Tag: perpetual war

Russia Says It Will Respond to Finland Giving US Access to Bases

On Wednesday, Russia said it would respond to Finland’s move to allow the US access to military bases inside the Nordic nation, which joined NATO last year and shares an over 800-mile border with Russia.

Under a new Defense Cooperation Agreement that was ratified by Finland’s parliament on Monday, the US can access 15 bases in Finland, including a border guard base only 20 miles from the Russian border.

“I can only confirm that Russia will not leave unanswered the NATO military buildup on our border, which threatens the security of the Russian Federation,” said Andrei Nastasin, a deputy spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry.

“We will also take the necessary measures, including of a military-technical nature, to counter aggressive decisions by Finland, as well as its NATO allies,” Nastasin added.

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US provides $2 billion loan to strengthen Polish military

Poland and the United States have inked a direct loan agreement for $2 billion as part of the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program, announced the Polish Ministry of National Defense (MoD) on Monday.

This marks the second such loan granted by the U.S. government to Poland recently. The FMF funds, which are allocated only to select allies with whom the U.S. maintains close defense collaborations, aim to further enhance Poland’s defense capabilities.

According to the Polish MoD, the acquired funds will be used to purchase American defense systems, specifically air and missile defense capabilities, which are considered a priority for the Polish Armed Forces given the current threats.

The statement highlighted the favorable financial terms of the agreement, reflecting the ongoing development of strategic relations between Poland and the U.S.

The U.S. remains Poland’s principal international partner in the modernization of its armed forces, including the acquisition of Patriot and HIMARS missile systems, Abrams tanks, and F-35 aircraft.

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Iran vows to protect Hezbollah from Israeli attack

Iran will throw all of its military power behind Hezbollah if Israel launches a full-scale attack on the Lebanon-based Islamist movement, a senior official in Tehran has warned. He added, however, that his country does not want an all-out war in the Middle East.

Tensions between the Jewish state and the Shia group, which has close ties with Iran, reached boiling point after the start of the Hamas-Israel war in October, with the two belligerents exchanging cross-border strikes. However, they have so far managed to avoid a major engagement.

In an interview with the Financial Times on Tuesday, Kamal Kharrazi, a foreign affairs adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, reiterated that Iran is “not interested” in a regional war. He urged the US, Israel’s key ally, to put pressure on West Jerusalem to prevent such escalation.

However, Kharrazi insisted that “all Lebanese people, Arab countries, and members of the axis of resistance will support Lebanon against Israel” if efforts to avoid a major conflict prove unsuccessful. “In that situation, we would have no choice but to support Hezbollah by all means,” he said.

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A War Draft Today Can’t Work. Let Us Count the Ways.

Two proposals that would radically alter the current system for registering Americans for a future draft were introduced recently in Congress without any hearings or debate.

They raise practical issues about whether any draft today would even be possible.

As part of this year’s National Defense Authorization Act, the House voted this month to make registration with the Selective Service System of all draft-eligible men ages 18-26 “automatic.” In addition, the version of the NDAA on its way to the Senate floor would expand draft registration to include young women now, too.

Debate about the draft has typically been framed around whether the U.S. “needs” a draft. Debate about women and the draft has been framed around whether women “should” be required to register. But the bigger question we face is three fold: will women sign up voluntarily (if in fact registration is not “automatic”), is “automatic” registration based on other databases feasible, and can registration or a draft – for men and/or women – even be enforced.

When I was invited to testify before the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service (NCMNPS) in 2019, I told them that “any proposal that includes a compulsory element is a naïve fantasy unless it includes a credible enforcement plan and budget… Women will be more likely to resist being forced into the military than men have been, and more people will support them in their resistance.”

Antiwar feminists have long identified militarism and war with patriarchy, and women have been an important part of movements against the draft even when only men were being drafted. At its national convention in 2022, the National Organization for Women adopted a resolution which “calls for an end to mandatory Selective Service registration” and supports the Selective Service Repeal Act of 2021.

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Our Nearly $1 Trillion Military Budget Won’t Make Us Safer

If you looked at the U.S. military budget without knowing otherwise, you’d probably guess we were in World War III.

Our military spending is now the highest it’s been at any point since World War II — and Congress keeps adding more. The House of Representatives just passed legislation that will take military spending to $895 billion, while the Senate Armed Services Committee passed a bill that would total $923 billion.

Those totals don’t even include the military aid to Ukraine and Israel that was included in the $95 billion war package Congress passed this spring. We’re teetering closer and closer to a $1 trillion military budget.

Adjusting for inflation, the last time the national security budget topped $1 trillion was in 1945, the final year of World War II.

Unlike a world war, there’s nothing happening today that can justify this level of spending. Even the war in Ukraine and the decimation of Gaza (which is being carried out with U.S.-supplied weapons) account for just a small fraction of overall spending.

So what’s all this spending for?

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SAS war crimes inquiry obtains huge cache of new evidence, BBC reveals

The public inquiry into alleged SAS war crimes in Afghanistan has obtained a previously deleted cache of data that could hold crucial evidence, the BBC can reveal.

The files were permanently erased from a server by a UK Special Forces contractor in 2016, during a murder investigation into the SAS.

But the public inquiry team has now secured backups of the server – part of a Special Forces communications system codenamed “Sonata” – believed to have been created before the files were erased.

The backups are likely to contain information about SAS operations on which members of the elite regiment were suspected of unlawfully killing unarmed Afghan detainees and civilians.

A spokesperson for the inquiry confirmed to the BBC that they had obtained the backups, adding: “We now hold the relevant material and are exploring a technical solution to retrieve and review the data to determine its relevance to the investigation.”

The spokesperson said the inquiry team was approached during several days of hearings about computer evidence last December by someone offering them access to the backups, but the inquiry declined to comment on the source of the offer.

This is the first time backups of Sonata have been obtained by investigators outside UK Special Forces, which blocked previous efforts by the Royal Military Police (RMP) to copy the server.

To the dismay of the RMP investigators, a contractor hired by UK Special Forces (UKSF) during the murder investigation ran a program on the server in 2016 designed to permanently erase previously deleted files.

This process, known as “zeroing”, flew in the face of explicit instructions the RMP had given to UKSF that no data should be tampered with before the server could be copied.

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US Sends Amphibious Assault Ship To Show Support for Israel Amid Lebanon Tensions

The US has deployed an amphibious assault ship to the Middle East to demonstrate support for Israel amid soaring tensions on the Lebanon-Israel border.

The Pentagon announced that the USS Wasp arrived in the eastern Mediterranean Sea last week. The deployment comes amid fears of a full-blown Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon as Israeli forces and Hezbollah continue to trade fire across the border.

A US official told The Associated Press that the deployment was “about deterrence,” but the US show of force could embolden Israel. The US insists it’s working to prevent a war in Lebanon, but Middle East Eye recently reported that Washington conveyed to Lebanon it would ultimately support Israel if it went ahead with an invasion.

The Wasp is carrying a US Marine Corps Expeditionary Unit and is sailing along with the USS Oak Hill, a dock landing ship. US officials told NBC News last week that one purpose of the Wasp’s deployment is to stand by to evacuate Americans in the event that a full-scale war breaks out along the Israel-Lebanon border.

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Report: Israel Plans To Invade Lebanon in the Second Half of July

The German newspaper Bild reported on Monday that Israel is planning to invade Lebanon in the second half of July as Israeli forces and Hezbollah continue to trade fire across the border.

The report, which cited diplomatic sources, said Israel would launch the assault unless Hezbollah stopped firing on northern Israel. But Israeli officials have made clear that’s not enough for them as they are demanding Hezbollah withdraw from the border to areas beyond the Litani River.

The Litani River is about 18 miles north of the Israel-Lebanon border, and Israel has said a Hezbollah withdrawal from the area is necessary for Israelis who have evacuated from northern Israel to return to their homes.

Hezbollah’s position is that it won’t stop firing on northern Israel unless there is a ceasefire in Gaza, while Israeli officials have threatened to escalate in Lebanon if they reach a truce with Hamas.

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Israeli military investigation reveals many Oct. 7 Israeli casualties were caused by IDF rather than Hamas

Israel has used the events of October 7 to justify a lengthy and very bloody war in Gaza that has caused the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians. On that date, Hamas terrorists entered southern Israel, where they reportedly killed more than 1,100 people and took 251 hostages.

However, it turns out that some of the Israeli deaths on that day came not at the hands of Hamas but instead as the result of “friendly fire” from the Israeli military. This is something that Hamas has been claiming for some time now, and many media reports about it were quickly dismissed as “disinformation.”

Now, however, leaks from a report compiled by the Israeli military itself confirm that a lot of the October 7 casualties were the result of friendly fire.

According to Israeli broadcaster Channel 12, a military investigation revealed that “friendly fires led to the deaths and injuries of an unspecified number of Israeli soldiers”. In addition, IDF forces were deployed in a “chaotic” manner.

A full official report is expected to be released next month, and it will essentially be an official admission that numerous Israelis were killed by the IDF and not Hamas. The IDF has not denied the information that has been leaked so far despite being aggressive about denying other leaks and failures.

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IDF Uses Palestinian Prisoners as Human Shields in Gaza, Report Says

Every accusation is a confession.

Al Jazeera said it received exclusive footage of IDF troops using Palestinian prisoners as human shields while carrying out missions inside the war-torn Gaza Strip.

Hamdah Salhut, a reporter for the news outlet, posted on X that these prisoners “were forced to enter tunnels while tied to ropes, and search buildings with hands behind their backs & cameras strapped to them.”

The report came after a video emerged of IDF troops driving with an injured Palestinian strapped to the top of the jeep’s hood. The Times of Israel reported that the video was taken in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, and the vehicle could be seen passing two ambulances. 

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