Tag: perpetual war

Russia Hammers Ukraine With Hypersonic Strikes, Liberates Key Villages in Donetsk

In addition, over the past week, 66 Ukrainian Armed Forces servicemen surrendered to Russian captivity, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported.

Russian forces conducted 33 precision strikes over the past week, including with Kinzhal hypersonic missiles, targeting Ukraine’s military-industrial facilities and armed forces, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported on Friday.

“Between September 21 and 27, the Russian Armed Forces carried out 33 group strikes using precision-guided weapons, including Kinzhal hypersonic aeroballistic missiles and strike drones. These strikes hit Ukraine’s defense industry facilities, their supporting energy infrastructure, military airfield infrastructure, and a military train carrying Western weapons and equipment,” the military statement said.

“Additionally, production sites and storage areas for drones and unmanned boats, arsenals, ammunition and fuel depots, temporary deployment points, and areas where Ukrainian forces, nationalist formations, and foreign mercenaries were concentrated were also targeted,” the Defense Ministry added.

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RaHDit Hacker Group Doxxes Ukraine Militants Who Attacked Russia’s Kursk Region

Previously, the hacker group RaHDit divulged info on more than 3,200 foreign mercenaries in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, as well as releasing information on 1,500 active employees of Ukraine’s foreign intelligence service, including those working undercover in more than 20 countries.

The Russia-based RaHDit hacker group has leaked data on over 800 Ukrainian Armed Forces militants who attacked the Kursk region.

Among the identified individuals are members of the 82nd Airborne Assault Brigade, the 61st Mechanized Brigade, and UAV operators, as well as some 200 foreign mercenaries from Armenia, Israel, Georgia, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Turkiye, Moldova, Syria, and other countries.

The hacker group RaHDit, which specifically launched its NemeZida project to denounce 21st century Nazis and their crimes, issued an appeal to Ukrainian troops to surrender, adding a reminder to use the special “Volga” radio frequency established by Russian forces for Ukrainian soldiers wanting to surrender.

The Russia-based hackers have previously doxxed everything from Ukrainian intel agents and drone operators to thousands of foreign mercenaries fighting in the ranks of Ukraine’s military.

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Nuclear arms to be used as soon as NATO attacks Belarus, Lukashenko says

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has said during a meeting with students that nuclear weapons will be used as soon as NATO attacks the republic.

“I <…> have been saying that attacking Belarus is World War Three. Actually, recently, Putin confirmed this making amendments to the nuclear doctrine that, in the event of an attack on Russia and Belarus we are using nuclear arms,” the BelTA news agency quoted him as saying. “He confirmed my words. This is the essence of my statement,” the Belarusian leader added.

“If we use nuclear weapons, they may respond. And to Russia as well, so it will use all of its arsenal. And this is a world war already. The West doesn’t want it either. They are not ready for it. Yet we are openly telling them: the state border is the red line. If they set foot on it, the response will be immediate,” Lukashenko asserted.

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Wars, Propaganda Wars and Funding Them

By now it’s clear even to the thick-skulled nabobs running our government, that the U.S. can’t win actual wars. It puts up a more respectable performance with propaganda campaigns, probably because those are things the mighty intellects in the CIA truly enjoy, but even those, with their ferocious philippics against malevolent Moscow in The New York Times and Washington Post, even those go down eventually to ignominious defeat. Truth will out.

Like it did in Afghanistan where, for 20 years our military men assured us victory was just around the corner and the established press harrumphed at any peacenik outraged by the slaughter. Then, practically overnight, the whole house of cards collapsed. Even those of us who had predicted a Taliban victory were stunned at the speed with which the U.S. puppet regime folded. It was a disgrace for the Empire. Not unlike the imperial misadventure in Iraq, but somehow worse. It brought all too forcibly to mind those U.S. military helicopters fleeing from Saigon rooftops so many decades ago…

For the past two and a half years, we Americans have been deafened by the clang of a stupendous propaganda war waged against Moscow and on behalf of Kiev and supposedly the west in our mainstream news outlets. We read early on that Russia would soon run out of missiles. It didn’t. Embarrassed silence greeted this uncomfortable fact. Even worse for our press and elite political fabricators, it turned out Russia BRISTLES with missiles. Little said about that in our corporate media. We also read that the desperate Russian military cannibalized washing machines and dishwashers to produce weapons, a lie that I’ve never seen retracted.

Also, those fiendish northern Slavs were accused of every conceivable atrocity against the Ukrainian population, and when later it emerged that the Russian military actually avoids targeting civilians with a care utterly absent in, say, the U.S. assault on Iraq or the Israeli one on Gaza, there were no apologies, no retractions, no expressions of contrition. Nope. The press just moved on to the next tall tale. My guess is that when this whole sorry proxy war ends with Ukraine’s defeat, the propaganda chickens will NOT come home to roost, no, they’ll flap their wings to the next nest of lies. Located where? Farther over the horizon. In China, of course.

For those who dread these frenzies of press prevarication, the news that Washington may allocate $1.6 billion for anti-Chinese propaganda cannot be good. According to a Responsible Statecraft article September 11 by Marcus Stanley, the House passed the “Countering the PRC Malign Influence Fund” on September 9. This money is “about twice, for example, the annual expenditure of CNN,” and it goes to the state department and the infamously, covertly CIA-associated USAID over the next five years. The Global Engagement Center and USAID will lead on spending these monies, making “grants to foreign media and civil society organizations.” The bill, “HR 1157 would supercharge these programs.”

Because the bill doesn’t require transparency to foreign citizens for this U.S. financing, “it’s possible that the program could in some cases be used to subsidize covert anti-Chinese messaging…Such anti-Chinese messaging could cover a wide range of bread-and-butter political issues in foreign countries.” In other words, the U.S. government is poised to launch a MASSIVE black propaganda campaign. Foreigners exposed to its efforts can expect epics of Chinese depravity that make J.D. “One Whopper After Another” Vance’s phony cat-eating Haitian fantasy in Ohio look like child’s play. Who knows what the state department and CIA chefs of hogwash will serve up, but you can be sure it will explode your tastebuds. And for the constipated American legacy purveyors of CIA poppycock, like The New York Times and The Washington Post, it’ll doubtless barrel through them like magnesium citrate.

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CNN shares details of ‘sophisticated’ pager attacks against Hezbollah

The alleged Israeli plot to target senior members of Hezbollah through their pagers relied on explosives hidden in the devices’ batteries in a way that was nearly impossible to detect, CNN reported Friday, citing sources.

Earlier this month, a series of powerful pager explosions swept through the Middle East, killing 12 people and injuring around 3,000. The victims included numerous officials of the Lebanese-based Islamist movement. The attack was followed a day later by portable radio explosions that killed at least 20 others. Iran and Lebanon accused Israel of orchestrating the attack, a charge denied by West Jerusalem.

An unnamed Lebanese official familiar with the investigation told CNN that the explosives in the pagers were hidden inside the device in a way “so sophisticated that it could not be detected.”

Another official told the network that the materials were “laced” into the pager’s lithium battery and were virtually undetectable, adding that he had “never seen anything like it.” Lebanese officials also witnessed controlled explosions of the pagers and observed how devastating they must have been to their owners, according to the article.

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Israel’s new war front in Lebanon has no clear off-ramp

There has recently been an alarming escalation of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict. On 23 September, Lebanon experienced its deadliest day since the end of its civil war (1975-90), with more than 560 people killed and another 1,800 injured in a single day by Israeli airstrikes in the country’s south and east.

Hezbollah maintains that it will continue fighting Israel until there is a ceasefire in Gaza. Israeli strikes against Lebanon continuing at this level of intensity will soon constitute a full-scale war.

This scenario would inevitably devastate Lebanon, with Hezbollah’s missiles and drones striking cities and many other targets across Israel. Such a conflict would add new layers of chaotic instability to the Middle East.

The nearly one-year-old Israel-Hezbollah conflict entered a new and dangerous phase with the explosion of thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies in Beirut, elsewhere in Lebanon, and Syria on 17 and 18 September.

Israel did not officially claim responsibility for this operation but was undoubtedly behind it. The explosions resulted in dozens of deaths and thousands of injuries of Hezbollah members and civilians, including two children.

Days later, an Israeli airstrike destroyed a high-rise building in the Dahiyeh district south of Beirut, killing 31 people, including senior Hezbollah officials Ibrahim Aqil and Ahmed Mahmoud Wahbi.

Hezbollah responded by attacking northern Israel with dozens of rockets.

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NATO Prepares for World War 3 with Russia

NATO is mobilizing its resources and strategic plans in anticipation of a potential all-out war, as articulated by Lieutenant-General Alexander Sollfrank, head of NATO’s logistics command.

This urgent preparation underscores a grim reality: the specter of World War III is looming.

In these two and a half years of war in Ukraine, we see how US and NATO support for Kiev has breached one by one all the Russian so-called ‘red lines’, up until we come to the frightening position that the West is about to greenlight attacks with its long-range missiles deep inside Russian territory, a move that can unleash unimaginable consequences.

That has led Russian President Vladimir Putin to once again warn that the U.S. and NATO would be ‘at war’ with Russia if the West allows Ukraine use long-range missiles – and, in fact, as we will see – be the ones to fire them.

According to reports from the Daily Mail, General Sollfrank has confirmed that NATO is developing mass evacuation and rescue strategies to address the anticipated challenges of a major conflict with Russia.

In a concerted effort to bolster its defenses, NATO has recently launched its largest military exercises since the Cold War, involving 90,000 troops from over 30 allied nations.

These exercises, dubbed Steadfast Defender 2024, are designed to test the alliance’s collective capabilities across multiple domains—land, air, sea, and cyber. The mobilization of American troops to European frontlines is also on the table, with plans being formulated to ensure rapid deployment in the event of an escalation.

Moreover, European nations are scrambling to enhance their military capabilities. Germany has pledged over €100 billion to modernize its armed forces, while Poland has committed nearly 5% of its GDP to defense spending.

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When odious foreign policy elites rally around Harris

Efforts to bolster the candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris by the D.C. foreign policy establishment kicked into overdrive over the course of the past week with the near simultaneous release of two open letters signed by hundreds of former U.S. national security officials.

It is an accelerated version of previous campaigns in 2016 and 2020, where ex-officials and military officers on both sides of the aisle vocalizing major opposition to Trump offer to give national security cred to the Democratic candidate — in this case Harris. For their part, the candidate virtually ignores that many of these endorsements are in many cases coming from odious individuals, including architects of wars and interventions that Democrats have openly criticized as stains on recent American history.

The first was a letter signed by over 100 former Republican national security officials stating that while they, alumni of every Republican administration from Reagan to Trump, “expect to disagree with Kamala Harris on many domestic and foreign policy issues” they also “firmly oppose the election of Donald Trump.”

According to the former GOP officials, Trump’s “susceptibility to flattery and manipulation by Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, unusual affinity for other authoritarian leaders, contempt for the norms of decent, ethical and lawful behavior, and chaotic national security decision-making” render him a danger to U.S. national security interests.

Critics of course point out that many of these people are the same Washington creatures who got our country into endless foreign wars and profited from them for 20 years straight — and until this day support cruel, authoritarian dictators when convenient to U.S. policy. They are not wrong.

As a group, the signatories of the first letter are a very mixed bag. The missive does feature a few sensible, responsible pillars of the Washington establishment, including those of former defense secretary (and U.S. senator) Chuck Hagel, and former FBI and CIA director William Webster.

Yet for the most part, the letter carried with it the odor of the consensus minded War Party, if not 9/11-era neoconservatism. In the past this would have been a problem for traditionally liberal and progressive outlets, but Mother Jones and the New Republic were quick to applaud the letter as a “win” for the Harris campaign. Not surprisingly, only The Nation has called out their fellow liberals and progressives for making common cause with the likes of Vice President Dick Cheney and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, both of whom have also endorsed Harris in recent days (except for columnist Joan Walsh, who found Liz Cheney’s endorsement of Harris “strangely moving,” writing, “Liz, I told you we could find common ground. Let’s have a cup of coffee. Or even a beer?”

This columnist at Al Jazeera, however, offers no stated desire for beers with the Cheneys, particularly father Dick. “What makes Cheney’s endorsement, and the Democratic Party’s embrace of it, particularly galling is the way in which they gloss over these past sins in order to paint him as a guardian of American values,” charged Howard University Law school professor Ziyad Motola.

Just so.

The letter features dozens of embittered Republican hawks who claim to deplore Trump’s “unethical behavior and disregard for our Republic’s time-tested principles of constitutional governance” when they evinced no such concerns when they worked for the likes of George W. Bush, Cheney, former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, Gonzales, and old boss John Ashcroft during the Global War on Terror.

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Can the US be accused of ‘meddling’ in Georgia’s election?

Sixteen years ago, Russia fought a brief war against the Black Sea nation of Georgia. Earlier in September President Joe Biden marked the anniversary, announcing that the United States “remains steadfast in its support of Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders.”

However, to Biden, sovereignty properly understood does not include resisting America’s wishes. He explained that “we remain committed to the Georgian people and their Euro-Atlantic aspirations [emphasis added].” He sharply criticized the “Georgian government’s anti-democratic actions, exemplified by the Kremlin-style ‘foreign agents’ law and Georgian government officials’ false statements, which are inconsistent with EU and NATO membership norms [emphasis added].”

This was further amplified last week when the U.S. announced a raft of sanctions on two Georgian officials and more than 60 individuals in the former Soviet state over human rights abuses and anti-democratic actions — all stemming from the fallout and protests of the government’s passage of a controversial foreign influence law.

“The United States remains deeply concerned by the ongoing anti-democratic actions of the Georgian government, which are incompatible with membership norms of the European Union and NATO,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Monday.

“In addition to the passage of the so-called ‘foreign influence law,’ we have also seen the Georgian government repeatedly violently crack down on Georgian citizens who protested that law.” Politics has been unsettled since the October 2020 parliamentary election, which the opposition refused to accept despite observers finding it to be basically free and competitive. Although demonstrators hoisted the banner of democracy, Georgia Dream has won three straight elections going back to 2012.

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REPORT: Israel To Establish ‘Security Zone’ At The Expense Of Lebanese Territory

Israeli journalists are famously tied into the security state when it comes to the information narrative. Tamir Morag is from Channel 14 and considered a ‘right wing’ journalist that clashes with the Israeli government at times, but he put this out on X yesterday.

Israel is considering re-establishing the security zone in southern Lebanon. If this happens, Hezbollah, which has caused the evacuation of a significant area within Israel’s territory for the past year, will see Lebanon pay for it by losing its sovereign territory. This will be the result of the actions of Nasrallah, the man who prides himself on the title “Protector of Lebanon.”

A source close to the Prime Minister tells us: “There will be no resolution in the north without a security zone inside Lebanon where the IDF is present. Without this, residents simply will not return. The establishment of the zone will be carried out in one of two ways: a political settlement, and if Hezbollah does not agree, a ground maneuver and seizure of the area.”

The source also adds that Israel will not be satisfied with the current terms of Resolution 1701 and will demand certain improvements: “We will not be content with pushing Hezbollah beyond the Litani River. In some areas, such as Metula, the river’s course is very close to the border, and additional solutions will be required there. The residents will not return because we tell them to; they will return only when they feel truly safe.”

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