Tag: perpetual war

US B-52 Bomber Flies With Israeli Jets Over Eastern Mediterranean

A US B-52 Stratrofortress bomber flew over the eastern Mediterranean Sea on March 4, marking the third US flyover of the Middle East in the past month, shows of force that are meant as threats toward Iran and its allies in the region.

“Israeli F-35i and F-15i aircraft flew alongside an American US B-52 strategic bomber,” the Israeli military said in a statement on Thursday. “During the flight, the forces practiced operational coordination between the two militaries to enhance their ability to address various regional threats.”

US Central Command (CENTCOM) confirmed that it conducted a “Bomber Task Force Mission in the Middle East.” It said the B-52, which is capable of carrying nuclear weapons, took off from a base in the UK and flew across Europe on its way to the Middle East.

According to Air & Space Forces Magazine, the US bomber “orbited off the coast of Israel,” meaning it likely flew near the besieged Gaza Strip.

The flight came just two weeks after the US sent two B-52 bombers over the Middle East on February 20. CENTCOM said the two bombers “flew across Europe and six partner countries in CENTCOM’s area of responsibility during their mission, which included aerial refueling and training missions at ranges.”

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Israel Cuts Electricity to Gaza, Ramping Up Collective Punishment

Israel on Sunday said it was cutting off electricity to the Gaza Strip as it ramps up the collective punishment of the civilian population to pressure Hamas to release Israeli hostages, violating the ceasefire deal reached in January.

Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen made the announcement, saying he instructed the Israel Electric Corporation to immediately stop selling electricity to power stations in Gaza.

“We will employ all the tools available to us so that all the hostages will return, and we will ensure that Hamas won’t be in Gaza on the ‘day after,’” Cohen said. The move is expected to impact Gaza’s water supply since electricity powers desalination plants that produce drinking water.

Since March 2, Israel has blocked the entry of aid, medicine, fuel, and all other goods into Gaza. The UN’s World Food Program has warned that it’s running out of food supplies in Gaza, and Palestinians report a sharp rise in prices since Israel imposed the total siege.

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What is Happening in Syria is Just What Obama and Biden Wanted

The news out of Syria is nothing short of horrific, and it provides a fresh illustration of what a catastrophic failure the Obama strategy in the Middle East has been. 

Greek City Times reported that “hundreds of Christians, including Greek Orthodox, and Alawites have been killed after clashes broke out on Thursday in the Latakia and Tartous regions on Syria’s Mediterranean coast, according to a human rights monitoring group.” 

That death toll may be a tragic underestimation. Greek City Times added that “the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) said on Friday that more than 225 people have been killed since Thursday. However, this is believed to be a gross underreporting, with activists on the ground, such as Coast Youth Forum, believing the death toll could be as high as 1,800, mostly Alawites, but also Christians.”

The perpetrators are members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamic jihad group that toppled the Assad regime and took control of Syria several months ago. But the groundwork for what is happening in Syria now was laid years ago, and is the direct result of policies that Barack Obama and Old Joe Biden (you know, the guy known as “Obama’s Third Term”) pursued. According to a revealing Apr. 2022 piece in RealClearInvestigations, Obama apparatchiks who had returned to positions in the Biden regime “coordinated with the jihadist franchise in an effort to topple the Syrian regime – while claiming they backed only the ‘moderate opposition.’” 

The article noted that “in waging a multi-billion dollar covert war in support of the insurgency against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, top Obama officials who now serve under Biden made it American policy to enable and arm terrorist groups that attracted jihadi fighters from across the globe. This regime change campaign, undertaken one decade after Al Qaeda attacked the U.S. on 9/11, helped a sworn U.S. enemy establish the Idlib safe haven that it still controls today.” In the course of this astoundingly foolish campaign, Old Joe’s future National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who was then Director of Policy Planning, wrote to his boss, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, “AQ [Al Qaeda] is on our side in Syria.” 

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Report Suggests U.S. Will Cease Future Military Exercises in Europe

According to reports, the U.S. has conveyed to its allies that it does not plan to participate in future military exercises in Europe.

Exercises scheduled through 2025 are not impacted by the freeze.

Swedish outlet Expressen reports, “If the ruling remains in force, it means that Sweden and the rest of the NATO member states will have to plan exercises without the participation of the United States or small American units in the air force.”

Per Expressen: (via Google Translate)

The information is scarce, but the announcement concerns exercises where the US is an important piece of the puzzle for the entirety of the exercise activities in Europe and, by extension, the defense of the European continent.

According to Expressen’s sources, the American planning freeze does not apply to exercises that have been decided to be carried out in 2025.

It concerns exercises that are currently on the “drawing board”, i.e. a little further ahead, says one of Expressen’s sources.

If the announcement stands, it means that Sweden and other NATO countries are forced to plan exercises without American participation or with only small American units in the exercises.

The news, if accurate, underscores President Trump’s position regarding NATO countries and his criticism of their failure to meet the current goal of spending two percent of GDP on defense.

President Trump has asserted that the U.S. accounts for over 70% of NATO’s funding.

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A Disastrous British-Led Operation in Ukraine: ‘The Krynky Landing’

UK military operation planners became central to an investigation after a failed mission that involved Ukrainian troops attempting to establish a foothold on the left bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast. This operation dubbed “Krynky Landing” initiated in October 2023, aimed to seize and maintain control over a section of territory held by the Russians, before pushing toward Crimea, and reaching all the way to the Perekop isthmus. It ended in tragedy in July of 2024.

As a result, an estimated 788 Ukrainian soldiers who defended Krynky in Kherson Oblast are now reported to be either dead or ‘missing in action.’

Not surprisingly, both Ukrainian officials and their NATO supervisors are keen to bury this story, as well as the massive number of Ukrainian casualties incurred during this military debacle.

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Poland & Baltic Nations Welcome Macron’s Words Of Nuclear Escalation Aimed At Russia

Poland as well as Baltic nations have expressed approval of Wednesday’s ultra-provocative words by French President Emmanuel Macron which floated the idea of using France’s nuclear deterrent to protect the European continent from Russian threats.

Macron said he is opening a “strategic debate” on possibly extending France’s nuclear umbrella to all of Europe – a role currently played by US nukes stationed in NATO countries. He claimed in the televised address that unless Putin is defeated in Ukraine, he will threaten other European countries with invasion. 

Throughout the more than three-year long Ukraine war the tiny Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have been outsized in their hawkish anti-Moscow rhetoric.

France remains the only nuclear power in the European Union, and it possesses some 290 nuclear warheads – according to media estimates – which is why Russian leaders quickly slammed the Macron comments as “extremely confrontational”

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‘We Can’t Stop Them’ – Thousands Of Ukraine Troops Suddenly Face Encirclement In Russia’s Kursk

The fuse has been burning slowly, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s risky August invasion of Russia’s Kursk region is about to blow up in his face in spectacular fashion — as thousands of Ukrainian soldiers are suddenly in imminent peril of being encircled, according to open source intelligence analysts. The crisis comes as Zelensky is under increasing US pressure to reach a negotiated end to the war — and a loss of captured Russian territory promises to make his already-deteriorated bargaining position even weaker. 

According to DeepStateMAP.live, an interactive map of the war run by Ukrainian military bloggers, their country’s forces in Kursk are nearly cleaved into two, with roughly three-quarters of Ukraine’s forces in Russia almost entirely surrounded on Friday. Their last connection between the two forces was a kilometer long and under 500 meters wide at its thinnest section. 

Black Bird Group military analyst Pasi Paroinen summed up the state of affairs for Reuters: 

“The situation (for Ukraine in Kursk) is very bad. Now there is not much left until Ukrainian forces will either be encircled or forced to withdraw. And withdrawal would mean running a dangerous gauntlet, where the forces would be constantly threatened by Russian drones and artillery.” 

Ukraine’s Kursk gambit, which surprised the world, was intended to stall Russia’s steady advances in eastern Ukraine, with hopes that Russia would be forced to engage in a major redeployment of forces to deal with the capture of Russian territory. Ukraine’s hold on the territory was also seen as a bargaining chip for Zelensky as the war now seems destined for a negotiated end. Not only does that chip appear to be vanishing, Putin could end up with a some new chips of its own — as Russia may soon have thousands more Ukrainian prisoners of war among its assets.  

In late February, Russia’s defense ministry said its forces had regained control of 64% of Kursk territory initially seized by Ukraine. Kiev’s cross-border offensive started in early August 2024 and has managed to control dozens of towns and villages and hundreds of square kilometers of territory. That accomplishment has reportedly been aided by thousands of North Korean soldiers, with reports that one to three thousand more were being sent in February. North Korea has denied its soldiers are fighting in the war.  

The New York Times reports that Russia is on the brink of a major victory in Kursk thanks to the coordinated work of North Korean troops and Russian drone units, advancing with the aid of intense Russian artillery and air bombardment. Ukrainian soldiers report an overwhelming concentration of new, fiber-optic drones that are controlled by an ultrathin cable rather than radio signals that are vulnerable to electronic jamming.

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Poland to Increase Defence Spending to Five Per Cent, Build a Half Million Man Army, Says PM Tusk

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced a number of new initiatives to bolster defence in a speech in Warsaw, as European powers appear set to comply with U.S. President Donald Trump’s demands that the continent pay for its own protection rather than relying on America.

Speaking before the Sjem parliament, Prime Minister Tusk declared Friday: “Hope is no substitute for strategy. Hope is a beautiful feeling, but in politics, it is often adjacent to naivety or illusion… Today, Europe is beginning to understand that since the United States expects much greater outlays, determination and courage from us, it must be met.”

Despite already being one of the top spenders in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on NATO defence at around 4 per cent, Poland should increase its spending to at least five per cent of GDP, Tusk said, according to the Gazeta Wyborcza.

This goal puts Poland in line with Estonia and Lithuania as the first countries in Europe to agree to U.S. President Donald Trump’s call for NATO allies to increase their defence spending to at least five per cent of GDP compared to the current baseline of two per cent, which is still unmet by many within the alliance.

Additionally, Prime Minister Tusk called for Poland to build an army of at least half a million people, including reservists, up from around 200,000 today. To help accomplish this aim, the Polish leader called for the return of military training for all adult men in the country.

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U.S. Satellite Mapping Company Maxar Technologies Blocks Ukraine’s Access to Imagery, In a Renewed Blow to Kiev’s War Effort

The information coming from satellites, spy planes, surveillance drones and even balloons, along with SIGINT (signals Intel) and human assets hands the information to direct your artillery and drone firepower – to the point where we can say that the ‘surprise element’ has almost disappeared from modern warfare.

While thew Ukrainian forces have been putting up a gallant defense, it is only with the use of NATO top gear – and also with the US intel sharing in real time – that Ukraine has been able to avert a total catastrophe, even if they did lose over 20% of its territory, including most coastal areas.

But now, without US military aid deliveries, and with intel sharing blocked, Kiev has a big incentive to come to the negotiating table.

Today (7), it arose that another capability was withheld from Ukraine as US President Donald J. Trump turns on the screws on Volodymyr Zelensky.

Politico reported:

“U.S. satellite mapping company Maxar Technologies has blocked Ukraine’s access to its imagery, according to a report by Ukrainian defense outlet Militarnyi.”

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AfD Demands German Nuclear Arsenal Amid Shifting Geopolitical Landscape

As seismic geopolitical shifts unfold and Europe’s dependence on the U.S. for security grows increasingly uncertain, the right-wing, anti-globalist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is urging Germany to develop its own nuclear arsenal and reinstate universal military conscription—including for women.

Speaking to the German news outlet T-Online in an interview on Thursday, March 6th, AfD MP Rüdiger Lucassen, a former Bundeswehr colonel who serves as the party’s chief defense expert, argued that Germany can no longer depend on Washington’s nuclear shield to ensure it’s security.

“If the U.S. steps back, Europe must step up,” Lucassen stated, calling for an independent European security structure with Germany at its core. “We need our own nuclear deterrent, a European command structure, and a military capable of defending itself. That means changing the Basic Law—fast.”

While clarifying that he isn’t suggesting some kind of Russian attack is imminent, Lucassen said it was nevertheless a possibility that responsible German leaders ought to prepare for. The former Bundeswehr colonel’s concerns were echoed by Hannes Gnauk, another member of AfD’s faction in the German Bundestag, who has also called for Germany to develop its own nuclear weapons stockpile.

Gnauk’s take on Russia and its proper relationship to Germany is slightly different from the former colonel’s, however, as he advocates for pragmatic economic ties while acknowledging that Moscow is neither a friend nor an enemy.

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