Tag: perpetual war

The Intelligence Support Activity – one of America’s most secretive special operations units

Established in 1981, the U.S. Army Intelligence Support Activity was created in the wake of the failed attempt to rescue the American hostages from Tehran. Very likely, this is the first time you hear about this unit – and for good reason.

A combination of a special operations and an intelligence-gathering outfit, Intelligence Support Activity operates in the shadows. For over 40 years, the unit has been paving the way for other secretive special missions units, such as the Army Delta Force and Navy’s SEAL Team 6. ISA is one of JSOC’s Tier 1 units, along with Delta Force, SEAL Team 6, and the Air Force’s 24th Special Tactics Squadron.

As to how the unit came to be, much like the rest of the U.S. special operations community, it arose from disaster and the ashes of defeat.

This is how an emergency created one of the military’s most secretive units.

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Parsons Gets $1.9M US Army Technical Direction Letter for Next-Gen Biometrics + More

The U.S. Army granted a technical direction letter worth $1.9 million to Centreville, Virginia-based Parsons Corporation for the acquisition of biometric mobile and static collection devices, including software, in support of the U.S. Army’s Next Generation Biometrics Collection Capability (NXGBCC).

Expected to be fielded in 2025, NXGBCC will replace the Army’s Biometrics Automated Toolset-Army, which the Army says, “is old and obsolete.”

NXGBCC will gather, analyze, and share fingerprints, facial, iris and voice biometrics, and is the first time Army personnel will use a capability that is software-based rather than tied to unique hardware that must be maintained, according to the Army.

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Reject the Failed Hawkish Consensus on Iran

No matter who wins the presidential election next month, US policy towards Iran seems likely to remain extremely hostile and confrontational. Both campaigns seem determined to out-hawk each other. The Iran policy debate in Washington, such as it is, is focused entirely on the same bankrupt coercive measures of sanctions, threats, and military action that are guaranteed to make things worse. There is no serious discussion of reducing tensions or resuming negotiations in the new year. The persistence of this failed hawkish consensus is dangerous for the US, Iran, and the wider region, and it needs to end.

The failed bipartisan hawkish consensus on Iran closes off paths for resolving disagreements peacefully, and it paves the way for unnecessary wars. The consensus embraces escalation as the solution to each new crisis, and it writes off diplomacy as naïve and useless. It is the same kind of bankrupt, outdated thinking that has dominated US foreign policy in the region for at least the last thirty years, and it is why US Iran policy remains so destructive and dangerous. We are desperately in need of some fresh and different policy ideas.

Unfortunately, both presidential candidates are content to keep the US on a collision course with Iran for the time being, and that means that the US will be stuck with the same rotten foreign policy in the Middle East for at least another four years. Donald Trump recently expressed support for an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. During the vice-presidential debate, Sen. Vance said that he would support whatever Israel wanted to do. On the Democratic side, Vice President Harris bizarrely claimed that Iran is America’s “greatest adversary” in response to a question in her interview with 60 Minutes. Harris asserted that Iran was an “obvious” candidate for being the greatest adversary because its government “has American blood on its hands.”

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The Insanity of US Foreign Policy

What do you do with a president (and of course he’s just reading a script given to him) who says he “fully, fully, fully” supports Israel as it commits genocide in Gaza, gobbles up the West Bank, invades Lebanon, and spoils for a war with Iran? It’s as if Joe Biden took an oath to Israel rather than the U.S. Constitution. And will the madness be any different under Kamala Harris or Donald Trump?

And, speaking of foreign interference in U.S. elections, why is Bibi Netanyahu, the Israeli leader overseeing genocide and invasions, allowed to address Congress, before which he receives stormy applause from virtually every senator and representative? Why are organizations like AIPAC allowed to have so much power and influence (through campaign financing and lobbying) over U.S. elections? Why is it OK when AIPAC brags that its support ensures that candidates win their elections, and that its opposition determines that they lose?

The untoward influence exercised by Israel and AIPAC ensures you have the “choice” of Donald Trump, who advocates smashing Iran for Israel, and Kamala Harris, who gives her unqualified support of Israel’s right to defend itself (of course, everything Israel does is “defensive”). The U.S. military is currently defending Israel in the Middle East, effectively at war with Iran (one hopes it doesn’t escalate, but a wider war with Iran may be the “October surprise” that will have Harris and Trump falling over each other to profess their undying devotion to defending Israel and smiting its enemies in the name of freedom).

It’s bizarre indeed to see the world’s self-styled lone superpower and imperial hegemon reduced to a lackey and toady of Bibi Netanyahu and hardliners within Israel. It’s not just a case of the tail wagging the dog but a flea on the tail wagging the dog.

With my globe in front of me, I see how geographically small Israel is. In land area, it’s roughly the size of New Jersey, Google tells me. Now, imagine if New Jersey completely dominated U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and heavily influenced presidential and congressional elections across America. A little weird, don’t you think?

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Israel looking at $66bn war bill as economic woes deepen

The total bill for Israel’s war on Gaza and Lebanon over several years will be some $66 billion, about 11 to 12 percent of Israel’s pre-war GDP, according to the Israeli Central Bank.

The number was revealed by Adam Tooze, a history professor and director of the European Institute at Columbia University in New York, who has written extensively about financial crises.  

He stated in a 7 October interview with Foreign Policy that Israel is fighting a war of choice, which includes the goal of unleashing mass violence to make Gaza “unlivable” and “deal” with Hezbollah.

Israel “is in a deliberate way escalating the destruction in Gaza and the effort to deal with Hezbollah in Lebanon. So this is expensive,” Tooze observed.

Even with US aid, which Tooze estimates at roughly $14 billion to $15 billion per year, the cost of the war is a strain on the Israeli government and society, he added.

Separately, a report published by Brown University’s Costs of War project said the US has given Israel $17.9 billion in military aid in the past year, and spent at least $22.76 billion assisting Israel, the highest amount in the two countries’ histories.

Tooze noted further that as a result of the war, Israeli tourism has collapsed by 75 percent, and hundreds of thousands of workers have been taken out of the economy at times while serving as reservists in the army.

“This is obviously disruptive to Israel, with a population of 10 million. If you take that number out of the workforce, prime-age, working young people, this is going to hurt.”

Tooze says that the Israeli economy, in particular the construction sector, has further suffered after imposing a ban on some 80,000 to 150,000 migrant Palestinian workers from the West Bank.

Estimates of Israeli GDP growth have fallen from three or four percent to roughly zero in the near future. At the same time, it faces a large surge in government spending.

In contrast, the relatively small economy of the West Bank, with a GDP of as little as $18 billion, has plunged roughly 20 to 25 percent.

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White House Ignored Warning from Pentagon, State Dept that Israel Was Creating a Catastrophe in Gaza

Recently released emails from Reuters show that officials in the White House ignored warnings from their counterparts at the Defense and State Department warning that Israel was committing war crimes and creating a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Reuters reviewed emails from the Departments of Defense and State from last October, showing that high-ranking officials warned about supporting Israel as it committed war crimes in Gaza.

“As Israel pounded northern Gaza with air strikes last October and ordered the evacuation of more than a million Palestinians from the area, a senior Pentagon official delivered a blunt warning to the White House, the outlet reported. “The mass evacuation would be a humanitarian disaster and could violate international law, leading to war crime charges against Israel.”

The warning came from Dana Stroul, then the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East in an Oct. 13 email sent to senior White House aides. She explained an assessment by the International Committee of the Red Cross that had left her “chilled to the bone.”  

Stroul and other officials were pushing the White House to take a more sympathetic position on the suffering of Palestinians and ask Israel to give Gazans more time to comply with Tel Aviv’s evacuation orders. 

While the Biden administration claims that it did pressure Israel early in the onslaught and that did make a difference, Reuters reports that the White House had little impact on Tel Aviv’s military operations. 

“But Washington was slow to address the suffering of Palestinians, said three senior U.S. officials involved in the decision-making process,” the article explains. “And while the ground invasion was ultimately delayed by about 10 days, the three officials attributed the pause more to operational preparations by the Israeli military than U.S. pressure.”

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Ralph Norman warns US is facing a saline shortage due to shipments to Ukraine and hurricane damage

Republican South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman on Monday warned that the United States was facing a saline shortage because shipments of the critical medical solution have gone to Ukraine.

Medical facilities around the United States are preparing for the shortage after a medical facility in North Carolina closed down because of flooding from the storm, and the shipments to Ukraine. The plant is operated by Baxter Healthcare Corp, which produces approximately 60% of the nation’s supply of IV solutions, according to The News & Observer.

Norman claimed the shortage and shipment of the products to Ukraine was an “assault on our way of life.”

“Just before I went on your show, I got a message from from a pharmaceutical group that saline is a severe shortage,” Norman said on the “Just The News, No Noise” television show. “Saline operations are going to be limited all over the country. Why? A lot of the medicine has been sent overseas, namely Ukraine, which we’re trying to get to the bottom of, but it’s an assault on our way of life. John and Amanda. It’s got to end with hopefully getting them out of office.”

Norman also warned of the shortage on a post to X, claiming that the shortage and destruction in North Carolina constitute a “national emergency that Biden-Harris needs to address immediately.”

“All money going to aid illegal immigrants needs to stop IMMEDIATELY. ESPECIALLY when this is happening in our own states,” he added to the post.

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Biden/Harris killed the 2022 Ukraine-War peace-deal. Would they want it now?

Early after Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022, Turkey, which is a NATO member but not as subservient to the U.S. Government as almost all of its European members are, broke with the U.S. Government’s opposition to there being any negotiations to settle the Ukraine war; and peace talks, negotiations to end the conflict, were held in Istanbul. As Wikipedia notes regarding those negotiations:

In a surprise visit to Ukraine on 9 April [2022], British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said “Putin is a war criminal, he should be pressured, not negotiated with,” and that the collective West was not willing to make a deal with Putin. Three days after Johnson left Kyiv, Putin stated publicly that talks with Ukraine “had turned into a dead end”. Naftali Bennett said in 2023 that both sides had wanted a ceasefire, the odds of the deal holding had been 50-50, and that the Western powers backing Ukraine had stopped the deal.[79]

Mr. Johnson had received U.S. President Joe Biden’s authorization to do that — to go to  Ukraine’s President Volodmyr Zelensky to inform him that The West (the U.S. empire, including NATO) would cease supporting Ukraine’s Government if Ukraine would sign the till-then-agreed-upon but not-yet-signed peace treaty with Russia, which entailed Russia’s ceasing its invasion in return for Ukraine’s returning to its neutral status which had prevailed prior to the US. Government’s take-over of Ukraine on 20 February 2014, and Ukraine’s ceasing its efforts to restore to Ukraine the 22% of the former Ukraine’s territory that Russia then was occupying. Biden insisted upon the Ukrainian Government’s pursuing an all-or-nothing strategy to defeat Russia in the battlefields of Ukraine — or else Ukraine would lose Western support in its war against Russia. (The reason for this policy from Biden is that though such a peace treaty would have been far better for Ukraine, since the million-or-so deaths, that continuing the war entails, would have been prevented, such a treaty would have totally ended America’s ownership of Ukraine, which was won by the Obama/Biden Administration’s stunningly successful coup in February 2014, which grabbed control of Ukraine away from the people of Ukraine. The U.S. Government wants to continue controlling Ukraine’s Government.)

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American Neocons Get Their Iran War as Congress Sleeps

Over the weekend, the Commander of the US Central Command (CENTCOM), General Michael Kurilla, arrived in Israel to “coordinate” with the Israeli military and plan a military strike against Iran. Think about that for a moment: one of the highest-ranking officers in the US military is planning a war in a foreign country against another foreign country which will be fueled by American weapons, American intelligence, and American tax dollars.

Did that foreign country – Iran – attack the United States or threaten Americans? No, it did not. What did Iran do to warrant a CENTCOM commander bringing the weight of the US military into play to plan a war – possibly WWIII? It retaliated against Israeli airstrikes including the assignation of a Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran.

It was the Israeli missile attack on Tehran – an unprecedented event – that set off this chain of escalation, but few would know if from media coverage. This war fever between Israel and Iran not only has nothing to do with us, but our increasing involvement actually hurts our national interests in the region.

After a deadly and futile three-year proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, the last thing we need is another war in the Middle East, especially against Iran. But make no mistake, war is what we are getting. This Administration has even offered to “compensate” Israel with even more weapons and diplomatic support if they hit targets of the US choosing and avoid others in Iran.

Imagine if China sent military officials to Iran to pay Tehran to make sure some US targets were struck and others avoided. Would we consider it Iran’s war against us, or China’s war against us? Both?

Has Congress declared war on Iran or even authorized the war? No. Has this Administration explained to us why Americans suffering after the catastrophic Hurricane Helene are on their own because we need to spend billions on a war that is none of our business? No. The neocons have wanted this war for decades and for them it’s always America last.

This war will make us less free, less safe, and much poorer. There will be no benefits at all, only downside.

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UK psychological warfare unit collaborated with Israeli army

Britain secretly advised the Israeli military on psychological warfare techniques, Declassified has found.

Leaked documents reveal how the British army’s 77th brigade discussed strategy and tactics with the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).

The 77th brigade uses psychological operations and social media to help fight wars “in the information age”.

It specialises in “non-lethal forms of psychological warfare” such as cyber-attacks, propaganda activities, and counter-insurgency operations online.

Israel’s own information operations have involved using fabricated videos and fake social media accounts to defend the bombing of Gaza.

Two exchanges with the IDF took place at the 77th brigade’s barracks in Hermitage, Berkshire, between 2018-19.

Leaked documents about the encounters originate from a hack of the IDF by a group called “Anonymous for Justice”. The dataset was subsequently published by Distributed Denial of Secrets.

Although some of the documents reference “secret” matters, there is strong public interest in reporting on their contents.

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