Tag: perpetual war

Yemeni Missile Strikes Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport

A missile fired from Yemen struck an access road on the grounds of Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport on Sunday, as a heavy US bombing campaign has failed to deter Yemen’s Houthis, who are officially known as Ansar Allah.

According to The Times of Israel, the Israeli military tried multiple times to intercept the missile but failed. A US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system that’s deployed to Israel also failed to intercept the Yemeni missile.

The missile left a crater, and six people were injured by the attack, though none of them were seriously hurt. The Houthis have fired a series of missiles and drones at Israel since the Israeli military resumed its genocidal war on Gaza on March 18, but the Sunday attack marked the first time a Yemeni missile made it past Israel’s air defenses.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that Israel would respond to the Houthi attack. “We’ve acted against them in the past, and we’ll act again in the future,” he said. “This isn’t a one-and-done, but there will be some big hits.”

Israel launched a few rounds of airstrikes on Yemen last year but hasn’t done so under the Trump administration. In March, the Israeli news site Ynet reported that the US has asked Israel not to respond to the Houthis’ attacks and said that US forces will handle the retaliation.

Since March 15, the US has launched over 1,000 strikes on Yemen, killing more than 200 civilians. The Trump administration started the bombing campaign in response to the Houthis announcing they would re-impose their blockade on Israeli shipping after Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza in violation of the ceasefire deal.

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Donald Trump fired national security adviser Mike Waltz for ‘plotting with Israel’s leader to bomb Iran’

President Donald Trump sacked his national security adviser Mike Waltz because he was plotting with Israel‘s leader to attack Iran, it was claimed last night.

Waltz, 51, was thought to have been fired because he accidentally added a journalist to a Signal chat about plans to attack Yemen’s Houthi terrorist group, causing global embarrassment for the Trump administration.

But last night the Washington Post reported the real reason for Trump’s ire was that Waltz huddled with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the latter’s White House visit in February and ‘appeared to share the Israeli leader’s conviction that the time was ripe to strike Iran,’ according to a source.

Trump was angered that Waltz ‘engaged in intense coordination with Netanyahu about military options against Iran ahead of an Oval Office meeting between the Israeli leader and Trump.’

The source said: ‘Waltz wanted to take US policy in a direction Trump wasn’t comfortable with because the US hadn’t attempted a diplomatic solution. 

It got back to Trump and the president wasn’t happy with it. You can’t do that. You work for the president of your country, not the president of another country.’

Waltz, a former Green Beret, was sacked from his position as head of the National Security Council (NSC) on Friday and will now become ambassador to the United Nations, a ‘massive downgrade move to save face’, according to one Trump insider.

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Ukrainian Drones Have Been Targeting Historic Orthodox Churches In Russia

Throughout over three years of the Russia-Ukraine war, there has been a sad and tragic trend of churches being struck by missiles, drones, or bombs on both sides of the conflict.

But attacks on religious sites have gone all the way back to 2014, and the start of the conflict in the Donbass, which saw pro-Kiev forces frequently shelling Russia-aligned areas, including attacks on Orthodox churches

And of course, since then the Ukraine government has actively and openly persecuted Ukraine’s largest Orthodox church for simply maintaining spiritual communion with the Moscow Patriarchate.

Famous, historic monasteries have been shut down or seized by authorities, monks expelled, and churches have been raided by far-right nationalist militant groups. As for the other side, Russian aerial raids have often devastated whole Ukrainian neighborhoods, including destruction of local churches.

In a fresh incident, Russian government and media sources say a Ukrainian drone was sent across the border and struck an iconic, historic church in Belgorord region, which set the church on fire.

Local Belgorod governor Vyacheslav issued a statement on Telegram Saturday saying “the enemy is striking our holy sites again – an enemy drone has attacked Saint George Church in the village of Tolokonnoye.”

Emergency crews were able to extinguish the blaze, but not before the church’s domes caught on fire…

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The Trump Administration Is Hiding American Casualties of War

The Trump administration is fighting an undeclared war in Yemen, and it has not been shy about publicizing the details of its attacks.

But the administration is unwilling to level with the American people about the costs of war. U.S. Central Command, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the White House are keeping the number of U.S. casualties from this ongoing conflict secret. This amounts to a cover-up. Members of Congress are calling for accountability.

“The administration should be transparent about the number of U.S. casualties from the attacks on the Houthis,” Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., told The Intercept. “I am also working to hold the administration accountable for its unauthorized strikes in Yemen.”

After two decades of intermittent war in Yemen, the U.S. officially launched Operation Rough Rider in March of this year, and has carried out strikes on more than 1,000 targets in Yemen.

Since taking office, President Donald Trump has also ramped up conflicts in Iraq, Somalia, and Syria, after running as an anti-war candidate and pitching himself as a “peacemaker.”

The strikes in Yemen are targeting the Iran-backed Houthi government, which began launching attacks on vessels — including U.S. Navy warships — in November 2023 over the war in Gaza. Recent U.S. attacks in response have targeted civilian infrastructure and, according to local reports, killed scores of innocent people.

U.S. troops are also in harm’s way. Earlier this week, a fighter jet fell off the side of the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier in the Red Sea, the Navy said in a statement on Monday. The Truman reportedly made a sharp turn to evade a Houthi attack, which caused the U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter to plunge overboard. One sailor was injured in the chaos, and the $60 million plane was lost to the deep.

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U.S. Government: We Didn’t Use ‘Political Violence’ in Iraq

Why does Washington find it hard to beat Iranian influence? According to the State Department, it’s because the U.S. doesn’t use “political violence” in Iraq, a country that the U.S. famously invaded and occupied in 2003.

“Iran uses levers of power that we refrain from using (political violence, bribery) and has economic and cultural relationships we cannot replicate,” says the State Department’s Iraq Familiarization Course slideshow from 2020 and 2021, which it just released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), along with several hundred pages of other training documents.

This message isn’t propaganda for public consumption; it is an internal statement of the State Department’s line. Part of mandatory training for employees stationed at the U.S. embassy and consulates in Iraq, the slideshow is a window into what the U.S. government tells itself about its role in the Middle East. The line that “we refrain from using political violence” is a sign that American leaders haven’t really internalized what a disaster the Iraq War was.

“A stable, sovereign, united Iraq is core to pursuing all our interests in Iraq,” the slideshow states. “Optimal approach: Highlight that Iraq’s path to stability is through a strong relationship with the U.S., not Iran.”

To be clear, the Iranian government has used violence and bribery to influence Iraq, fostering predominantly Shi’ite sectarian militias that run their own protection rackets and assassinate peaceful opponents.

But one of the largest acts of “political violence” in Iraq’s history was the U.S. invasion of 2003, when American troops invaded the country, toppled its government, and imposed a new one at gunpoint. (So much for Iraqi sovereignty.) The Iraq Body Count Project has documented at least 120,108 civilian deaths, some of which the U.S. Department of Defense tried to sweep under the rug, as a result of the war from 2003 to 2011.

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Israel Bombs Humanitarian Aid Flotilla on Way to Gaza

A ship carrying supplies bound for the Gaza Strip was attacked by Israeli drones in international waters on Friday, according to the activist group that organized the flotilla. The vessel reportedly took at least one direct hit to its hull and sustained damage from fire, forcing its crew to issue an urgent call for help.

Organizers with the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) said one of their vessels was attacked by an unidentified drone in the early hours of Friday morning, noting the ship was not far off the coast of Malta when it was hit.

“At 00:23 Maltese time, the Conscience, a Freedom Flotilla Coalition ship, came under direct attack in international waters,” the group said in a press release. “Armed drones attacked the front of an unarmed civilian vessel twice, causing a fire and a substantial breach in the hull. [. . .] The drone strike appears to have deliberately targeted the ship’s generator, leaving the crew without power and placing the vessel at great risk of sinking.”

An FFC spokesperson, Caoimhe Butterly, later told Reuters that the ship was struck en route to Malta, where it was scheduled to pick up other activists, among them climate campaigner Greta Thunberg and retired US Army Colonel Mary Ann Wright. The group said it had arranged the aid shipment “under a media black out to avoid any potential sabotage.”

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U.S. Pushes Congo and Rwanda to Sign Ukraine-Style Mineral Deals

Massad Boulos, President Donald Trump’s senior adviser for Africa policy, told Reuters on Thursday that the administration wants the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda to sign a peace treaty with each other — and then sign Ukraine-style minerals deals with the United States.

Boulos predicted a minerals deal with the DRC would be signed on the same day as the Congo-Rwanda peace accords, “and then a similar package, but of a different size, will be signed on that day with Rwanda.”

That day, according to Boulos, should come sometime in the next two months. At a meeting in Washington last week, the DRC and Rwanda agreed to an ambitious timetable that included both of them submitting drafts of their half of the peace treaty on May 2. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is scheduled to preside over another meeting in Washington to finalize the peace treaty by mid-May.

Rwanda’s side of the deal included a pledge to stop supporting M23 and other insurgent groups that have been rampaging through the eastern Congo. The insurgents captured several key cities in the DRC at the beginning of the year, and when they marched through the gates of their captured towns, Rwandan troops marched right alongside them.

In return for Rwanda pulling out its troops and halting support for the insurgents, the DRC will promise to take Rwanda’s security concerns seriously, including action against a Rwandan insurgent group that operates in the Congo, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).

The FDLR is one of more than a hundred armed groups operating in the eastern Congo. It is of particular concern to Rwanda because its members are mostly members of the Hutu tribe and they are determined to overthrow the government of Rwanda, which is largely controlled by the Tutsi tribe at present. The Hutus attempted to exterminate the Tutsis in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

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REPORT: The United Nations Could Run Out of Cash Within Months

The United Nations is reportedly running dangerously low on funds and could be out of cash within months. Isn’t that a shame?

Conservatives have long called for the defunding of the United Nations. The far left institution has a history of elevating some of the worst states and actors on the world stage.

The UN really does nothing but cost the U.S. money, while occupying some of the most expensive real estate in the world.

Should we really care that they’re going broke?

From The Economist:

On May 5th the UN will brief members on a previously unreported $600m (17%) cut to its $3.7bn budget aimed at avoiding default this year. It will include a hiring freeze while officials consider further savings that a Western diplomat describes as “moving jobs from New York to Nairobi”. Yet it may not be enough. A combination of deadbeat members and mad budget rules have led to a liquidity crisis. Now, a leaked White House memo proposing that America stop paying its mandatory contributions threatens a financial crash in the citadel of peace and security.

Last year the UN had a $200m cash shortfall, despite spending only 90% of its planned budget. This year will be much worse. Internal modelling suggests that the year-end cash deficit will, without cuts, probably blow out to $1.1bn, leaving the UN without money to pay salaries and suppliers by September. Most UN funding, such as for bodies providing humanitarian food or shelter, is voluntary, but the core functions are paid for through mandatory dues, linked to the size of members’ economies. These core functions include General Assembly meetings, peacekeeping and human-rights monitoring. In a letter seen by The Economist that Mr Guterres sent to members in February, he warned that the peacekeeping budget to pay for troops may run dry by mid-year.

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INSANE: Zelensky Hints Ukraine May Attack Victory Day Parade in Moscow That Will Include 20 Heads of State

On the one hand, we all know ‘talk is cheap’, so it may be that Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky is just posturing when he hints that his forces may well attack the May 9th Victory Day Parade in Moscow, Russia – an event that will gather thousands of people, including as many as 20 heads of state.

This would amount to an especially damning escalation since Putin declared a 3-day truce from May 8-10 – a proposal that Kiev sneered at, but hasn’t publicly rejected.

However, given the apparent lack of common-sense reasoning, many people are taking him seriously when he says Russia is ‘rightfully worried when it fears an attack on the military parade’.

“We in Ukraine never wanted a single second of this war. Back on March 11, we responded positively to the American proposal for a full ceasefire. We made our own proposal to Russia – bilaterally – to halt strikes at least on civilian targets. We also proposed making the Easter ceasefire full and extending it for thirty days.

Russia has consistently rejected everything and continues to manipulate the world, trying to deceive the United States. Now, yet again, another attempt at manipulation: for some reason everyone is supposed to wait until May 8 before ceasing fire — just to provide Putin with silence for his parade.

We value human lives, not parades. That’s why we believe — and the world believes — that there is no reason to wait until May 8. The ceasefire should not be just for a few days, only to return to killing afterward. It must be immediate, full, and unconditional — for at least 30 days to ensure it is secure and guaranteed. This is the foundation that could lead to real diplomacy.

We reaffirm this proposal. The American proposal also remains on the table. Russia knows exactly what it needs to do and how to respond: to genuinely cease fire.”

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As VP Vance Says the Russia-Ukraine War ‘Is Not Going to End Any Time Soon’, State Department Spokeswoman Warns US ‘Not Going To Mediate Peace Talks Anymore’

The war in the Ukraine is in its third year. While a lot of progress in peace talks was made in the last 100 days under the auspices of the Donald J. Trump US administration, we’ve apparently come to the point where the initiative must now be seized by the Russian and Ukrainian warring parties.

For weeks now, we have been hearing from Trump and his top cabinet members that, because of the lack of tangible progress by the two sides in the peace process, the US may be about to leave the position of a mediator in the negotiations.

It seems that this day has arrived.

First, Marco Rubio told Fox News that progress between Russia and Ukraine was ‘not fast enough.

Then, VP JD Vance told the same Fox News that the Ukraine war is ‘not going to end any time soon’, in a rare admission of the difficulties that the peace process is facing.

Sky News reported:

“Russia and Ukraine are getting closer to a peace deal but not fast enough, the US’s top diplomat has said.

Marco Rubio repeated that Washington was ready to step aside and stop pursuing peace should a deal not materialize – a threat he’s made several times in the past week.

‘I think we know where Ukraine is, and we know where Russia is right now… they’re closer, but they’re still far apart’, he said during an interview on Fox News.

But vice president JD Vance told the same network that he didn’t see a quick end to the conflict.

‘It’s not going anywhere… it’s not going to end any time soon’, Vance said.”

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