for land registration in Area C of the occupied West Bank – an area comprising around 60 percent of the territory and home to the vast majority of Israeli settlements. The move, pushed by far-right Ministers Israel Katz and Bezalel Smotrich, is widely being described by critics as a de facto annexation of Palestinian land.

Under the 1995 Oslo Accords, Area C was placed under temporary Israeli control, with an eventual transition to Palestinian Authority (PA) administration expected. That transition never materialized. Now, with the new cabinet resolution, any land registration efforts by Palestinians in Area C will be declared legally void by Israel. Israeli authorities plan to initiate formal land registration processes, conduct widespread land surveys, and potentially reclassify vast tracts as “state land,” opening them for settlement expansion.

Under international law, all Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank is illegal.

“This is a dangerous step toward realizing the messianic vision of the annexationist government,” said Israeli rights group Yesh Din, warning that the move violates international law and threatens the rights of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

Palestinian activists, such as Ayed Jafry from the village of Sinjil, say the policy will further entrench dispossession. “We’re now dealing directly with the occupation again,” he told Middle East Eye (MEE). “This opens the door for settlers to seize land without oversight.”

According to Israeli media, the government is changing its policy from restricting land use unless permitted to broadly permitting land claims unless explicitly prohibited. Finance Minister Smotrich declared the move part of a broader campaign of “normalization and de facto sovereignty,” aiming to eliminate any prospects for a future Palestinian state.

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