Tag: perpetual war

No Talks With the U.S., Says Iran

In response to the Trump administration announcing another round of sanctions on Iranian oil as part of the “maximum pressure” strategy for dealing with the recalcitrant muslim theocracy, the Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi declared Tuesday that his country would not begin formal negotiations with the United States.

“Iran’s position regarding nuclear talks is clear, and we will not negotiate under pressure and sanctions,” he said during a press conference.

The country’s position could complicate a potential effort by Trump to create a deal regulating the Iranian nuclear program. The U.S. pulled out of the previous deal, the JCPOA, in Trump’s first term; the president argued that it was “the worst deal ever.”

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U.S. Votes Against UN Resolution Fully Blaming Russia for Ukraine War

The United States voted Tuesday against a three-page United Nations resolution that placed the blame for the ongoing Russia–Ukraine conflict solely on Russia. The resolution came on the third anniversary of the start of the Ukraine War, and passed the UN General Assembly with a vote of 93 in favor and 18 against, with 65 countries abstaining.

Israel also voted against the resolution placing the blame solely on Russia. The Israeli foreign ministry clarified that its position is intended to back the U.S. efforts to end the war, telling the Time of Israel, “Israel believes it is important to support the American effort aimed at bringing about progress in efforts to end the war and resolve the conflict peacefully.”

Notable absentations from the resolution include India, China, and all of the other BRICS members except Egypt and Indonesia, which voted for the resolution. All EU member-states except Hungary also voted for the resolution. 

In contrast to the resolution adopted by the General Assembly fully condemning Russia, the UN Security Council adopted a U.S. resolution calling for an end to the conflict and mourning the loss of life without assigning blame. This American resolution was backed by 10 of the 15 members of the Security Council, with the other five abstaining. Russia backed the American resolution after failing to amend it.

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Turkey Warns That Netanyahu Will Resume Gaza War Once All Captives Released

The first phase of the Hamas-Israel ceasefire is coming to a close, with Hamas Thursday night expected to handover the bodies of four more deceased Israelis. This time there won’t be a handover ceremony, after outraged Israeli officials threatened it could collapse the deal and all progress made.

Negotiations for the second phase don’t really appear to have gotten of the ground as yet. The first phase took effect Jan.19 – and has resulted in the release of 25 living hostages by Hamas, as well as the bodies of four more.

The deal called for the exchange of some 2,000 Palestinian detainees and prisoners held by Israel. Over 60 Israeli hostages still believed to be held in Israel, but some half are suspected to be dead at this point.

Conditions in the Gaza Strip continue to deteriorate amid winter conditions. “Sila Abdul Qader is the seventh child confirmed to have died from the cold in Gaza in just 24 hours,” Al Jazeera reports Thursday.

Meanwhile, Turkey is warning that once Israel gets all its citizens back, Prime Minister Netanyahu will simply resume the war, also as the White House has been vocalizing plans for a total displacement of the Palestinian civilian population there:

In an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera, Turkiye’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan says he fears Israel will resume the war on Gaza after all the captives are released.

“As it is known, an ethnic cleansing war was witnessed by the whole world; almost 60,000 civilian Palestinians were killed, most of them were women and children. This must never reoccur,” Fidan said.

“However, it is feared that once all Israeli captives are released, Netanyahu will resume the war. There are deep concerns in this respect and they give rise to constant threats within the region,” he said.

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Netanyahu Views the Hostages as His Excuse To Restart the Slaughter

Israel sustained the West’s support for its slaughter in Gaza for 15 months only through an intensive campaign of lies.

It invented particularly heinous Hamas war crimes, such baby beheadings and mass rape, for which no evidence has ever been produced. Conversely, it played down its own, even graver war crimes in response to Hamas’ attack on Israel.

With Hamas’ October 2023 crimes ever-more distant in the rear-view mirror, and Israeli crimes still all too visible in Gaza’s complete destruction – amounting to a “plausible” genocide, according to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – Israeli leaders have been desperately trying to shift attention to a fresh narrative battleground.

They need a new set of lies to justify resuming the slaughter. And as ever, the western establishment media are actively assisting.

Both Hamas and Israel are playing a predictable propaganda game, using the regular exchanges of Israeli and Palestinian hostages in the ceasefire’s first phase to seize the moral high ground.

Israel once again has all the cards, care of rock-solid western support, and yet once again it is failing to win the public relations war.

Which explains why Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threw another of his temper tantrums at the weekend, this time blaming Hamas for stage-managing the release of Israelis in what he called “demeaning” and “humiliating ceremonies”.

Israel and its supporters were particularly incensed, it seems, by one of the captives, released on Saturday, beaming on stage as he warmly kissed two of his captors on the forehead.

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Bibas family threatens to sue Israeli govt as official propaganda on hostage killings unravels

The Bibas family demands the Israeli government cease exploiting the deaths of their family members for propaganda purposes as layers of evidence support claims an Israeli airstrike killed them.

The relatives of an Israeli family killed while in Hamas captivity in Gaza have demanded the government stop making statements attributing blame for the killings of their loved ones, threatening to “take all legal measures at their disposal” if the Netanyahu administration refuses to comply. The request came three days after a declaration by Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari that Palestinian “terrorists” had “deliberately” killed two young members of the Bibas family “with their bare hands.”

Lawyers representing surviving members of the Bibas family have accused government ministries of seeking to exploit their plight for propaganda purposes, complaining “the family continues to receive, surprisingly, repeated inquiries from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Information System… with the aim of satisfying the public’s voyeuristic instinct.”

“Although it is surprising that it is necessary to request and emphasize this,” the lawyers continued, “we ask once again and in every language of request that all parties” be instructed “not to contact the family, nor to speak with any professional party entrusted with conducting the examinations regarding the circumstances of the murder and the condition of the deceased.”

Read the Bibas family’s letter to Netanyahu and other officials here.

The Bibas family has become a symbol of the plight of Israelis taken captive on October 7, but the truth behind their experience remains obscured by official spin. All four family members were taken captive on Oct. 7, but the father was separated in the chaos. 

While he survived his time in Hamas and was later released to Israel, his wife, Shiri, and two young sons, Kfir and Ariel, were killed while in the custody of the Mujahedin Brigades, a smaller, lesser known faction. According to a Mujahedin Brigades commander, “When [Shiri Bibas] was captured [on October 7], we sent her children with her out of compassion for them. The Israeli occupation killed her along with her children after bombing them along with their captors.”

The commander also declared that Shiri Bibas had served as a soldier in the Israeli army’s Unit 8200 intelligence division, which spies on and seeks to compromise Gaza residents, and later served in the army’s Gaza Division.

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Top Israeli Calls for the Killing of All Palestinian Adults in Gaza: Report

Nissim Vaturi, the deputy speaker of Israel’s Knesset, sounded like a Fox News host on Sunday when he called for the murder of every adult male in Gaza.

The New Arab reported that Vaturi, a member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, indicated to an Israeli radio station that there are no innocent Palestinians and that the IDF is being too “considerate” in the enclave.

“We need to separate the children and women and kill the adults in Gaza, we are being too considerate,” he said, calling them “scum and subhumans.”

He also called on the IDF to turn the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank into Gaza.

Vaturi’s comments — if they were directed at any other group of people in the world — would be met with scorn and disbelief, but his position is the same as many politicians in Washington and commentators on network news channels.

Martin Oliner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s appointee on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, penned a recent column claiming that Gazans are fundamentally evil and unworthy of mercy.

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Trump’s Mineral Deal and Pillaging Ukraine

Normally, it is the country that defeated you in war, and not the country that defended you, that pillages you after the war. Unfortunately for Ukraine, its biggest military defender is set to pillage its resources as the two countries have now signed a minerals agreement after Trump warned that a refusal to sign would have led to “a lot of problems” for Ukraine.

Many mistakes have been made in the war over Ukraine’s minerals: Zelensky may have made a mistake in his strategy, and Trump may be mistaken in facts.

Offering Ukraine’s natural resources to the U.S. was Ukraine’s idea. As Biden yielded the White House to Trump, the Zelensky team saw Trump as less of a cold warrior and more of a transactional businessman. So, their strategy took on a new tone.

When Zelensky pitched his Ukrainian Victory Plan to the United States, he introduced a new idea: “[j]oint protection by the US and the EU of Ukraine’s critical natural resources and joint use of their economic potential.” In exchange for sustained and increased military aid, Zelensky offered the U.S and EU “an agreement… that would allow for joint investments and use of Ukraine’s natural resources, which Zelenskiy said were worth trillions of dollars.”

According to The Washington Post, Ukraine’s goal was to “convince Trump that Ukraine is not a charity case but a cost-effective economic and geostrategic opportunity that will ultimately enrich and secure the United States and its interests.”

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Fire the Washington War Party

President Donald Trump gets a lot of things wrong. Chief among them is his crazy plan to ethnically cleanse two million Palestinians from the smoking ruins of Gaza.

But he also gets some very important things very right.

Trump managed to end the longest war in US history, Afghanistan, by cutting off the money that fueled this absurd conflict. Without Trump’s forceful intervention, this conflict could have dragged on for another decade and cost yet another $2 trillion. None of the generals or politicians involved had the guts or sense to end this pointless war.

Now, it appears that Trump may be doing it again in the other pointless war, Ukraine. The US has lavished at least $175 billion fueling the Ukraine War. Given that some of the US aid is hidden or obscured, the true figure may be over $200 billion – this by the US which is deep in hock with a monster debt of $36 trillion which it can’t pay back.

The fact is that CIA and State Department mounted a coup costing $5 billion (according to the senior State Department official, Victoria Nuland who organized it) that overthrew Ukraine’s pro-Moscow regime. It’s worth recalling that Ukraine was an integral party of Russia for hundreds of years – longer than Virginia has been part of the USA. Many Ukrainians want full independence from Moscow – others, particularly Russian-speakers, do not. The conflict in Ukraine is a civil war fueled by the western powers in an effort to fragment the Russian Federation and Balkanize its parts.

For Washington’s pro-war neoconservatives, further shattering the former Soviet Union is the ideal strategy. But the neocons and armchair amateurs who led the Biden administration were so blinded by their hatred of Russia and world power ambitions that they utterly failed to see how they were bringing Russia and the US to the edge of war. In fact, the US and some European allies were waging economic and military warfare against Russia that could have gone nuclear at any time.

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UNREPORTED: Ukraine’s parliament fails to extend Volodymyr Zelensky’s presidential term

Ukrainian Parliament failed to pass the vote recognizing Zelensky as president until the inauguration of a new Head of state.

This is a signal: Leave.

Through this vote, the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament) made clear to Zelensky there will be no indefinite mandate.

Europe expected “stability” and “support” for him, but saw a parliament setting a countdown timer for Zelensky.

EU leaders arrived in Kiev today to stand in solidarity with Zelensky.

The vote was held to disprove of Trump’s 4% statement but that didn’t happen, an agreement could not be reached on the legitimacy of Zelensky as president.

This is a slap in the face by Parliament to Zelensky, essentially telling him your days are numbered.

The U.S. will have to negotiate with those who will come to power. Ukraine needs not temporary figures but leaders who act firmly and pragmatically—without hysteria, illusions, or artificial power retention scenarios.

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France Eyeing Deployment Of Nuclear-Armed Rafale Fighters To Germany: Report

France is apparently looking at the possibility of deploying air-launched nuclear weapons to Germany, a consideration that’s being made amid growing concerns that the United States will no longer guarantee European security under NATO. Broader discussions about nuclear deterrence among European leaders point very clearly to the deepening crisis in the transatlantic alliance under U.S. President Donald Trump, emphasized by calls from German leader-in-waiting Friedrich Merz for talks with his British and French colleagues about European “nuclear sharing or at least nuclear security.”

According to a report in the British newspaper The Telegraph, which cites an unnamed French official, “Posting a few French nuclear jet fighters in Germany should not be difficult and would send a strong message” to Russia, which would aim to bolster Europe’s nuclear deterrent.

While it’s unclear how seriously the proposal is being discussed at the highest levels in France, there is a logic behind raising the idea at this point in public.

In France, there is now an increasing focus on building up Europe’s capacity to provide a defensive bulwark against Russia, as Trump shifts to embrace Moscow. The result has been a growing rift between the United States and its European NATO allies, with differing positions on the continued provision of support for Ukraine looming large.

Evidence of this fractious relationship was provided in a meeting between Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron in Washington yesterday, in which Ukraine was again atop the agenda. Trump refused to provide security guarantees to Ukraine once a potential peace deal is signed.

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