Tag: perpetual war

The New Age Militarists

Alex Karp, the CEO of the controversial military tech firm Palantir, is the coauthor of a new book, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West.

In it, he calls for a renewed sense of national purpose and even greater cooperation between government and the tech sector. His book is, in fact, not just an account of how to spur technological innovation, but a distinctly ideological tract.

As a start, Karp roundly criticizes Silicon Valley’s focus on consumer-oriented products and events like video-sharing apps, online shopping and social media platforms, which he dismisses as “the narrow and the trivial.” 

His focus instead is on what he likes to think of as innovative big-tech projects of greater social and political consequence.

He argues, in fact, that Americans face “a moment of reckoning” in which we must decide “what is this country, and for what do we stand?”

And in the process, he makes it all too clear just where he stands — in strong support of what can only be considered a new global technological arms race, fueled by close collaboration between government and industry and designed to preserve America’s “fragile geopolitical advantage over our adversaries.”

Karp believes that applying American technological expertise to building next-generation weapons systems is the genuine path to national salvation and he advocates a revival of the concept of “the West” as foundational for future freedom and collective identity. 

As Sophie Hurwitz of Mother Jones noted recently, Karp summarized this view in a letter to Palantir shareholders in which he claimed that the rise of the West wasn’t due to “the superiority of its ideas or values or religion… but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence.”

Count on one thing: Karp’s approach, if adopted, will yield billions of taxpayer dollars for Palantir and its militarized Silicon Valley cohorts in their search for AI weaponry that they see as the modern equivalent of nuclear weapons and the key to beating China, America’s current great power rival.

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Massive Explosion at Russian Nuclear Bomb Base Following Ukrainian Drone Strike

On Thursday Ukraine carried out a drone-bombing attack against a Russian nuclear weapons base 450-miles outside of Moscow resulting in a massive explosion and numerous fires which spread to neighboring cottages.

The base, Engels airfield, hosts a number of Russia’s nuclear-capable heavy bombers and cruise missiles.

A state of emergency has been declared in the area.

Ukrainian Dictator Vladimir Zelensky carried out the attack as a ceasefire agreement is underway.

Notably Ukraine carried out a drone strike on sleeping Russian civilians in Moscow the last time they came to the ‘peace’ table.

France is preparing for nuclear war, according to statements by French Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron.

A hospital in the region was also hit as well.

“A hospital in the central Russian city of Engels has sustained damage in the largest ever Ukrainian drone raid on the area, local officials have reported. The nearby regional capital, Saratov, was also targeted,” RT said Thursday.

On Monday representatives from Moscow and Washington will meet in Saudi Arabia for further peace negotiations.

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Key Coca-Cola & Pepsi Ingredient ‘Controlled By RSF Paramilitary In Sudan’

Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) is currently controlling access to a vital ingredient used in Coca-Cola and Pepsi across vast swathes of the country, according to a new report.

Gum arabic, an organic emulsifier derived from the sap of the acacia trees, is a major ingredient in a range of products, including the gigantic soft drink brands as well as soap, medicine, sweets and cosmetics. Around 70 percent of the world’s supply comes from Sudan, where the trees grow in a 200,000 square mile belt across the south of the country that is largely controlled by the RSF, according to Bloomberg.

Hisham Salih Yagoub, whose company Afritec is one of Sudan’s biggest international suppliers, told the news outlet that he regularly pays the RSF $2,500 per truck to allow transport of the product to the country’s ports.

“They stop the trucks and you have to pay for the trucks to move,” he said. “They either steal some of it or they make you pay.”

Since April 2023, Sudan has been embroiled in a brutal civil war between the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). The country has fallen into a humanitarian crisis, with 12.5 million Sudanese displaced from their homes, according to UNHCR. Thousands are estimated to have been killed.

The RSF has been accused of widespread sexual assault, looting, torture and the summary execution of civilians, while the SAF has also been censured for indiscriminate bombing campaigns.

According to documents acquired by Bloomberg, the SAF has also introduced a range of fees that amount to roughly $155 per 100kg of gum arabic being sent out of Port Sudan, meaning any transportation of gum arabic out of the country likely involves payment to groups accused of war crimes.

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Why ‘Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace’ Advocates Cling to Genocide Denial

Israel’s renewed assault on Gaza comes several months after both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch issued reports concluding without equivocation that Israel was engaged in genocide. But very few members of Congress dare to acknowledge that reality, while their silence and denials scream out complicity.

In a New York Times interview last weekend, the Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer put deep moral evasion on display. Among the “slogans” that are used when criticizing Israel, he said, “The one that bothers me the most is genocide. Genocide is described as a country or some group tries to wipe out a whole race of people, a whole nationality of people. So, if Israel was not provoked and just invaded Gaza and shot at random Palestinians, Gazans, that would be genocide. That’s not what happened.”

Schumer is wrong. The international Genocide Convention defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” – with such actions as killing, “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,” and “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.”

Such actions by Israel have been accompanied by clear evidence of genocidal intent – underscored by hundreds of statements by Israeli leaders and policy shapers. Scarcely three months into the Israeli war on Gaza, scholars Raz Segal and Penny Green pointed out, a database compiled by the Law for Palestine human rights organization “meticulously documents and collates 500 statements that embody the Israeli state’s intention to commit genocide and incitement to genocide since October 7, 2023.”

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Israel Doesn’t Care About the Captives. It Always Planned To Reboot the Genocide

What excuses has Israel given for renewing the genocide:

1. Israel says it is trying to force Hamas to release the captives in Gaza.

Yet, as we know from those already released, the indiscriminate bombing of Gaza only increases the chances the captives will be killed. There is no plausible scenario in which dropping US-supplied 2,000lb bombs across Gaza makes any Israeli held in the enclave safer or brings them home sooner.

In any case, there was a known and easy way for Israel to get the last of the captives back. They were due to be freed in the second phase of the ceasefire agreement, already well past its implementation date. But weeks ago Israel decided to tear up the agreement it had signed and impose new terms in which the rest of the captives would have to be returned – and without Israel either ceasing its fire or withdrawing from the enclave, as it had agreed to do.

What Israel’s return to genocide shows is that the Israeli government would rather kill the remaining captives – vaporising them with Trump’s latest shipment of 2,000lb bombs – than either make a concession to secure their release or place any limitation on its ability to slaughter the people of Gaza.

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Zelensky Backs Trump Proposal To Halt All Strikes On Energy Facilities

Fresh off a Wednesday morning phone call with President Trump, Zelensky has said that he backs the US proposal to halt all strikes on energy facilities in the context of the Ukraine war, according to Bloomberg. Still, he has at the same time vowed to ‘win this war’.

Just hours prior, overnight, Ukrainian drones had targeted a Russian oil facility in Krasnodar Region, resulting in damage and a large fire at a oil tank. The one-hour phone call was described as “very good” by Trump on Truth Social.

“Much of the discussion was based on the call made yesterday with President Putin in order to align both Russia and Ukraine in terms of their requests and needs,” the president wrote.

“We are very much on track, and I will ask Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, to give an accurate description of the points discussed.”

If the tit-for-tat strikes on energy facilities actually halt for the 30-day period, this could indeed jump-start other major agreements, a first in the war.

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Judge Ana Reyes Blasted for ‘Disturbing,’ Unprofessional Ruling, Hectoring DOJ Attorney on What ‘Jesus Would Say’ About Trans Soldier Ban

A D.C. judge is being accused of being one of many “activist judges” who is using her position to stymie President Donald Trump’s agenda after blocking his de facto ban on transgender people in the military.

U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes, a Biden-appointee and the first openly lesbian federal judge in D.C., blocked the Trump administration’s transgender troops ban on Tuesday night, in part citing Hamilton, a Broadway musical beloved by liberals, to justify her decision.

“The Court’s opinion is long, but its premise is simple. In the self-evident truth that ‘all people are created equal,’ all means all. Nothing more. And certainly nothing less,” the order reads, differing from the Declaration of Independence which reads, “all men are created equal.”

“Women were ‘included in the sequel’ when passage of the Nineteenth Amendment granted them the right to vote in 1920. See Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton: An American Musical (2016); compare U.S. Declaration of Independence (1776) with U.S. Const. amend. XIX (1920),” the citation reads. “That right is one of the many that thousands of transgender persons serve to protect.”

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From USS Liberty to Rachel Corrie: Israel’s Attacks on U.S. You Probably Didn’t Know About

While it has become normalized for US Presidents to openly avow that they are Zionists and pledge unconditional support to their Israeli ally, most Americans still remain unaware that Israel has repeatedly attacked and killed their fellow citizens.

During the past four years of Joe Biden’s Presidency, Israel has gotten away with murdering five American citizens, for which there have been no consequences for the US’ special relationship with Tel Aviv. Yet Israel’s attacks against America and its citizens go back much further.

In 1954, Israeli intelligence operatives planted bombs in US, British, and Egyptian civilian areas in Cairo, ranging from shopping malls, and movie theatres to diplomatic targets.

The goal was to frame Communist groups, the Muslim Brotherhood, and other actors to serve Israeli interests, convincing the US and UK to back Israel in taking military action. However, the plot, known as “The Lavon Affair” was thankfully foiled and represented a diplomatic debacle for Tel Aviv.

During the June 1967 war that Israel initiated with its “Operation Focus” surprise attack against Egypt, an American naval vessel called the USS Liberty was deliberately attacked by the Israeli military.

The incident led to the killing of 34 US sailors and the injury of 174 others, miraculously the US-flagged ship did not sink despite Israel having repeatedly assaulted it with torpedoes and even napalm.

Then US President Lyndon B. Johnson covered the event up in order to not embarrass Israel, although the ship’s survivors have campaigned for justice for years and rarely received much media attention. It is alleged that the Israeli intention behind the USS Liberty assault was to create a false-flag attack that justified American intervention in the 1967 war.

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Drugs as Weapons of War: The US CIA and the Heroin Trade

Why examine the role of the CIA in the rise of the global Heroin trade?

Three reasons-

First, during my recent travels to Rome, I learned of “Operation Blue Moon (Operazione Blue Moon),” which is widely covered in Italian press, publications, and embedded in the Italian political belief system. An account paradoxically completely absent in both the CIA declassified document reading room and in US press coverage. In Italy, “Operation Blue Moon” is shorthand for a commonly believed narrative involving collusion between the CIA and the Italian Mafia to flood dissident Italian groups with inexpensive heroin.

Second, the Chinese CCP government appears to be intentionally targeting the USA with cheap imported Fentanyl, a drug similar to Heroin in mechanism of action but much more potent and deadly. In the US, the commonly accepted narrative is that this is a form of intentional but surreptitious politically motivated chemical warfare by the CCP against American citizens intended to corrode and compromise the cultural backbone of the USA. Assuming this to be true, this strategy and associated tactics would be eerily similar to Italian claims of CIA strategy and tactics in the case of the widely held belief in the history of “Operation Blue Moon.” Tangential but related is that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was once addicted to Heroin and was convicted of felony Heroin possession.

And third, today, with what is proposed to be the complete release of the entire unredacted dossier of US Government records concerning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, we may be able to finally conclude whether or not the US CIA was involved in that seminal event. Was his assassination an internal coup? HHS Secretary RFK Jr. has repeatedly asserted that he believes that the CIA was involved in the assassinations of both his uncle and father.

Is the culture of the CIA truly so evil, so Machiavellian, that the organization would promote and facilitate the global heroin trade as a political weapon? Is it so evil that it would even participate in a violent domestic coup by assassinating a sitting US President to defend and advance its organizational interests? Or assassinate a leading presidential candidate that would likely act to reduce CIA power or even dissolve the organization? Well, the willingness of the CIA (and its corrupt partner organization USAID) to assassinate or in a multitude of other ways overturn sovereign foreign governments is well documented. As is the long history of CIA/USAID foreign election interference, including interference in Italian elections.

For those who have not read “The Prince,” Machiavellianism is a psychological trait centered on manipulation, coldness, and indifference to morality. There can be no doubt that the dominant culture of the US CIA is both Machiavellian and utilitarian – a belief system in which the ends are considered to justify the means. In the field of personality psychology, Machiavellianism is the name of a personality trait construct characterized by manipulativeness, indifference to morality, lack of empathy, and a calculated focus on self-interest. Does this sound like the culture of the CIA as you know it? Speaking for myself, it is a precise description of the trained CIA agents I have known during my career. I have come to believe that dark triad personality traits are both selected for and intentionally amplified in how CIA agents are trained. Picture “The Real” Anthony Fauci, and you have a pretty good example. A US Government bureaucrat known to surreptitiously frequent CIA headquarters, according to various whistleblowers.

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Trump Should Resist Another America-Last War in the Middle East

In his inaugural address, President Donald Trump made clear that he wants history to remember him as a “peacemaker and a unifier.” In his telling, “we will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end—and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.”

That goal is in jeopardy. Forces inside and outside his administration are trying to drag the president into more wars in the Middle East. One possibility would be an expansion of the low-level war his predecessor Joe Biden lost to the Houthis in Yemen. Another, more consequential possibility would be a full-blown war with Iran. Both wars would be losers that would damage both the country and Trump’s legacy.

Start with Yemen. In that small, impoverished country, the Houthi movement has been attacking shipping in the Red Sea since Israel attacked Gaza after the Hamas terror attack on October 7, 2023. 

The economic damage from the disruption to Red Sea shipping has been consequential, but survivable. A glance at a map makes clear who pays the cost of the disruption, however: Asia-Europe trade. Because of easy U.S. access to both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans—big, beautiful oceans, as the president might say—trade with either continent mostly doesn’t rely on the Middle East.

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