Tag: perpetual war

The U.S. Establishment’s Intense Commitment to Exterminating Palestinians

In today’s U.S., people are actually not allowed to avoid punishment if they publicly express the opinion that America’s continuing to donate the weapons and satellite intelligence that Israeli troops are using to exterminate the Gazans is unacceptable to them.

On January 16th, Caitlin Johnstone aptly headlined “None Of These War Criminals Will Face Justice While The US Empire Exists”, and opened with:

Two journalists were ejected from a State Department press conference on Thursday for asking inconvenient questions about Gaza. One of them, Sam Husseini, was physically carried out by security while demanding to know why Secretary of State Antony Blinken is not in The Hague for his war crimes.

Husseini was then forcibly removed for asking questions about Gaza, and about Israel’s nuclear program and Hannibal directive. Blinken told Husseini to “respect the process,” to which Husseini replied, “Respect the process? Respect the process? While everybody from Amnesty International to the ICJ says Israel’s doing genocide and extermination, and you’re telling me to respect the process? Criminal! Why aren’t you in the Hague?”

The western political-media class is expressing outrage over the incident, not because of journalists being manhandled for asking critical questions of their government, but because those journalists asked critical questions. …

Just the day before, the January 15th edition of The Chris Hedges Report, “America’s Academic Gulag (w/ MIT Student Activists) | The Chris Hedges Report”, showed the great international war reporter Hedges interviewing two young rising stars and Ph.D. students at America’s leading STEM University, MIT, who are being driven out, and their scholarships and grant funding cancelled, simply because they consider genocide to be unacceptable. One, named Prahlad Iyengar, had been a National Science Foundation Fellow studying for his Ph.D. in the intersection of quantum information, quantum sensing, and machine learning; and the other, who is Richard Solomon, had been studying for his Ph.D in the political economy of trade and science, and who had previously been a Vice Consul and Assistant Secretary in the U.S. State Department.

That 58-minute video starts out with an excellent four-minute introduction by Hedges, and then proceeds to his interviewing each of these two young men regarding the circumstances that had led up to his virtually inevitable expulsion from MIT. Each of these two describes clearly his own activities that had caused him to be now involuntarily seeking employment outside of his intended career-path (because each of the two is now a marked man within that career-path inside the U.S. empire). Each, though in a very different professional field from the other — one of them representing the STEM side, and the other the political-science side — describes a situation that I would characterize as being the incompatibility in today’s United States, between success within the U.S.-and-allied Establishment, versus decency or what might be called “conscience,” so that a stark choice must be made between those two objectives. Holding both of them simultaneously is prohibited by the U.S. Establishment. One may pursue success, or one may pursue being decent, but one cannot pursue both at once, without being punished for doing so.

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Zelensky is desperately trying to provoke a Pearl Harbour moment

There has been much reporting of Ukraine’s aerial attack on Russia over recent days that struck as far as Tatarstan. Western media has been quick to point out the use of western ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles in these attacks and six of each appear to have been used.

What does this all mean?

As talk increases of a possible meeting between Presidents Trump and Putin to discuss ending the war, Volodymyr Zelensky is grasping for a Pearl Harbour moment. Specifically, he wants to provoke Russia into a retaliatory strike against NATO that would be so strategically damaging that NATO would be drawn into Ukraine’s war with Russia.

In that regard, Zelensky is trying to position himself as a modern-day Winston Churchill.

Churchill famously said in a radio broadcast on 9 February 1941 addressing President Roosevelt, ‘Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.’

In April 2024, Zelensky said, ‘We will have a chance for victory if Ukraine really gets the weapon system which we need.’ He has used a different form of the same Churchillian entreaty several times.

In truth, Churchill knew that Britain could only defeat Nazi Germany in western Europe with the industrial might of the United States. So too, Zelensky has always wanted a more direct NATO role in the war, because it has always been clear that Ukraine cannot defeat Russia on its own.

History will record that the outcome of World War II was sealed by events far from Europe, but rather in the Pacific, namely the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, on 7 December 1941. That so enraged the United States that they had no choice but to enter the war.

By attacking targets deep inside of Russia using western supplied weapons, Zelensky’s gamble is that Russia will retaliate by striking a significant NATO target inside of Europe.

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Without job opportunities in their homeland, Colombians are recruited by Kiev

NATO’s proxy war against Russia through Ukraine has shown significant changes in various aspects, particularly regarding the participation of foreign mercenaries. While, at the start of the war, the flow of fighters was predominantly composed of individuals from Europe and the United States, a notable shift occurred throughout 2024, with a considerable increase in mercenaries from Latin America, especially Colombia. The driving factor behind this growing presence of Latin American fighters is not ideological, but rather economic, with many of these soldiers seeking a way to survive financially abroad, considering the extreme poverty in their home countries.

Colombia, one of the nations most affected by economic inequality in Latin America, serves as an example to understand this reality. With a large portion of the population living below the poverty line, many Colombians see themselves with few viable alternatives to improve their financial situation. For many Colombians, military service appears to be one of the few legal options that guarantees some level of financial stability, albeit modest. However, with scarce job opportunities and a struggling economy that fails to offer appealing alternatives, the chance to participate in the war in Ukraine, where mercenaries’ payments can be much higher, becomes attractive to many ex-soldiers who were previously trained in the Colombian armed forces.

The situation in Ukraine, however, does not turn out to be a “simple battlefield” for these mercenaries, as it might have seemed initially. When the first foreign fighters arrived, particularly Europeans and Americans, many saw the war as an opportunity to test their skills or even to partake in an “adventure.” However, as the conflict intensified, it became clear that the reality of the Ukrainian battlefield was far more brutal than many had imagined. Modern warfare, with its predominant use of heavy artillery, airstrikes, and large-scale exhausting confrontations, is an environment unfamiliar to soldiers who, like many Colombians – as well as Brazilians and other Latin soldier – were used to urban combat and guerrilla warfare, where the use of light weapons at short distances is common.

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Trump Administration To Deliver More Weapons To Taiwan

In what will be seen by China as an escalation of war, the United States will deliver more weapons to Taiwan under the incoming Trump administration. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz has confirmed that the president-elect intends to give the island, currently at odds with China over its sovereignty, all the defense systems it has paid for. This move highlights the frequent U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.

China’s leaders have repeatedly condemned United States arms sales to Taipei as “destabilizing and provocative.” In response to the weapons agreements, China has conducted frequent naval and aerial drills around the island as a way of showing force against U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.

Speaking at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington on Tuesday, Waltz, a Florida Congressman, stated: “We have over a $20 billion backlog of things that they paid for and that we need to work hard to free up and have them get what they paid for as a deterrent measure. The backlog is mainly due to the extensive nature of U.S. arms sales.”

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US creates strongest-ever armor material with 100 trillion bonds per cm²

Aresearch team led by scientists at Northwestern University has developed the first-ever two-dimensional mechanically interlocked material with high flexibility and strength. In the future, this could be used to develop lightweight yet high-performance body armor and other such tough materials, a press release said. 

It was in the 1980s that Fraser Stoddart, then a chemist at Northwestern University, first introduced the concept of mechanical bonds. Stoddart then expanded the role of these bonds into molecular machines by enabling functions like switching, rotating, contracting, and expanding in multiple ways and using them to develop interlocked structures, which also won him the Nobel Prize in 2016. 

Researchers have been working on developing mechanically interlocked molecules with polymers for decades but have failed. “In organic chemistry, it is pretty straightforward to form so-called “medium-sized rings” that are 5-8 atoms around. But such rings are too small to thread another molecule through them,” explained William Dichtel, a professor of chemistry at Northwestern University in an email to Interesting Engineering.

“In our paper, there are new rings formed at each repeat unit of the 2D structure, which are 40 atoms around,” added Dichtel. This was achieved using an innovative and novel approach that even questioned assumptions about how molecules react

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The Merits Of A Demilitarized “Trans-Dnieper” Region Controlled By Non-Western Peacekeepers

This proposal is the most realistic means for keeping the peace after an armistice.

Bloomberg cited unnamed “people with knowledge of Kremlin thinking” to report that Russia will only demand that Ukraine restore its constitutional neutrality, “drastically cut back military ties with the NATO alliance”, limit its army, and freeze the front lines, albeit with some territorial swaps. Also, “The Kremlin’s position is that while individual NATO members may continue to send arms to Ukraine under bilateral security agreements, any such weapons should not be used against Russia or to recapture territory.”

To be sure, Bloomberg might have either invented their sources or they’re uninformed of what the Kremlin thinks, but there’s also the possibility that they’re accurately reflecting what it plans to ask for during peace talks. Hopefully Russia’s demands of Ukraine are more than what Bloomberg just reported, however, because the aforesaid requests would be settling for much less than it might otherwise be able to achieve as suggested by some of the proposals made at the end of this analysis here.

For instance, any agreement to limit the Ukrainian Armed Forces is meaningless without a monitoring mission paired with credible enforcement mechanisms to enforce compliance. After all, even written guarantees that individual NATO members won’t arm Ukraine for the purpose of using these weapons against Russia or to recapture territory – not to mention purely verbal ones – could be broken. There’s also the question of how Russia would respond to future drone and missile strikes from Ukraine.

The most realistic way to address these concerns is through the participation of only non-Western countries in monitoring and peacekeeping roles, the latter of which could concern deployment along the entire Russian-Ukrainian border, including the Line of Contact (LOC). About the second-mentioned, the reported territorial swaps could see Russia give back its part of Kharkov Oblast in exchange for Ukraine giving back its part of Kursk Oblast, which each would formally retain their territorial claims to the other.

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Russia & Iran Sign 20-Year Defense, Energy Pact 3 Days Before Trump Inauguration

President Vladimir Putin of Russia and President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran on Friday signed a 20-year pact between their countries at the Kremlin, just three days before Trump’s inauguration.

Dubbed the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty, the Kremlin is hailing it as bringing relations with the Islamic Republic to a new level, enshrining the two countries’ status as strategic partners. Putin hailed the “real breakthrough, creating conditions for the stable and sustainable development of Russia, Iran and the entire region.”

Russian media has described it covers all spheres, including defense, counter-terrorism, energy, finance, transport, industry, agriculture, culture, science and engineering.

The allies are also working on linking their national payment systems: “According to the Russian leader, in 2024, the share of transactions in Russian rubles and Iranian rials exceeded 95% of all bilateral trade operations,” TASS noted.

Putin further said in a press conference with Pezeshkian, “Our countries firmly uphold the principles of the supremacy of international law, the sovereignty of states, non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries.” As for Pezeshkian, he said the following:

“We witness a new chapter of strategic relations,” the Iranian president said, adding that the countries were set to expand trade ties and also boost the “level of security cooperation.”

The pact is heavily focused on defense and security cooperation. “It will confirm the parties’ desire for closer cooperation in the field of defense and interaction in the interests of peace and security at the regional and global levels,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had earlier stated.

Already, the two sides cooperate closely on drones. Russia has since the Ukraine war’s start been using Iran-produced ‘Shahed’ kamikaze drones against Ukrainian cities, and Iran has reportedly set up a major UAV production facility on Russian soil at Moscow’s invitation. 

Moscow and Tehran early last month lost a key Middle East ally upon the fall of Bashar al Assad, after Islamic insurgents rampaged across the country and the demoralized and underpaid Syrian Army quickly collapsed. Turkey was widely seen as supporting the insurgents with intelligence and equipment, and likely other NATO states played a background role as well.

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The Evolution of the Militarized Data Broker

Today, the world’s economy no longer runs on oil, but data. Shortly after the advent of the microprocessor came the internet, unleashing an onslaught of data running on the coils of fiber optic cables beneath the oceans and satellites above the skies. While often posited as a liberator of humanity against the oppressors of nation-states that allows previously impossible interconnectivity and social organization between geographically separated cultures to circumnavigate the monopoly on violence of world governments, ironically, the internet itself was birthed out of the largest military empire of the modern world – the United States.

The ARPANET

Specifically, the internet began as ARPANET, a project of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), which in 1972 became known as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), currently housed within the Department of Defense. ARPA was created by President Eisenhower in 1958 within the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) in direct response to the U.S.’ greatest military rival, the USSR, successfully launching Sputnik, the first artificial satellite in Earth’s orbit with data broadcasting technology. While historically considered the birth of the Space Race, in reality, the formation of ARPA began the now-decades-long militarization of data brokers, quickly leading to world-changing developments in global positioning systems (GPS), the personal computer, networks of computational information processing (“time-sharing”), primordial artificial intelligence, and weaponized autonomous drone technology.

In October 1962, the recently-formed ARPA appointed J.C.R. Licklider, a former MIT professor and vice president of Bolt Beranek and Newman (known as BBN, currently owned by defense contractor Raytheon), to head their Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO). At BBN, Licklider developed the earliest known ideas for a global computer network, publishing a series of memos in August 1962 that birthed his “Intergalactic Computer Network” concept. Six months after his appointment to ARPA, Licklider would distribute a memo to his IPTO colleagues – addressed to “Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer Network”– describing a “time-sharing network of computers” – building off a similar exploration of communal, distributed computation by John Forbes Nash, Jr. in his 1954 paper “Parallel Control” commissioned by defense contractor RAND – which would build the foundational concepts for ARPANET, the first implementation of today’s Internet.

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Why Would Any Country Partner With the US?

Recent threatening statements by incoming President Donald Trump have raised the question of why any country would risk partnering with the United States. But the erosion in trust has not begun with the incoming Trump administration.

Several years ago, Saudi Arabia began to reexamine its relationship with the United States. Their confidence had been shaken by the unreliability of the partnership. President Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan shocked the Saudis, but so too, Annelle Sheline, Research Fellow for the Middle East Program at the Quincy Institute, told me, did “Obama’s signing of the JCPOA” and “Trump’s lack of response after the September 2019 attacks on Saudi oil facilities.” The damage caused by three consecutive presidents to trust in the partnership helped convince Saudi Arabia to explore closer relationships with Iran, Russia and China.

While Saudi Arabia’s trust in partnering with the U.S. waned because the U.S. made a nuclear agreement with Iran, Iran’s trust in partnering with the U.S. waned because the U.S. broke it. Hardliners in Iran had warned then President Hassan Rouhani that his trust in America would be repaid with broken promises. Despite these warnings, Rouhani placed Iran’s future in trusting the U.S. to keep their promises and honor their agreements. The hardliners were vindicated when Trump illegally pulled out of the JCPOA nuclear agreement. The proof that a partnership with the U.S. was not to be trusted helped convince Iran to forge ever tighter relationships with Russia and China.

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Keir Starmer’s Support for the Gaza Ceasefire Is Riddled With Lies

There are so many lies, deceptions and misdirections in Sir Keir Starmer’s statement on the ceasefire agreed between Israel and Hamas yesterday that they need to be picked apart line by line.

Starmer: After months of devastating bloodshed and countless lives lost, this is the long-overdue news that the Israeli and Palestinian people have desperately been waiting for. They have borne the brunt of this conflict – triggered by the brutal terrorists of Hamas, who committed the deadliest massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust on October 7th, 2023.

Under no reasonable definition can the last 15 months be described as a “conflict”. The slaughter and maiming of hundreds of thousands of civilians, as well as Israel’s program to starve the rest of the population, should rightly be understood as a genocide, one the International Court of Justice began investigating a year ago, and one that has been attested to by every major international human rights group, as well as a growing number of Holocaust scholars.

Starmer does at least hint at the truth in conceding that the ceasefire is “long overdue”. The genocide in Gaza could have been brought to an end at any point by US pressure. Indeed, the outlines of the current ceasefire were advanced by the Biden administration back in May. It was Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu who blocked progress. Israel’s western patrons, including Starmer, rewarded him with weapons, intelligence and diplomatic cover. If the ceasefire is “overdue”, Starmer is fully responsible for that delay.

Further, the “conflict” wasn’t “triggered” by Hamas’ attack of October 7, as Starmer claims. The “conflict” has been going on for more than three-quarters of a century, triggered by Israel’s continuous efforts to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their homeland, with western backing, in an explicitly colonial project. Israel wants us to believe the “conflict” clock started ticking on October 7. Only the ignorant, and contemptible politicians like Starmer, repeat that lie.

The killings on October 7 2023 weren’t “the deadliest massacre of Jewish people” since the Holocaust. That’s another cynical Israeli talking point repeated by Starmer whose sole purpose is to rationalise Israel’s genocide. The “deadliest massacre” for Jews since the Holocaust was, in fact, committed by the Argentinian junta, which disappeared and murdered thousands of Jews in the late 1970s. And unlike Hamas, whose victims were killed not because they were Jews but because they were Israelis and viewed as members of an oppressor nation, Argentina’s generals killed Jews specifically for being Jewish. Nonetheless, that massacre – inconvenient to the West – has been carefully memory-holed, including by Starmer.

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