Tag: perpetual war

The Enduring, Racist Trope of Palestinian ‘Rejectionism’

Since the beginning of the Zionist project in Palestine, large efforts have been exerted to paint all resistance to its colonial endeavors as irrational and at odds with progress and modernity. 

From the onset, Theodor Herzl, founder of political Zionism, envisioned that local Palestinian Arabs would welcome the progress brought by Zionist colonizers and greet them with open arms. Those who did not, or the “penniless” ones who could not contribute to this new society, would be “spirited” across the border.

Contrary to Herzl’s predictions, the Zionist colonial project was largely met with resistance. Rather than understanding this for what it was — the natural response of indigenous people toward colonialism — the majority of Zionist leaders dismissed this opposition as regressive and rooted in a fear of ingenuity and prosperity.

Later, Palestinian resistance would be characterized by charges of anti-Semitism and senseless bloodlust.

This deliberately manufactured dichotomy between the prosperous and civilized Settler and the regressive and rejectionist Arab standing in the way of progress set the tone for developments between Palestinians and Zionist settlers for decades to come. 

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US Senator Says Ukraine Is ‘Gold Mine’ with $12 Trillion of Minerals ‘We Can’t Afford to Lose’

Aprominent US lawmaker has referred to Ukraine as a “gold mine”, insisting the West must maintain access to its estimated $12 trillion worth of critical minerals.

US Senator Lindsey Graham made these comments in a June 10 interview on the CBS program “Face the Nation”.

“They’re sitting on $10 to $12 trillion of critical minerals in Ukraine”, Graham said.

“They could be the richest country in all of Europe. I don’t want to give that money and those assets to Putin to share with China”, he added.

Graham, a Republican, recalled that, when Donald Trump was president, he sent Ukraine military aid in the form of loans.

The senator strongly implied that Ukraine should pay the West for weapons shipments with its large mineral reserves.

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Military Draft Coming? House Passes Measure To Automatically Register Men For Selective Service

The House of Representatives on Friday approved its version of the annual defense policy bill, effectively clearing the $883.7 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to move forward in a 217-199 vote which largely fell along party lines. Only three Republicans opposed it.

A number of ‘controversial’ amendments are part of it, setting up a further fight with Democrats as it moves forward, including a measure empowering the National Guard to crack down on the southern border.

But among the most interesting aspects to the bill for Fiscal Year 2025 is an amendment to the NDAA which automatically registers all draft-age male U.S. residents with the Selective Service System.

This means that all able-bodied males in the country age 18-26 could potentially be drafted in the scenario of a future war declaration by Congress. The selection would be based on information from Federal databases.

While there has been a Selective Service program in effect for decades, it has long previously only been voluntary, but this new amendment will make registration automatic. The merely ‘voluntary’ system had been in effect since 1980 – but critics have said that leaving it up for young men to decide for themselves whether to register has resulted in a weak and ineffective system with not enough numbers.

According to more background for this new Congressional push: 

The automatic draft registration proposal was instigated by the Selective Service System (SSS) as part of its annual budget request to Congress, introduced by Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.), “wholeheartedly” endorsed by HASC Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), and approved by voice vote of the full committee without audible opposition. The text of Rep. Houlahan’s proposal can be read here. Her office’s press release on the proposal can be read here.

Rep. Houlahan had been one of the leading advocates of proposals in previous years to expand draft registration to women as well as men. Her latest proposal for automatic registration of men only for a military draft indicates that she is more deeply committed to militarization than to any purported feminism.

There’s been a rising number of military papers and reports calling for the reinstatement of a more robust draft system of late, especially in relation to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.

For example, last year the US Army War College’s academic journal included a highly disturbing essay on what lessons the US military should take away from the continuing war in Ukraine.

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Senate Armed Services Committee Proposes Mandatory Draft Registration for Women in FY25 Defense Policy Bill

The Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) has proposed to include a provision in the Fiscal Year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that mandates draft registration for women.

Under the latest National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), not only will men aged 18 to 26 be automatically registered for selective service, but an amendment also proposes mandatory draft registration for women.

Please note that the version of the Fiscal Year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) passed by the House of Representatives is distinct from the version advanced by the Senate Armed Services Committee.

In May, the FY25 NDAA received strong bipartisan support as it was approved by the House Armed Services Committee (HASC). The vote was overwhelmingly in favor, passing 57 to 1.

On Friday, the House of Representatives approved its version of the bill to automatically register men aged 18 to 26 for selective service.

This automatic draft registration system would replace the existing system from 1980, which allows young men the freedom to decide whether or not to sign up for the draft.

The new legislation was introduced by Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.), a former Air Force officer, and was endorsed by HASC Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.).

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UN Report Details Israeli War Crimes During First Months of War on Gaza

The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry (COI) provides a detailed analysis of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 and the Israeli assault on Gaza. The report finds both sides committed war crimes but concludes there is no evidence to support the claim that Hamas engaged in mass rape during its rampage in southern Israel. The COI found evidence of Israel intentionally killing civilians and Israeli forces engaged in acts of sexual torture. 

The report’s analysis of the events on October 7 concluded Hamas intentionally targeted two dozen civilian targets, leading to hundreds of deaths. The COI found evidence that members of Hamas committed sexual assaults on Israelis, with some female bodies found undressed. 

However, the report debunks the widespread claim that top Israeli and US officials have often repeated that Hamas engaged in mass rape during its attack. “The Commission has reviewed testimonies obtained by journalists and the Israeli police concerning rape but has not been able to independently verify such allegations,” the report says. “Additionally, the Commission found some specific allegations to be false, inaccurate or contradictory with other evidence or statements and discounted these from its assessment.”

While the assertion that Hamas engaged in mass rape on October 7 has been widely discussed in the US media, the Palestinian accusations that Israeli forces have systematically engaged in horrific sexual violence have gone largely unreported. 

The COI found evidence to back the Palestinian claims that Israel is engaging in systemic sexual torture and humiliation. “Based on testimonies and verified video footage and photographs, the Commission finds that sexual violence has been perpetrated throughout the [Israeli enforced] evacuation processes.” The report continues, “Palestinians were made to watch members of their family and community strip in public and walk completely or partially undressed while subjected to sexual harassment.”

The Israeli forces inflicted sexual torture on males, according to the COI. “Males were repeatedly filmed and photographed by soldiers while subjected to forced public stripping and nudity, sexual torture and inhumane or cruel treatment,” the report found. 

The COI concluded that the Israeli forces were authorized or allowed to engage in the sexual abuse. “The Commission concludes that forced public stripping and nudity and other types of abuse by Israeli military personnel were either ordered or condoned.” It adds, “These acts were intended to humiliate and degrade the victims and the Palestinian community at large by perpetuating gender stereotypes that create a sense of shame, subordination, emasculation and inferiority.”

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There Are Only Downsides To Prolonging The War In Ukraine

Last week, President Joe Biden and a number of top American and European officials met in Normandy to attend a ceremony marking the eightieth anniversary of the D-day invasion. In a pair of speeches, Biden recounted the operation that he said marked the beginning of the “great crusade to liberate Europe from tyranny” before drawing a direct connection to where things stand with the war in Ukraine.

Biden called Russian president Vladamir Putin a tyrant who invaded Ukraine simply because he is “bent on domination.” Biden then renewed one of his favorite tropes, asserting that if Ukraine falls, its people will be subjugated, its neighbors will be in immediate danger, and all of Europe will be threatened by Putin’s aggressive ambitions.

But the West’s chosen depiction of Putin as a tyrant bent on conquering the entire European continent suffered its latest setback last month when it came out that the Russian president is interested in halting the fighting and negotiating a deal that recognizes the current battlefield lines.

Putin is showing this interest even though the Russian military is in a strong position that seems likely to get even stronger. Last year’s long-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive was meant to drive Russian forces out of Ukraine. But since its launch last summer, Ukraine has lost more territory than it has gained. Recently, the Russians even launched a brand new incursion into territory around the northeastern city of Kharkiv—territory that had already been recaptured by the Ukrainians in late 2022.

Russia’s minefields, artillery, and punishing glide bombs have not only kept Ukrainian forces from advancing but left them struggling to hold their positions along the current front line. Meanwhile, Russia has significantly boosted war-related production far beyond anything we’re seeing from the West, which, while bad for the Russian economy in the long run, ensures the intensity of Russia’s bombing and shelling will not cease anytime soon.

At the same time, the Ukrainian government is facing a serious shortage of soldiers that no amount of foreign aid or equipment transfers can do anything to alleviate. Earlier this year, the Ukrainian parliament passed a law that sought to boost conscription rates by making it easier for the government to find and identify draft-eligible men. But the problem persists, leading Ukrainian officials to tap into the country’s prison population, cut consular services to military-aged Ukrainian men living abroad, and forbid men who are dual citizens from leaving Ukraine. As the country’s supply of young men runs low, the average age of a Ukrainian soldier has climbed to forty-three years old.

What makes Ukraine’s situation even more tragic is how easily it could have been avoided. One month after Russia invaded in early 2022, both sides reached an agreement where Russia would pull back to preinvasion boundaries and, in return, Ukraine would agree to not seek NATO membership.

The deal could have put an end to the fighting and handed Kyiv control of all the land Russia had just seized. But, according to senior negotiators on both sides and high-level mediators from the various countries facilitating the talks, officials from the United Kingdom and the United States convinced the Ukrainians to walk away from the deal and fight.

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US-NATO Threats Ignore ‘Red Lines’ in Ukraine

Front lines are collapsing for the Ukrainian army, whole units surrendering. Top commanders are fired. Faced with complete disarray of the U.S.-NATO instigated war in Ukraine, U.S. militarists are doubling down.

According to the Ukrainian constitution, President Volodymir Zelensky’s term in office is over. But he remains in power by martial law. This has led Ukrainian workers to hold strikes and work stoppages. But this news is ignored in the Western media.

A national truckers’ work slowdown inside Ukraine moved traffic to a 5-mile-an hour crawl and halted grain exports based on national anger at the expanded draft mobilization made by Zelensky, now an unelected president. (yahoonews.com, May 18)

Ukraine’s combat units are so severely understaffed that the government would have to triple its mobilization in order to continue the current level of fighting, according to Eric Ciaramella, former U.S. National Intelligence Council official. The draft can’t fill the current gap, nor can even kidnapping men off the streets.Lockhart, PaulBest Price: $17.49Buy New $24.31(as of 05:02 UTC – Details)

U.S. Failure on Two Fronts

U.S. efforts to dismember Russia appear to have utterly failed. Economic sanctions, price caps, the protracted war on Russia’s border and tens of billions of dollars, along with hundreds of U.S. and other NATO member troops sent as trainers, plus mercenary contractors can’t hold the corrupt Ukrainian military machine together.

At the same time, on the world stage the one strategic ally of the U.S. in Western Asia, Israel, has utterly failed in its genocidal war on Gaza. Both setbacks mean that U.S. political dominance is being challenged in fundamental ways.

U.S. strategy toward Russia aimed to partition and dismember the country, destabilize the border and block China’s Belt and Road development plans in Central Asia.

U.S. strategists considered all these steps crucial in preventing People’s China from surpassing the U.S. economically. The opposite has happened. What imperialist strategists have warned about for decades and sought to prevent is now the reality.

China and Russia’s relations of intense cooperation and a merge of common interests is unfolding steadily. This was further cemented during the very warm state meeting between China’s President Xi Jinping and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin on May 16.

That means U.S.-NATO plans are in total disarray. Rather than reconsider their strategy, which has brought setbacks and defeats in Ukraine and for Israel in Gaza, this has led to an ominous escalation in U.S. military threats.

The threat to dangerously escalate the war in Ukraine arises from the plans to give Ukraine high-speed missiles and allow the Kyiv regime to use the weapons to strike inside Russia. This threat is not just from a single statement or one delivery of weapons.

The statements promoting strikes with the U.S.-supplied weapons to targets inside Russia are being made directly by President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who is a former prime minister of Norway, but acts as if he were a U.S. official.

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Joe Biden’s Time Interview Should Set Off Alarms

On May 28, U.S. President Joe Biden gave an interview to Time. His delivery and content were concerning for a number of reasons. Biden, at times, seemed misinformed and detached from reality. Sometimes, he seemed off message; other times, he seemed convinced by his own talking points. But four answers he gave were especially alarming and deserve to be highlighted.

The first was Biden’s assertion that America is “the world power.” The truth of that claim can be debated, but making that claim is deaf to the changes taking place in the world. Much of the world is angry at the United States for substituting leadership in the global community of international law with the imposition of an inconsistent and hypocritical rules-based order.

If the United States is still the world power, then a multipolar world that includes a rapidly growing BRICS+ and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is closer and closer on its heels. Biden seems not to have noticed what his CIA director has: that the world is in one of “those times of transition that come along a couple of times a century. Today the United States still has a better hand to play than any of our rivals, but it is no longer the only big kid on the geopolitical bloc. And our position at the head of the table isn’t guaranteed.”

In a disturbing defense of his claim, Biden said that “the reason why I cleared the intelligence so we can release the information we knew that [Putin] was going to attack, was to let the world know we were still in charge. We still know what’s going on.”

It is disturbing that Biden says that he released the intelligence, not to alert and protect Ukraine or to prevent war, but “to let the world know we were still in charge.” It is also disturbing that the United States had that intelligence, and knew Ukraine was about to be attacked, but did nothing to prevent it. Hawkishly, they could have massively armed Ukraine prior to the invasion. More rationally and responsibly, they could have seriously engaged Vladimir Putin on Russia’s December 2021 proposal on security guarantees and discussed a promise that Ukraine would not be invited into NATO. Sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko of Freie University in Berlin remarks that the United States failing to act on that intelligence in either of those ways “looks sort of strange, and of course very tragic for Ukraine.” It is disturbing that the U.S. impotently released the intelligence, not to prevent war and protect Ukraine, but to show the world that they are still “the world power.”

The second is Biden’s insistence that Putin has clearly stated his intention not to stop at Ukraine but to “reestablish the Soviet Union.” He pulled out a copy of Putin’s February 21, 2022 speech, repeatedly mocking his interviewers, “You probably haven’t read it.” But as Biden explains it to them, and summarizes it as saying “Ukraine is not a neighboring country” but “an inalienable part” of Russia, it begins to sound like Biden has not read the speech, which is highly critical of the Soviet Union.

Discussing the “critical” stage “the situation in Donbas has reached,” Putin references the closeness of the people of Donbas not to justify integrating or conquering them but to justify protecting them. If Biden has read the speech, it must have been a heavily redacted version. As Nicolai Petro, author of The Tragedy of Ukraine, pointed out to me, Biden selectively quotes from the speech while leaving much of contextual importance out.

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Are There Saboteurs Operating In The United States?

“Preventing War is Much Better than Protesting War. Protesting war is too late.”

– Nhat Hanh

Is the United States sleepwalking its way into a hot war with Russia? Over the last three years the United States has provided over $175 billion in military assistance to the Ukraine1. This military assistance prolongs a war on Russia’s border which has killed over 50,000 Russian Soldiers2. Has Russia passively accepted this military assistance to its enemy on the battlefield or are they doing anything about this? Over the last three years there have been many explosions, train derailments, bridge collapses and other incidents within American infrastructure which point to an organized effort to disrupt American production and the export of important material overseas.

A Motive for Sabotage and Some Recent Examples

There is a rich history of the use of saboteurs to disrupt a nations ability to produce materials which support war. Prior to the U.S. entry into World War II the Germans inserted saboteurs in the United States to disrupt American transportation, manufacturing and electrical distribution systems3 in a clandestine operation code named Pastorious. Please don’t be fooled into believing that the dastardly Nazi’s are the only nation to employ these techniques. As another example, in Iran over the last two decades numerous nuclear scientists have been assassinated4 and the digital malware Stuxnet was utilized to retard the Iranian pursuit of nuclear weapons. The clandestine techniques of sabotage are widespread and often occur as a precursor to open warfare. It is only logical to believe that if a nation wants to prevent another nation from having a military advantage it would strike at those technological or logistic sites which provide this advantage. This technique has been used throughout history, and I suspect is occurring in our homeland today.

Over the last three years there have been numerous train derailments, fires and explosions at food production sites and factories which produce ammunition and other materials. Within the last month there have also been well publicized incidents on our riverways and ports that have disrupted transportation networks. Of interest these incidents are occurring in both the United States and in other NATO countries. Specifically, these incidents include a fire at the Scranton Pennsylvania ammunition plant on the 15th of April and a fire at another ammunition factory on the 17th of April in Monmouth England5. What is interesting is both these ammunition plants produce 155-millimeter howitzer rounds which are in great demand in the Ukraine. In mid-April 26 barges became unmoored and created havoc to shipping on the Ohio river6. Most recently another barge struck a bridge and caused a collapse of the bridge connecting Galveston and Pelican Island7.

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Lindsey Graham on the Real Reason Behind Ukraine

What happened to the story that “Putin attacked Ukraine unprovoked, and Ukraine was just defending itself, etc”? Now, suddenly, the problem is the natural resources in Donbas, not Ukraine itself. The first victim in war is always the truth. These people have NEVER told the truth about any war EVER!!!!!!

I have stated before that there is a huge natural gas reserve under Crimea. All the Neocons are doing is constantly trying to conquer Russia and bankrupt it so they can invade, and it has been the same scenario constantly. Obama wanted to invade Syria, and Putin came to their aid. This was all about a pipeline they wanted to put through Syria to cut off Russian energy sales to Europe. The Neocons orchestrated the blowing up of Nord Stream. That undermined Germany and Europe – but as Victoria Nuland famously said, “Fuck the EU.”

The question of Palestinian reserves was confirmed back in 2019. I covered the gas reserves in Syria’s occupied Golan Heights in 2017 involving Genie Oil. Obama wanted to invade Syria all for pipelines. What the press reports never connects the dots. Obama was pushing for a pipeline through Syria to stop Russia from supplying energy to Europe. This has been a war against Russia for decades.

The Neocons after blowing up Nord Stream, promised to pay for a pipeline from Nigeria to Europe. When the Niger coup took place, that is why Victoria Nuland was on a plane to Niger. US taxpayers fund the Neocon dreams of war. We blow up Nord Stream and then pay for a pipeline from Nigeria.  The deal with Nigeria was that they had to be the first Digital Currency guinea pig, and the US taxpayer would fund a pipeline from them to Europe to cut off energy sales from Russia.

Now, Lindsey Graham has come out and admitted that the “resources” under Crimea are worth $10 to $12 trillion, and this is again to stop Russia from gaining that natural gas.

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