Tag: perpetual war

The IDF’s Attack on Christ Reveals a Larger Pattern

Many political figures have weighed in on the latest IDF controversy this week, as images posted online clearly depict an Israeli soldier taking what appears to be a sledgehammer to the face of a statue of Jesus Christ in southern Lebanon. The IDF issued a statement condemning the attack, saying the soldier’s actions were “wholly inconsistent with the values expected of its troops,” and adding that a criminal investigation would be launched, assuring there would be “harsh disciplinary action” against those involved. But we’ve seen this movie before.

First, I would be remiss not to mention the hypocrisy of the situation. Israel has killed thousands of civilians in southern Lebanon since the major escalation resumed and has displaced over 1.2 million Lebanese civilians, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry and disaster management agencies. But predictably, the IDF has not issued a single statement condemning the civilian deaths or displacement of Lebanon’s citizens. The IDF has shown a consistent tolerance for the havoc wreaked upon Lebanese civilians, yet when faced with damaging PR from a vile attack on a statue of Jesus, they move almost immediately to condemn it — because Benjamin Netanyahu knows he cannot afford to lose favor in the predominantly Christian West.

The theme behind the IDF’s statue attack becomes even more apparent when you consider how Christians are treated in Israel today, where they are often met with violence or harassment. In 2025, there were reportedly more than 155 attacks against Christians in Israel, ranging from physical assaults to the vandalism of churches, according to the Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue. Notably, this marks a sharp increase from 2024, when 111 incidents were reported.

The treatment of Palestinian Christians has been far worse, with both Israeli settlers and IDF soldiers carrying out relentless attacks and mass displacements of Christian communities in Palestine. These actions are often dismissed as unrelated to religion, but the pattern suggests otherwise.

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Trump’s Iran Fiasco’s Silver Lining – The End of NATO

The one great big positive that has come out of the Donald’s Iran fiasco is that he has not held back in blackening the name of NATO in a manner that has heretofore been unthinkable:

“NATO WASN’T THERE WHEN WE NEEDED THEM, AND THEY WON’T BE THERE IF WE NEED THEM AGAIN. Remember Greenland, that big, poorly run, piece of ice!!!”

The Donald also described NATO as a “paper tiger” and stated he is “strongly considering” pulling the United States out of the alliance, citing its failure to support his reckless war on the Persian Gulf:

“They weren’t there. None of them. They weren’t there.”

The Europeans, of course, had good reason not to sign up for America’s latest Forever War. They are being reminded of that at the petrol stations every day, but there is more to be said than, well, finally Washington called a War Party and no one sent an RSVP.

What is actually transpiring on the fraught world stage at the moment is powerful demonstration that allies and alliances are a profound detriment to the Homeland Security of America, not a fundamental necessity.

That’s obviously true with respect to Israel, which lured the gullible Trump into attacking Iran for no good reason of Homeland Security, but it’s also true on a universal basis. In fact, NATO is every bit as much of an albatross for the reasons that we amplify at length below; it’s very existence 35 years after the Cold War ended demonstrates why it is long past time to revert to the wisdom of the Founders and anchor America’s national security posture on –

… peaceful commercial relations with all, entangling alliances with none.

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Iran Blockade: IRGC Attacks Three Container Ships in Strait of Hormuz

At least three container ships have been attacked in the Strait of Hormuz by Iran this morning, with a Royal Navy office reporting “heavy damage” to at least one, and Tehran claiming ships had been seized and taken into Iranian waters “in order to examine the cargo and documents”.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has opened fire on three container ships attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz, the maritime chokepoint at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, as a strained ceasefire is challenged by two mutual blockades imposed by Iran and the United States attempt to deny each other access to the critical-to-trade waterway.

Britain’s Maritime Trade Operations centre (UKMTO) reports that in the early hours of Wednesday morning the Greek-owned, Liberia-flagged container ship Epaminondas was approached by an “IRGC gun boat” and fired on without warning.

The attack “caused heavy damage to the bridge”, although no injuries, fires aboard, environmental concerns were reported. “All Crew reported safe”, it was stated. London state media says it understands that the ship’s master believed he had permission to transit the Strait of Hormuz, and was ‘running dark’ — the ship’s AIS transponder being turned off to avoid attention — but was nevertheless attacked.

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USAF Explains Additional F-15EX Buys During Budget Brief

AFP attended the four hours of budget briefings at the Pentagon yesterday as part of the Pentagon Press Corp.

The Department of the Air Force’s Fiscal Year 2027 President’s Budget request marks a fundamental strategic shift. This budget departs from previous practices and makes a conscious effort to prioritize investment in modernization and readiness, recognizing both as essential and non-negotiable. With a total request of $338.8 billion, this 38% increase over the FY26 enacted position is a generational investment designed to supercharge our Defense Industrial Base, sharpen our military readiness, and secure enduring Air and Space superiority.

The budget truly is procurement wish list dream for all of the services, which we will write more about later today.

Part of the procurement buy for fiscal 2027 includes 24 F-15EX aircraft, in a sustained production run to more than 260 airframes.

I question the Air Force officers delivering the briefing about concerns we have heard from retired flag officers about the vulnerability of the F-15EX in a high-threat environment as shown by 4 F-15s being shot down during Operation Epic Fury, by far the aircraft impacted by hostile and friendly fire.

The answer I received was the need primarily in the Pacific of an airframe that can load a large amount of weapons for possibly stand-off offensive fires.

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What went wrong in Israel? A genocide scholar examines ‘what Zionism became’

Former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, when asked to explain the apparent about-face that led him to advocate the unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, quoted a beloved Israeli pop ballad. “What you can see from there, you can’t see from here,” he said, referring to the shift in perspective he had supposedly undergone since coming to power.

Although the 2005 Gaza disengagement was perhaps less a change of heart than one of strategy, as his senior adviser later admitted, the lyric became a byword of Israeli politics, an oft-cited reminder that perspective is everything.

Israeli-born Holocaust historian Omer Bartov invoked the same line when he was asked how he had come to view Israel’s ferocious assault on Gaza as a genocide. Living in the US, where he has spent more than three decades, he said, had given him the necessary distance to see the annihilation of Gaza for what it was. “I think it’s very hard to be dispassionate when you’re there,” he said.

Bartov did more than simply apply the word genocide to Israel’s actions: he shouted it from the establishment-media rooftops, making the case in a lengthy July 2025 essay in the New York Times titled: I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It. (He had addressed some of the arguments in a Guardian essay the year prior.) Bartov’s declaration cost him several close relationships, he told me, even though subsequent events have not only validated his analysis but further demonstrated the lack of concern for Palestinian suffering that has become prevalent in Israeli society.

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Far-Left Sen. Chris Murphy Backtracks After Backlash, Claims “SARCASM” Following Praise of Iran’s Shadow Fleet Dodging U.S. Blockade

Radical Democrat Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut is cheering for America’s enemies during active hostilities with Iran, and when called out, he pulled the classic leftist move, gaslighting, and deflection.

As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, Murphy replied with a smug one-word “awesome” to a Lloyd’s List report claiming that at least 26 ships from Iran’s notorious “shadow fleet” had brazenly bypassed the U.S. naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz/Gulf of Oman area.

Murphy didn’t express concern for U.S. troops. He didn’t worry about Iranian oil money flowing to terrorists. He didn’t even pretend to support America’s interests.

He just typed “awesome.”

X users immediately unloaded on the Connecticut Democrat, calling the remark “literally rooting for the enemy” and “treasonous.”

White House officials ripped him for gleefully regurgitating Iranian propaganda while U.S. forces are actively engaged. Even some on the left couldn’t defend it.

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Trump’s extreme use of military is stirring a crisis of conscience among troops

As President Donald Trump increasingly uses the U.S. military to carry out his agenda through brute force, organizations that provide counseling services for U.S. servicemembers are reporting growing numbers of calls. These calls have further spiked in response to Trump’s war on Iran, one of the most unpopular in U.S. history.

The United States has carried out the war through intense attacks on densely populated civilian areas, the impact of which was clearly shown in the bombing of a girls’ school, killing well over 100 children. Not even concerned with selling the war to the public, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has leaned into treating the intervention as a “holy war” for Christianity.

Mike Prysner, an Iraq War veteran and executive director at the Center on Conscience & War (CCW), told Truthout that troops are telling his organization that they don’t want to be involved in the killing.

“That’s pretty much all of the cases that we have,” Prysner said. “It’s all people who don’t want to take part in killing in a war that they don’t believe in, and this war has made them realize that they can’t take part in any kind of U.S. military action ever again.”

The CCW, formerly the National Interreligious Service Board for Conscientious Objectors, was founded in 1940 to assist religious communities whose beliefs prohibited them from participating in war. Over time, and as a result of broadening criteria for who can qualify as a conscientious objector (CO), the organization evolved to assist troops of all backgrounds whose values prevent them from being able to participate in war.

Prysner told Truthout that in recent weeks CCW has already been able to help several servicemembers become COs to avoid being deployed.

To reach more servicemembers experiencing crises of conscience, CCW and other organizations including the Quaker House founded the GI Rights Hotline in 1994. Steve Woolford, a resource counselor at the Quaker House, has taken calls for the hotline since 2001 and agreed that the war on Iran, and Trump’s broader use of the military, has caused a spike in calls.

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Trump Gives an Indefinite Cease-Fire to Iran. What Is This War?

Last Friday, President Trump posted a series of announcements on Truth Social, claiming that Iran had given him everything he wanted in exchange for nothing. The President asserted that Iran had agreed to hand over what he called their “nuclear dust” (the enriched uranium buried under ground from last June’s American air attack); to stop funding Hezbollah and Hamas; and to open the Strait of Hormuz and never close it again. Many of Trump’s pro-war supporters declared victory, reveling in their triumphalism.

While that was a feel-good story, there were many obvious problems with it, starting with the fact that Iran never confirmed any of it and would never realistically surrender, given its perception of the massive leverage it continues to possess. Sure enough, Iran later that day denied having agreed to anything beyond opening the Strait during the cease-fire negotiations. But after Israel continued to bomb Lebanon, despite Trump’s announcement that he had “PROHIBITED” Israel from doing so, which he followed by announcing a full military blockade of the Strait to prevent Iran from selling oil, it was clear that a deal to end the war was very far away.

During his flurry of victory claims, Trump set Wednesday — tomorrow — as the deadline for Iran to agree to a comprehensive deal, after which he said he would begin obliterating the country. He announced that he was sending Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff (with J.D. Vance being added later) to Islamabad to meet with the Iranians. In response, Iran announced that it would refuse to attend any negotiations while the U.S. was blockading the Strait. As a result, Trump’s deadline will come and go tomorrow, presumably without a deal.

As he has done before, Trump’s response to the lapse of his deadline is not to follow through on his threats (thankfully), but instead to announce an extension of the deadline. Today, he did exactly that, though notably, his extension came without any new deadline: it is just an indefinite suspension of hostilities pending an agreement. All of this raises a question that has lurked since the start of this: what is the purpose of this war, and how can it end? We examine those questions in the above 30-minute video.

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Ukraine Seeks To Import African Migrants To Fill Labor Shortage After 100s Of 1000s Dead Or Wounded At The Front

Volodymyr Zelensky’s head of his Presidential Office in Ukraine, Kyrylo Budanov, has announced plans to import migrant laborers from Africa. Essentially, this entails Ukraine establishing new laws for the legal entry and residence of foreign workers.

The government will introduce a new list of “migration-risk” countries to facilitate this plan, according to remarks Budanov made at the CEO Club Ukraine.

“They enter, obtain documents, and then move on. This is a problem that creates barriers for business,” Budanov reportedly said, emphasizing that Ukraine will now move to make it easier for migrants to stay and work in Ukraine.

Last October, rumors swirled that Ukraine was directly recruiting mercenaries from Latin American drug cartels to fight in its war against Russia. Kyiv’s forced conscription policies at home, which often resort to violence, have already raised numerous concerns about the brutal practices of Zelensky’s military as well as the desperate situation Ukraine is in due to loss of life on the frontlines.

It has long been known that Ukraine faces a serious demographic crisis, now exacerbated by men who have died in the war or fled to other countries. Already, there have been voices pushing for mass immigration in Ukraine since the war began. Last year, Remix News reported that Vasyl Voskobojnik, president of the Ukrainian Association of Foreign Employment Agencies, said the population decline can no longer be offset by simply increasing the birthrate. Instead, immigration from Third-World countries is the only solution.

Voskobojnik said the Ukrainian government must develop a migration policy by 2026 that focuses on reducing this shortage.

However, importing foreign workers and foreign warriors (who may or may not have criminal ties) will only add to concerns that Ukraine will ever be a desired member of the European Union, as the EU faces its own crises brought on by mass immigration.

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Now that Orbán Is No Longer Prime Minister, Zelensky Finally Restores the Druzhba Pipeline Flow of Russian Oil to Hungary

As expected, the oil will flow again soon.

Conservative champion, former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is the man Brussels loves to hate – and Kiev too.

Unlike the Globalist ‘leaders’ of the EU, Orbán rejected Ukraine’s membership in both the EU and NATO, and refused to send money for Kiev’s war effort.

This made him an enemy for Volodymyr Zelensky, who ridiculed him, called him fat, threatened to unleash his military on him, and finally, in the runup to the Hungarian elections, cut the flow of Russian oil passing through Ukrainian territory in the Druzhba pipeline.

And now that Péter Magyar won the election with a wide margin, to no one’s surprise, Zelensky announces that the pipeline will be opened in less than ten days.

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