Tag: perpetual war

WAR: EU Puts A Military Presence On Ukrainian Soil Through 2028

Brussels just put a European Union military presence on Ukrainian soil through November 15, 2028. Until now, the training camps were located outside of the country, not inside Ukraine. But on November 9, Brussels took a step further than ever before – and that step could have very serious consequences. The Council of the European Union approved an official EU military presence on the territory of a country at war.

The Council of the European Union on November 9 extended the mandate of the European Union Military Assistance Mission in support of Ukraine, EUMAM, for two years until 15 November 2028 with a budget of almost 300 million euros. The same meeting also established a military presence on Ukrainian soil with the purpose of the EU military to directly and effectively coordinate with the respective Ukrainian military authorities. This will be the first time that the EU will have a military presence on Ukrainian soil as the current EUMAM training is conducted outside of Ukraine, ZeroHedge reports.

That is the boots-on-the-ground step Europe has been circling for years. As noted above, the plan of Europe is simple and European leaders make no secret of it. Foreign Minister Lavrov stated in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday that as soon as a ceasefire is reached, they intend to begin to move in the stabilization forces of Europe into territory controlled by the government in Kiev.

The timing is crucial. The Russian and Ukrainian parties are holding talks with US officials in Abu Dhabi on Nov 10-11. These are the first three-way talks since February. Donald Trump has said a deal is close after nearly five years of full-scale war. And it is just at this time that the EU has decided to create a formal military presence on the territory controlled by Kiev and to finance it through 2028.

This is according to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre in a conversation with Politico, after he, along with Finnish President Alexander Stubb had held a 90-minute call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on October 27. Denmark and Latvia had wanted to keep Putin isolated, Støre now tells the newspaper that he has seen no sign of openness from Putin, and therefore the only voice that reaches Moscow is that of Washington. In the informal EU-summit that is taking place in Dublin this week, the issue will be discussed as to who shall be Europe’s voice in negotiations with the Russian President.

Keep reading

Israel Is ‘Rich Enough’ To Buy US Weapons Without Financial Aid, Rubio Says

The White House is much too late in belateldy ‘discovering’ this talking point, but admin officials continue to say that it’s time for Israel to stand on its own and begin purchasing weapons without relying on US financial assistance.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday stated, “Israel is now prosperous and rich enough to be able to be a sales country. They can buy weapons from us, but we no longer have to provide the financing.“

Coming off Republicans getting clobbered in the midterms, and with Israel being increasinly unpopular among the American electorate, Rubio followed by adding that “it’s something the Israelis themselves have offered us.”

When asked whether this could be something to take effect in 2027, Israel replied, “Well, that’s what the president said we’re going to do. So, ultimately, I think they could if they wanted to, yeah, absolutely.”

“On the question of financing, I think Israel has clearly graduated beyond that,” he said, alluding to Israel being a wealthy enough nation.

Just before last week’s midterm elections, President Trump had abruptly proposed ending nearly $4 billion in annual American assistance to Israel.

He floated this in acknowledgement that the Iran war angered most Americans, and that public opinion on Washington’s historic and ongoing support to Israel has fallen precipitously.

But obviously it’s all too little, too late – as Republicans have been punished at the polls. Many pundits who were once strong MAGA supporters have complained that Trump had effectively abandoned ‘America First’ principles.

Keep reading

Moscow’s Statistics Agency Was Wiped Out By Hackers – Who Posted ‘Official’ Death Toll From War

Two hacker groups say death records stolen from Russia’s federal statistics agency show between 393,881 and 450,100 people killed in the war in Ukraine, a total well above anything Moscow has acknowledged since it stopped publishing military losses in September 2022. The Belarusian Cyber Partisans put the figure at 393,881 as of Aug. 27, while the pro-Ukrainian group Silent Crow says 450,100.

According to Euronews, the Cyber Partisans counted only deaths where military action or its consequences was the recorded cause, while Silent Crow also added non-combat military deaths, deaths logged as terrorist acts, and people registered in Russia who died in occupied territory or in Ukraine with no cause established. Silent Crow’s data, as relayed by Kyiv Post, has annual deaths climbing from about 19,000 in 2022 to more than 182,000 in 2025, mostly among people aged 30 to 49.

The Cyber Partisans describe a break-in that took months to set up and ended in destruction. They say they got into the agency’s network about six months ago, then “wiped out Rosstat’s IT infrastructure” overnight between Oct. 31 and Nov. 1, destroying databases, servers and a 1,800 TB storage system. In their account, the haul included more than 1 TB of classified mortality statistics with causes of death, and “the total volume of document management systems and databases downloaded exceeds 10 TB.” Bloomberg reported that the groups claimed access to about 25,000 computers and 23 TB of data.

Acording to Rosstat, it detected targeted attacks between Oct. 29 and Nov. 1 and is still restoring systems, but found no evidence that its databases were compromised or that confidential information leaked. “To ensure data security, some parts of the infrastructure remain isolated,” the agency said. Its major economic reports are expected to be late through at least Nov. 13.

Keep reading

Creative Destruction: 9/11, Enron, and American Bitcoin

“The process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor.”
— REBUILDING AMERICA’S DEFENSES: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century by The Project For The New American Century, September 2000

Controlled demolition is a phrase often used in some circles when discussing the events of September 11, 2001. However, this is usually reserved for theories regarding the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, and is less often applied to the political, economic, and technological pillars that upheld the world before these attacks. As this piece will attempt to outline, both the physical and “creative destruction” that occurred on that day have had cascading and compounding effects on society as we knew it then, and especially as we know it today.

While the term creative destruction is typically associated with the Marxist school of thought, specifically based on analyses of Karl Marx’s work via Joseph Schumpeter and Werner Sombart, in the context of conspiracy, the phrase refers to the intentional demolition of markets, technological structures and regulations due to a deliberately triggered event. The goal of that event is to intentionally and purposefully bring about a specific, wanted change to the aforementioned pillars of the status quo — leading to an advantaged consolidation by the very conspirators of the event.

The players in this act of creative destruction that occurred at the onset of the new millennia are hardly limited to the usual cast of characters often brought up when discussing September 11, 2001 (9/11). They include members of the various businesses affected and crucially involved in the events surrounding the terrorist attacks; notably, security broker giant Cantor Fitzgerald, led by Howard Lutnick; the infamous American energy pioneer Enron, led by Ken Lay; investment bank and underwriter Alexander Brown & Sons, led by Alvin “Buzzy” Krongard and his deputy Mayo Shattuck III; and stalwarts of the public-private “revolving door” such as Dick Cheney and James Baker, as well as the lesser known Thomas Barnett.

Thomas Barnett, a former strategist, professor and researcher at the Warfare Analysis & Research Department at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, RI, was selected to join members of the government, Cantor Fitzgerald, and various other public, private and intelligence sector partners atop the World Trade Center to “war game” in the years that preceded the 9/11 attacks. Specifically, these war games were part of the “New Rule Sets Project,” which “explore[d] how the spread of globalization alters the basic ‘rules of the road’ in the international security environment” with a focus on “how these changes redefine the US Military’s historic role as ‘security enabler’ of America’s commercial network ties with the world.”

The aforementioned concept of creative destruction is immaculately laid out by Barnett in his post-“war game” book, The Pentagon’s New Map. Barnett posits that the American national security state properly understood that there was a very real and looming danger downstream from the 1990’s Clinton-era, which saw a booming economy due to the “Information Revolution.” The country could not simply rest on its laurels, despite their immense success in distributing their state-funded technological developments across the globe. As Barnett and his national security state benefactors saw it, both globalization and digitalization must be achieved on their geopolitical terms, not just on their technology stacks.

Keep reading

Very Close to a Nuclear Strike on Iran: We Can Save Ourselves

The 1984 British movie Threads opens with ordinary scenes in Sheffield, England, where a young couple learns they are expecting a baby. The story of their personal life is intertwined with the news of a growing conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, centered on Iran. We next learn that a nuclear weapon is used in an attack, followed by another. Before long, Sheffield itself is the site of hydrogen bomb detonations, with our protagonists either perishing in the explosions or subsisting under devastating conditions of starvation, civil unrest, radiation-induced and infectious diseases, and freezing temperatures over the coming days, weeks, months, and years. The film ends with the 13-year-old daughter of the young couple from the start of the film giving birth to a deformed clump of flesh months after being raped in a lawless and collapsed society.

Forty-two years after this brilliant movie first gave people in the UK and beyond just a glimpse of the unfathomable consequences of nuclear war, watching the opening scenes is even more grim than it has been in the intervening decades, given just how eerily similar they seem to be to our current moment. With the US and Israel continuing to wage war on Iran, and their respective leaders having been repudiated in public polls and elections, the prospect of nuclear weapon use and a wider nuclear war is seemingly more real than ever before. But unlike in the 1980s, when the general public was well aware of what was at stake, having been frightened by Ronald Reagan’s saber-rattling and educated about the dangers of nuclear weapons throughout the Cold War, including through cultural interventions like popular films, today, when President Trump repeatedly threatens to annihilate Iran, the media and the general public seem to shrug and move on to other news of the day, checking perhaps on what Kim Kardashian had for breakfast.

The seriousness of Trump’s threats cannot be overstated. The two of us have been warning in Al Jazeera and other outlets that, sick and desperate as such threats might be, it behooves the world to take them seriously and make sure a nuclear attack on Iran, or anywhere else for that matter, never happens. Recently, we have been joined by popular media figure Tucker Carlson and other commentators. The internet is abuzz with such warnings.

The logic is simple. Trump and Netanyahu are both desperate to salvage what little credibility they may have with their publics by demonstrating that this war with Iran was not a total failure. If the purpose of the war had been to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon or weapons, then having Iran acquire a nuclear weapon or weapons would be the ultimate repudiation of their efforts and proof of their folly.

Both US and Israeli intelligence agencies report that Iran has shifted the locus of its nuclear enrichment from Fordow and Natanz to the Kuh-e Kolang underground complex widely known as Pickaxe Mountain. The complex is buried under 300 feet of granite, which makes it impenetrable for U.S. or Israeli conventional weapons, including the Mother of All Bombs (MOAB), which Trump has threatened to use. Tucker Carlson shared that he had an “informed source” who told him, “Bibi calls Trump about it [a nuclear strike] every day.” Fortunately, Trump has not yet given the go-ahead.

The background to all this is that Iran has made clear that it will neither export its enriched uranium nor cease its enrichment activities, both of which it had done before Trump stupidly blew up Obama’s Iran nuclear deal or JCPOA. With the deal in place, Iran had also mothballed most of its centrifuges and, according to the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, was only enriching to 3.67 percent – well below weapons grade. Ayatollah Khamenei had issued a fatwa against building an Iranian nuclear weapon, which remained in effect until he and other Iranian leaders were killed in a joint U.S./Israeli strike back in February. Now numerous Iranian leaders have publicly insisted that Iran needs a nuclear weapon as a deterrent against another U.S. and/or Israeli attack. There is evidence that some leaders of the IRGC have also adopted this view despite the fact that official Iranian government policy continues to reject such actions.

Keep reading

Russia Slashes Military Recruitment Bonuses

Russia is beginning to show signs of financial strain from its prolonged war in Ukraine. St. Petersburg has slashed its military recruitment bonus from 3.5 million rubles ($43,000) to just 400,000 rubles ($4,900), a reduction of nearly 89%. The city had already lowered the payment to 1 million rubles in October before announcing another reduction in November. New recruits can still receive an additional 400,000 rubles from the federal government, bringing the combined guaranteed signing bonus to approximately $9,800.

The cuts are spreading beyond St. Petersburg. Mari El reduced its regional recruitment bonus from approximately $28,300 to $4,900, while Mordovia lowered payments from $36,900 to $9,800. Irkutsk and Novosibirsk have also reduced incentives. These bonuses became an important part of Russia’s recruitment strategy because Moscow has attempted to maintain its military manpower through paid contracts rather than another politically disruptive mass mobilization. The government offered enormous financial incentives, particularly in poorer regions where a military contract could provide several years of ordinary wages. Now some of those payments are disappearing, even as the war continues consuming manpower.

The Conflict Intelligence Team suggested that St. Petersburg may have already fulfilled its annual recruitment target, allowing authorities to reduce payments toward the end of the year. Regional governments have incentives to recruit soldiers at the lowest possible cost, and bonuses could increase again when new recruitment targets are established in 2027. A government reducing payments because it has sufficient recruits faces a very different situation from one reducing payments because it can no longer afford them.

Nevertheless, the financial pressure on Russia’s regional governments is becoming increasingly apparent. St. Petersburg is attempting to contain a budget deficit estimated at approximately $1.34 billion. Officials have reportedly cut planned spending on social programs and urban improvements by $860 million and are considering eliminating about 15% of government and public-sector positions. Other regions are confronting similar problems. Russian regional governments had accumulated combined budget deficits exceeding $1.65 billion by September. Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service has also reported that 65 Russian regions are preparing spending reductions between 2027 and 2029, although those projections should be treated as assessments from a party to the conflict rather than established outcomes.

Keep reading

France Blames Iran For Cyberattack That Paralyzed Supermarket Freezers, Vows Retaliation For “Sabotage”

France accused Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of masterminding last month’s cyberattack, which disrupted 700 of the country’s 10,000 supermarkets and struck deep inside the country’s food supply chain.

Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said earlier today in Paris that the IRGC’s operation marked the first large-scale cyberattack aimed at sabotage on French territory. Speaking on the sidelines of the G7 ministerial meeting, he said France had summoned Iran’s ambassador on the matter and was seeking sanctions against the group responsible.

“This is the first large-scale cyberattack with an aim of sabotage on the national territory,” Barrot said. “It hurts the nation’s interests and the security of French citizens. We will take sanctions at the European level against all who are responsible” and “we will take any other proportionate and necessary measure to respond to this attack and dissuade those who would like to reproduce it.”

Keep reading

Massie files 8 articles of impeachment against Hegseth

Representative Thomas Massie has introduced eight articles of impeachment against Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, calling for a House vote on the measure this week.

On Monday, Massie (R-Ky.) accused Hegseth of high crimes and misdemeanors stemming from unauthorized military actions in Iran, Yemen and Venezuela.

The 34-page impeachment resolution maintained that Hegseth “directed and caused” U.S. armed forces “to be introduced into hostilities against the Islamic Republic of Iran” without congressional authorization, a declaration of war, or a qualifying national emergency.

“Secretary Hegseth knowingly executed and implemented unlawful orders to initiate war against a foreign nation notwithstanding the absence of congressional authorization, an attack upon the United States giving rise to the national emergency contemplated by law, or an imminent threat requiring immediate defensive action,” the resolution states.

“Wherefore, Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth, by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to civilians, the lawful conduct of United States military operations, the integrity and credibility of the United States Armed Forces, and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with his duties and the rule of law. Peter Brian Hegseth thus warrants impeachment and trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.”

Chief Pentagon Spokesperson Sean Parnell defended the war secretary in a statement on Monday, expressing confidence that Hegseth “will not back down.”

Keep reading

U.S. Military Aircraft Depart Second UK Base After ‘Iran Threat’

At least 10 U.S. Air Force refuelling tankers left a second airbase in Britain on Monday, with one outlet reporting an undisclosed threat from Iran forced the departure.

The evacuation comes weeks after the U.S. withdrew its bombers from RAF Fairford airbase over a suspected Iran-linked security incident, as Breitbart News reported.

Flight tracking data seen and reported by BBC Verify shows the aircraft left RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk and landed at other American bases in Europe and also at Prestwick Airport in Ayrshire.

The Wall Street Journal reported this was in response to a threat from Iran.

It is unclear whether the threat was imminent or general, the sources told the newspaper.

Asked about Monday’s flights, a Ministry of Defence (MoD) spokesperson told the BBC: “We do not routinely comment on the activity of other nations. Aircraft and other assets move regularly ​according to operational ​requirements.”

The BBC report set out the destinations for the departed aircraft:

Two aircraft that left initially flew to US bases in Germany and Italy.

The first KC-135 then returned to Mildenhall before heading east and landing at Spangdahlem airbase in Germany.

The other aircraft – having flown circuits over Aviano airbase in Italy – flew on to and landed at Spangdahlem.

Three U.S. Osprey tiltrotor transport planes also departed RAF Mildenhall and arrived Tuesday at RAF Lakenheath, another base used by the U.S. in England, CBS News reported.

Former UK National Security Adviser Lord Ricketts told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We are talking about an airbase which houses these large tanker aircraft. Of course, they are large targets, an airbase has a long perimeter, so they are inevitably vulnerable.”

He added: “Nobody knows at this stage what this information was. I suspect part of it is an abundance of caution.”

Keep reading

Massie files articles of impeachment against Hegseth

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., filed articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Hegseth on Monday.

The articles accuse Hegseth of illegally launching the war in Iran and killing hundreds of civilians in boat strikes against suspected drug-smugglers int the Caribbean, Politico reported.

Massie had initially offered articles of impeachment in September, but Speaker Mike Johnson adjourned the House before a vote could take place.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced he would hold a Tuesday press conference in the face of a growing impeachment push from lawmakers.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said that he’ll support impeaching Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Jeffries said that House Democrats will have a conversation about whether there’s enough support for the resolution when they convene in Washington for the first time after the midterm elections on Tuesday.

Keep reading