Tag: perpetual war

In Syria, the Barbarians Aren’t at the Gate, They’re in Power With Western Support

Atrocities are being committed every day in Syria by the new rulers, according to Irish writer and peace activist Declan Hayes.

However, the Western corporate-run media are ignoring or censoring the horrific reality because the Western governments backed the regime-change operation.

He says that Syria – a cradle of civilization – is now being ruled by barbarians with the tacit support of Western governments and media.

The population is living under a reign of terror because the new rulers are terrorists affiliated with Islamic State who espouse an extremist version of Islam that does not tolerate other religions or versions of Islam.

Declan Hayes visited Syria as a peace activist and humanitarian many times during the decade-long war in that country. He witnessed the aftermath of atrocities carried out by insurgent groups in Latakia, Kassab, and Maaloula, among other places.

These mercenary groups were proxy forces financed and armed by the United States and its Western allies in a covert war for regime change against the former Syrian government.

The reasons for the regime-change operation were geopolitical due to the West’s support for Israel and antagonism towards Russia and Iran, as well as control of oil and gas resources.

Hayes maintains close contact with religious leaders and other community figures in Syria, especially among the Alawite, Christian and Shia Muslim communities. He says that the appalling violence and killings that were carried out by the Western-backed terror proxies during the decade-long war are continuing to be inflicted today.

Homes and villages are raided daily by armed supporters of Syria’s new ruling regime led by the de facto president, Ahmed al Sharaa, also known as Mohammad al Jolani, who is the leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) militia.

HTS was formerly an affiliate of Islamic State and other Al Qaeda-linked terror networks. HTS seized power two months ago in Damascus after former President Bashar al-Assad fled the country with his family. Assad is living in exile in Russia.

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The Art of the Sabotage: The Far Left’s Betrayal of Ukraine Is Coming

I’ll open with the punchline, but be forewarned — there’s nothing funny about it: The Far Left will betray Ukraine because they hate Trump more than they care about the Ukrainian people.

Those poor, suffering civilians in Ukraine? They’re abstractions — mere cannon fodder for a greater cause. Been that way since the beginning of the conflict, and although the Biden administration never formally admitted it, slaughtering Russians and Ukrainians in a long, protracted bloodbath was America’s objective all along.

Sure, we “dolled up” the policy with high-minded speeches about protecting liberty and Russia being evil and/or Ukraine being pure and good, and vowing that Putin “cannot remain in power,” but we never sought any sort of resolution. Not really. Instead, we armed Ukraine with just enough equipment, weapons, technology, and artillery to maintain the status quo. 

It was a bloodbath we wanted, and a bloodbath we got.

From the Far Left’s viewpoint, the plan made sense: Russia was our “enemy” — especially after they interfered in the 2016 election and cheated poor Hillary out of the presidency. And then, in 2022, they invaded a neighboring country. Y’know who else invaded their neighbors? That’s right: HITLER! Clearly, it’s in our strategic interest to weaken the next Hitler.

And when you strip away all the high-minded rhetoric, that’s been Biden’s true objective all along. Let the war continue. Let Russia hemorrhage. Let the Red Army bleed itself dry.

A healthy, intact Russian military is a threat. Therefore, let’s weaken it as much as possible, depleting it of its weaponry, equipment, and manpower.

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Netanyahu’s Quest To Attack Iran With the ‘Mother of all Bombs’

In a press conference with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to “finish the job” against Iran with the support of President Trump.

Ever since his rise to power in the late 1990s, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has worked toward a war with Iran, presumably to demolish Tehran’s nuclear facilities but also to ensure its power projection in the region.

Now the emboldened Netanyahu wants to finish the job, decimate Iran’s nascent nuclear capabilities, undermine Tehran’s future and overthrow its rulers. After the misguided wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Washington’s neoconservative empire-builders are also back, pushing still another forever war for a “paradigm shift in the Middle East.”

The Israel-Iran scenarios

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has discussed with Trump several possible levels of American backing. According to Israeli observers, there are now four viable scenarios for an Israeli attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities, as seen in the light of US-Israeli relations. Let’s name them.

In the cooperative scenario, the US and Israel cooperate in an attack against Iran’s nuclear sites, which will be followed by Trump’s ultimatum that Iran must entirely dismantle its military nuclear program.

In the clash scenario, the Trump administration would build on diplomacy to seal a nuclear deal. Yet, Israel would attack on its own and thereby undermine Trump’s efforts causing a bilateral drift between the two countries.

In the investment scenario, Saudi Arabia would offer the US hundreds of billions of dollars in investment, to avoid a destabilization in the region that could undermine Riyadh’s 2030 modernization program.

In the solo scenario, Israel attacks Israel’s nuclear facilities without direct US cooperation, but with the tacit consent of the White House. This would happen after the Trump administration’s threats and coercive diplomacy against Iran.

Ultimately, US priorities will matter the most. But these can be elusive and contradictory. Some in the Congress have called for more US military action, including direct attacks against Iran. Others have echoed the Biden Administration’s calls for restraint and de-escalation.

Here’s the problem: any escalation with Iran, whether by the US, Israel or both would likely regionalize the Gaza devastation, which is mis-aligned with Trumps’ economic and geopolitical goals in the Middle East.

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Probes Reveal Depth of Big Tech Complicity in Israel’s AI-Driven Gaza Slaughter

Several recent journalistic investigations – including one published Tuesday by The Associated Press – have deepened the understanding of how Israeli forces are using artificial intelligence and cloud computing systems sold by U.S. tech titans for the mass surveillance and killing of Palestinians in Gaza.

The AP‘s Michael Biesecker, Sam Mednick, and Garance Burke found that Israel’s use of Microsoft and OpenAI technology “skyrocketed” following Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

“This is the first confirmation we have gotten that commercial AI models are directly being used in warfare,” Heidy Khlaaf, chief artificial intelligence scientist at the AI Now Institute and a former senior safety engineer at OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, told the AP. “The implications are enormous for the role of tech in enabling this type of unethical and unlawful warfare going forward.”

As Biesecker, Mednick, and Burke noted:

Israel’s goal after the attack that killed about 1,200 people and took over 250 hostages was to eradicate Hamas, and its military has called AI a “game changer” in yielding targets more swiftly. Since the war started, more than 50,000 people have died in Gaza and Lebanon and nearly 70% of the buildings in Gaza have been devastated, according to health ministries in Gaza and Lebanon.

According to the AP report, Israel buys advanced AI models from OpenAI and Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform. While OpenAI said it has no partnership with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), in early 2024 the company quietly removed language from its usage policy that prohibited military use of its technology.

The AP reporters also found that Google and Amazon provide cloud computing and AI services to the IDF via Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract signed in 2021. Furthermore, the IDF uses Cisco and Dell server farms or data centers. Red Hat, an independent IBM subsidiary, sells cloud computing services to the IDF. Microsoft partner Palantir Technologies also has a “strategic partnership” with Israel’s military.

Google told the AP that the company is committed to creating AI “that protects people, promotes global growth, and supports national security.”

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You Get What They Pay For, War

Readers here have heard of Ray McGovern’s MICIMATT, the military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academe-think-tank complex. It’s gargantuan and lubricated with enormous sums of money.

Consider think tanks. Go to thinktankfundingtracker.org and you’ll see useful information like this:

Top 10 Think Tanks That Receive Funding from Pentagon Contractors

  1. Atlantic Council $10,270,001
  2. Center for a New American Security $6,665,000
  3. Center for Strategic and International Studies $4,115,000
  4. Brookings Institution $3,475,000
  5. Hudson Institute $2,240,000
  6. Council on Foreign Relations $2,095,000
  7. Stimson Center $1,555,763
  8. Aspen Institute $1,125,000
  9. German Marshall Fund $871,010
  10. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace $620,008

I wonder why these think tanks tend to favor the agendas and interests of America’s various weapons makers? Hard to offer “neutral” or “balanced” advice when so much of your funding is coming from the merchants of death.

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Time To Junk the Munich Analogy

No sooner had the announcement about a new policy for Ukraine from the Trump administration been made than the cries of “appeasement! Munich! Hitler! Neville Chamberlain” began to ring out from almost all corners of the mediaverse.

The lessons to be learned from the events in Munich in 1938, in which Prime Minister Chamberlain signed off on the Nazi seizure of Czechoslovakia, are of course relevant, but they have also been used to justify all manner of wars and violence that have had little justification. Perhaps even worse, the Munich analogy has been used to justify the refusal to negotiate with adversaries.

Were it up to me, I would banish that analogy from the English lexicon. I will briefly explain my reasoning.

The Munich appeasement analogy was widely used during the Korean War, but by no one more forcefully than General Douglas McArthur, in charge of United Nations forces in Korea, who used it to press for a total war in the region against North Korea and their Chinese allies. This would have required a full war mobilization of the United States and the very likely use of nuclear weapons.

Both Truman and the US Joint Chiefs of Staff balked at paying such a price, and did not much appreciate the Munich analogy being used as a club against them. MacArthur was called home and fired in April of 1951. It is now generally accepted that Truman and the Chiefs were correct in rejecting both a wider war and the analogy being used to justify it.

A little more than ten years later the Munich analogy again came into play during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Air Force Chief General Curtis LaMay thought that a general war with the Soviet Union was inevitable, and pushed President John Kennedy to approve it. Kennedy, in fact, was a big fan of the Munich analogy himself and had written a best selling book with that as the theme. At a crucial meeting as the crisis was going on, LeMay said, “I don’t see any other solution. It will lead right into war. This is almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich.”

Fortunately for the planet, Kennedy balked, and managed to end the crisis short of all-out war. Most of us are glad that he did.

And then there was the Invasion of Iraq in 2003. If the abuse of analogies was a criminal offense, the George W. Bush administration would have received the maximum sentence. Saddam Hussein was a cruel dictator indeed, but claiming that he had weapons of mass destruction nearly ready to use was preposterous and quickly debunked by weapons inspectors and the media. But the Munich analogy served its purpose, in this case rallying support for a disastrous war, and the refusal to negotiate.

What we have here are good examples of the Munich analogy being misused. And there were others, in Vietnam, Central America, and more.

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Crazed Biden Judge Signals She May Block Trump’s EO on Transgender Troops, Says the Assertion That Only Two Genders Exists is “Not Biologically Correct”

A federal judge on Tuesday signaled she would side with a group of transgender soldiers who sued to block President Trump’s executive order on transgender troops.

Judge Ana Reyes, a Biden appointee, grilled DOJ lawyers on Tuesday and said that Trump’s executive order asserting there are only two genders is “not biologically correct.”

“With the DOD policy expected to be finalized over the coming week, Reyes said she would hold off on issuing an order but had largely made up her mind about the legality of the order, at one point remarking that “smarter people on the D.C. Circuit would have to tell me I’m wrong” about the policy. She added that the central premise of the executive order — that only two genders exist — is “not biologically correct.”” – ABC News reported.

Last month President Trump signed the “Restoring America’s Fighting Force” executive order and the “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness” executive orders, which direct every element of the U.S. military to “operate free from any preference based on race or sex” and root out gender insanity and made up pronoun usage, respectively.

This order directs the Secretary of Defense to ensure that military service is “reserved for those mentally and physically fit for duty” and “promptly issue directives for DoD to end invented and identification-based pronoun usage.” The standards for our military troops are deemed “inconsistent with the medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria.”

“It is the policy of the United States Government to establish high standards for troop readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity,” the order states. “This policy is inconsistent with the medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria. This policy is also inconsistent with shifting pronoun usage or use of pronouns that inaccurately reflect an individual’s sex.”

Judge Reyes also grilled lawyers on the use of pronouns and gender ideology.

“If you were in a foxhole, you wouldn’t care about these individuals’ gender ideology, right?” the judge asked DOJ lawyers.

The judge did not issue a ruling on Tuesday.

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NORAD commander says hundreds of drone incursions were detected at US military installations

The Pentagon needs more technology and expanded authorities to deal with large numbers of incursions over U.S. military installations by small unmanned aerial systems, the commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command told lawmakers.

NORAD and Northcom chief Gen. Gregory Guillot revealed more details Thursday about widespread, recent incidents that highlight the drone problem.

“The primary threat I see for them in the way they’ve been operating is detection and perhaps surveillance of sensitive capabilities on our installations,” he said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. “There were 350 detections reported last year on military installations, and that was 350 over a total of 100 different installations of all types and levels of security.”

High-profile incidents that were reported last year include UAS sightings at multiple bases in New Jersey amid a broader slew of public reports of mysterious drone activity in that part of the country. At the time, a senior defense official said the Pentagon was “frustrated” by these types of events.

Complicated regulatory structure and limitations on UAS countermeasures stemming from concerns about flight safety and privacy have created “significant vulnerabilities that have been exploited by known and unknown actors,” Guillot told lawmakers in written testimony for Thursday’s hearing.

Not all commanders have the authority to use weapons to defend their bases from these types of drone incursions. Only about half are considered “covered installations,” he told lawmakers.

Section 130i under Title 10 of U.S. Code pertains to protection of “certain facilities and assets from unmanned aircraft.”

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We Are Closer To All-Out War In Europe, In Asia, And In The Middle East Than Most People Realize

We really are at one of the most pivotal moments in human history.  Decisions that are being made now will have very serious implications for every man, woman and child on the entire planet.  We have entered a time of “wars and rumors of wars”, and we have seen so much death and destruction over the past couple of years.  But now a new administration is in control in Washington and we have reached a fork in the road.  Will global leaders take advantage of this small window of opportunity to establish peace, or will they choose all-out war?

The good news is that for the first time in a long time, U.S. officials are talking with the Russians.  On Monday, Marco Rubio traveled to Saudi Arabia, and it is expected that he will be talking with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov about Ukraine while he is there…

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in Saudi Arabia on Monday and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was on his way to the country, amid expectations that peace talks on ending the war in Ukraine are about to begin.

This is a very positive development, but negotiations with the Russians will certainly not be easy.

For one thing, the Ukrainians and our European allies are demanding that the Russians make territorial concessions, and the Russians are completely ruling that out…

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday ruled out territorial concessions to Ukraine, setting out a tough opening stance on the eve of talks on Tuesday with U.S. President Donald Trump’s team in Saudi Arabia.

Trump said after a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday that the two sides would begin talks aimed at ending the war in Ukraine.

The Russians are winning the war and having been steadily moving forward in recent months.

They see absolutely no need to give any territory that they have captured back.

The longer the Ukrainians wait to make a deal, the more territory they will lose.

The Russians have all the leverage, and they know it.

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Mysterious Explosions Rock Russian Shadow Fleet Tanker Off Italian Coast

Two explosions rocked the hull of a Maltese-flagged oil tanker hauling Russian crude oil from Algeria while it was docked at the port of Savona in northwestern Italy late last week. Investigators have not ruled out the possibility that the “two loud bangs” were caused by explosive devices, as a section of the hull appeared to be “retracted inwards.”

Italian daily newspaper il Fatto Quotidiano reported that the oil tanker Seajewel, part of the Russian shadow fleet to circumvent Western sanctions, was hit by “two loud bangs” on Friday. The crew found a section of the hull “bent inwards.” 

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