Tag: perpetual war

Israel still eyeing a limited attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities

Israel has not ruled out an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming months despite President Donald Trump telling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the U.S. was for now unwilling to support such a move, according to an Israeli official and two other people familiar with the matter.

Israeli officials have vowed to prevent Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon and Netanyahu has insisted that any negotiation with Iran must lead to the complete dismantling of its nuclear program.

U.S. and Iranian negotiators are set for a second round of preliminary nuclear talks in Rome on Saturday.

Over the past months, Israel has proposed to the Trump administration a series of options to attack Iran’s facilities, including some with late spring and summer timelines, the sources said. The plans include a mix of airstrikes and commando operations that vary in severity and could set back Tehran’s ability to weaponize its nuclear program by just months or a year or more, the sources said.

The New York Times reported on Wednesday that Trump told Netanyahu in a White House meeting earlier this month that Washington wanted to prioritize diplomatic talks with Tehran and that he was unwilling to support a strike on the country’s nuclear facilities in the short term.

But Israeli officials now believe that their military could instead launch a limited strike on Iran that would require less U.S. support. Such an attack would be significantly smaller than those Israel initially proposed.

It is unclear if or when Israel would move forward with such a strike, especially with talks on a nuclear deal getting started. Such a move would likely alienate Trump and could risk broader U.S. support for Israel.

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Nine US military planes deliver bunker-busting bombs to Israel: Report

Nine US military transport aircraft loaded with bunker-busting bombs landed at an Israeli airbase near Tel Aviv in the past 24 hours, Israel’s public broadcaster said Thursday, Anadolu reports.

“Nine US transport planes carrying bunker-busting bombs and other defensive weapons landed at Nevatim Airbase near Tel Aviv, in central Israel,” the Israeli broadcasting authority KAN reported.

It added that the move comes “in anticipation of a possible joint US-Israeli strike, should nuclear negotiations between Washington and Tehran fail.”​​​​​​​

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Did Ukrainian Intel Attempt Trump Assassination?

For weeks, the mainstream media has been gripped by mania over Nikita Casap, a teenage resident of rural Wisconsin accused of murdering his mother and stepfather, in order to finance an elaborate scheme to assassinate US President Donald Trump and instigate a nationwide race war. News outlets have given the case blanket coverage. This has included extensive investigative timelines, psychological profiles speculating on the 17-year-old’s motives and mental state, and even cautions that federal funding cuts could prevent similar plots being foiled in future.

Eerily absent from this inexorable flurry of coverage, however, has been much if any reference to how Casap was no lone wolf, but a component of a wider conspiracy coordinated with and directed by as yet unidentified actors in Ukraine. Even more damningly, there has been zero consideration of whether the intended assassination of Trump was one way or another orchestrated by Kiev’s security and intelligence services, in order to sabotage ongoing peace negotiations between Moscow and Washington.

This glaring oversight is all the more inexcusable given the contents of a publicly-accessible FBI affidavit. It contains numerous excerpts of private conversations conducted over prior months via Telegram between Casap and pseudonymous individuals with Ukrainian telephone numbers in Cyrillic, discussing the killing of Trump in some detail. In one such chat, Casap posed a variety of questions to an anonymous Ukrainian user, amply indicating he expected to be extracted to Kiev once he took Trump out.

“How long will I need to hide before I will be moved to Ukraine?” he enquired, adding, “I probably should brush up on my Russian.” He further asked, “So while in Ukraine, I’ll be able to get a normal job and have a normal life? Even if when [sic] it’s found out I did it?” In an even more revealing exchange in January, Casap asked an “unknown” confederate “what country do you think will get the blame for this?” They stated plainly:

“Russia will be blamed for it, this is the goal.”

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Nova festival founder outed as Israeli intel collaborator involved in Gaza genocide

As Fox News seethes over pro-Palestine slogans at a California music festival, founders of the Israeli rave attacked on Oct 7 claim to be “deeply hurt” by the display. Yet one of the founders has openly bragged of serving as a top Israeli military intelligence asset involved in the Gaza genocide.

Amid a full-blown corporate media freakout over Irish hip hop trio Kneecap projecting “Fuck Israel – Free Palestine” during their set at the Southern California music festival Coachella, the founders of the Israeli Supernova Music festival issued a statement demanding the rappers make amends for having “deeply hurt many in our community” with their alleged “affront” against the Israeli rave community.

“The Nova community was built on the ideals of peace, freedom, and unity through music,” reads a solemn message from the Tribe of Nova Foundation, which was immediately re-broadcast on social media by at least one former official Israeli propagandist. “Our festival was a space where people came together – across cultures and beliefs – to celebrate life. That’s why we believe that even in the face of ignorance or provocation, our response must be rooted in empathy, not hate.”

A review of one of the group’s cofounder’s online activities, however, reveals that rather than the peace-loving hippie he purports to be, he’s taken an active and ambitious role in Israeli intelligence operations in the time since October 7.

Yet as independent researcher “12 Ball” noted on Twitter/X, the day after concertgoers died amid Israel’s response to armed Hamas incursions, Nimrod Arnin – who helped organize the rave and is listed as a Tribe of Nova foundation co-founder – leapt into action to help Israel’s military unleash fire and fury on Gaza.

On Oct 8, Arnin co-founded “Cobalt Complex, an autonomous OSINT & civilian web intelligence (WEBINT) operations center that operated independently to support Israel’s intelligence apparatus at the outset of the Iron Swords War,” he wrote on his LinkedIn profile, using the official Israeli euphemism for its genocidal siege of Gaza.

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Close the US Military Bases in Asia

President Donald Trump is again loudly complaining that the U.S. military bases in Asia are too costly for the U.S. to bear.  As part of the new round of tariff negotiations with Japan and Korea, Trump is calling on Japan and Korea to pay for stationing the U.S. troops. 

Here’s a much better idea: close the bases and return the U.S. service members to the U.S.  

Trump implies that the U.S. is providing a great service to Japan and Korea by stationing 50,000 troops in Japan and nearly 30,000 in Korea.  Yet these countries do not need the U.S. to defend themselves. 

They are wealthy and can certainly provide their own defense.  Far more importantly, diplomacy can ensure the peace in northeast Asia far more effectively and far less expensively than U.S. troops.      

The U.S. acts as if Japan needs to be defended against China.  Let’s have a look.  During the past 1,000 years, during which time China was the region’s dominant power for all but the last 150 years, how many times did China attempt to invade Japan?  If you answered zero, you are correct.  China did not attempt to invade Japan on a single occasion.

You might quibble.  What about the two attempts in 1274 and 1281, roughly 750 years ago? It’s true that when the Mongols temporarily ruled China between 1271 and 1368, they twice sent expeditionary fleets to invade Japan, and both times were defeated by a combination of typhoons (known in Japanese lore as the Kamikaze winds) and by Japanese coastal defenses.  

Japan, on the other hand, made several attempts to attack or conquer China. 

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Russia Resumes ‘Special Military Operation’ After 30-Hour Easter Truce Expires, Moscow Says

Russian forces have resumed military operations against Ukraine following the expiration on April 21 of a 30-hour cease-fire, which Moscow unilaterally announced last weekend to mark the Easter holiday.

“With the expiry of the truce, the Russian Armed Forces continued the special military operation,” Moscow’s defense ministry stated, referring to its ongoing invasion of eastern Ukraine.

In a statement cited by Russia’s TASS news agency, the ministry claimed that Russian forces had strictly observed the Easter cease-fire, which lasted from 6 p.m. on April 19 to midnight on April 20 (Moscow time).

Hours after the truce expired, the Ukrainian air force said Russia had fired a number of missiles and drones into Ukraine’s Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, and Cherkasy regions.

According to the Ukrainian air force, most incoming drones were successfully neutralized by air defense batteries.

Ukrainian officials said that no deaths or injuries—or any significant material damage—had so far been reported as a result of the renewed Russian attacks.

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Military Finds Physical Reality Shatters DEI-Fueled Theories About The Sexes

Ten years have passed since the Department of Defense initiated a social experiment with women in the military. Pentagon officials promised that female trainees headed for previously all-male combat arms units would have to meet the exact same standards as men. Has the experiment played out as promised?

We are about to find out. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s March 30 memorandum calls for a 60-day review to achieve high, uncompromised standards in combat arms units such as the infantry, special operations, and other occupations with extraordinary physical demands. 

Thanks to a series of executive orders that President Donald Trump has issued since January, Hegseth’s six-month implementation period should proceed without equivocation or distractions related to percentage-based diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) quotas. Wrote Hegseth, “[I]t is essential to identify which positions require heightened entry-level and sustained physical fitness.”

An honest review of contemporary policies regarding women in the military should reflect sound priorities unrelated to DEI. Career opportunities are important, but if there is a conflict, the needs of the military must come first.

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Fateful Errors: Why NATO Leaders Should Have Listened to George Kennan in 1997

In 1997, veteran U.S. diplomat George Kennan stated that ‘expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American foreign policy in the entire post-Cold War era’. Twenty-eight years later, who would say he was wrong?

George Kennan famously authored the U.S. policy of containment of the Soviet Union, in an article in the New York Times of 1947, which he signed X, to maintain his anonymity. His view was that containment would lead to the eventual break up or mellowing of Soviet power and, as it turns out, the former prediction came to pass.

Yet, he was opposed to the expansion of NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Union and argued that asking European nations to choose between NATO and Russia would eventually lead to conflict.

In an article in the New York Times of 5 February 1997 he asked: ‘Why, with all the hopeful possibilities engendered by the end of the cold war, should East-West relations become centred on the question of who would be allied with whom and, by implication, against whom in some fanciful, totally unforeseeable and most improbable future military conflict?’

His article was intended to influence discussions ahead of the July 1997 NATO Summit in Madrid which would consider the planned expansion of NATO to include the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. Each state had suffered under Soviet repression after World War II but were now free and democratic after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact.

Kennan’s warning went unheeded, the NATO Summit agreed to the inclusion of three of the four former Warsaw Pact countries within NATO, excluding Slovakia which had not received the required number of votes in a referendum.

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Does Zelensky Want Peace or War?

Considerable attention has been paid to whether Russian President Vladimir Putin is serious about negotiating a peace or whether he is delaying to provide time to achieve all of Russia’s goals on the battlefield. The Kremlin, itself, has said that, though they take the Trump administration’s diplomatic efforts seriously, they cannot simply be accepted “as they are” because they have not yet addressed “Russia’s core demand, that is, the need to resolve the issues stemming from the root causes of this conflict.”

Russia has been accused by some of rejecting Trump’s ceasefire. The Kremlin has called the issue “complex” and cautioned against expectations of “immediate results.” Some of Russia’s “core demands,” like guarantees Ukraine won’t join NATO and protection for ethnic Russians in Ukraine, are reasonable; some, like maximal restrictions on the Ukrainian armed forces and Ukraine ceding more territory at the negotiating table than it has lost on the battlefield, are not.

Less attention has been paid to whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is serious about negotiating a peace. Though it is frequently claimed that, unlike Putin, Zelensky has accepted the Trump administration’s ceasefire without preconditions, like Russia, Ukraine has set preconditions. Zelensky has stipulated that children abducted by Russia and Ukrainian civilians illegally held by Russia must be returned. He has identified as red lines, reasonably, that no territory beyond that already occupied by Russia be ceded, and, more unreasonably, that adequate security guarantees be given. Unreasonable because those security guarantees, as Zelensky has previously made clear, must be NATO membership or international forces that include the United States. Recently, Ukraine added the red line that it could not accept limitations on its armed forces: “This is a principled position of Ukraine – no one, and certainly not the aggressor country Russia, will dictate to Ukraine what kind of armed forces Ukraine should have.”

But more immediately, and more provocatively, there has recently been a series of events that Ukraine has seized upon and potentially enhanced to provide a cause for increased Western aid and intervention. Standing between the Trump administration, who is trying to negotiate an end to the war, and Europe, who seems determined to continue the war, Zelensky has bought the rights to these true events and produced stories that may dramatically enhance the facts in order to provide the motivation to bring the U.S. back into the war.

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Congressman Visits Ukraine Frontlines, Filmed Firing Heavy Weapon

Apparently trying to out-hawk the late John McCain, Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick has described that he recently traveled to Ukraine and spent several days at the front lines.

The 51-year old Republican rep from Pennsylvania spent a total of a week inside the war-ravaged country, visiting soldiers while making declarations that Ukraine and the US will defeat the Russian military.

Fitzpatrick even did a provocative photo op wherein he signed an artillery shell “to Putin”. And even more alarming is that he filmed himself firing a large gun, which may have been an anti-aircraft weapon.

It’s unclear whether he was manning the gun near an actual combat zone, or if he was really engaging a target. Likely it was at some kind of training or firing range.

Still, it’s clear the Congressman was trying to be as provocative against the Russians as possible, at a moment a Republican president is trying to forge peace between Moscow and Kiev.

Crucially, Fitzpatrick traveled around with Ukraine’s National Guard Artillery and Third Assault Brigade – the latter which is made up of Azov Special Operations soldiers and is commanded by Andriy Biletsky, who has long been accused of having neo-Nazi links and ideology.

He wrote on X after the trip, “It was my profound honor to deliver a very ‘personal’ message to Vladimir Putin today, from the front lines of the war near the Russian border, on behalf of our PA-1 community.  The only permissible details to share are that ‘the message was delivered on target.’“

This does suggest he may have been firing on or near an actual war zone – though the security risks would be enough to probably prevent him from getting very close to any real fighting.

Fitzpatrick has been receiving significant backlash over the stunt, especially as it could harm the cause of Trump’s efforts to negotiate peace settlement. In addressing ‘messages’ directly to Putin, it seems a deliberate effort at sabotaging peace.

Gen. Mike Flynn (ret.) ripped the Congressman, saying on X: “How stupid can you be?”

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