Tag: perpetual war

Decades of Global Drone War Made Trump’s Caribbean Killing Spree Possible

On September 2, 2025, a small fishing boat carrying 11 people was targeted by a U.S. Reaper drone off the coast of Venezuela. Hellfire missiles were fired. Two survivors clung to the wreckage. Their identities and motives were unknown. Their behavior showed no hostility. Moments later, the drone operator launched a second strike — the so-called “double tap” — killing the final survivors. This scene is shocking, but it should not be surprising to anyone who has followed the trajectory of the U.S.’s drone wars. This tactic is familiar from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and, most recently, Gaza, where the Israeli military has used much worse violence to conduct genocide.

The U.S.’s first drone strike in the Caribbean, and the footage of the incident, reignited a debate about a conflict that Washington refuses to call a war — because it isn’t one. Instead, the Trump administration is using sheer violence to terrorize non-white populations and, as usual, has normalized lethal force far from declared battlefields and without any legal mandate.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has approved at least 21 additional strikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific since September, killing at least 87 people. He has aggressively defended the very first operation, insisting he would have authorized the second strike as well — despite claiming he did not see it. Hegseth even misinterpreted the visible smoke on the video as the “fog of war,” seemingly unaware that the term refers to uncertainty in conflict, not the physical aftermath of a missile strike.

The details matter because they reveal something essential: the senior leadership overseeing these operations does not appear interested in the law, accuracy, or the basic meaning of proportionality. Instead, it has embraced escalation and mass murder as official policy.

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The Case Against American Intervention in Venezuela

As the USS Gerald R. Ford—the largest aircraft carrier afloat—casts its shadow along the Venezuelan coast, the United States must confront an uncomfortable question: What national interest is being protected by threatening a country that poses no military, territorial, or existential danger to the American republic?

The answer, made clear by an array of respected American scholars, former officials, and ex-military insiders, has nothing to do with security. Instead, it arises from a familiar mixture of ideology, geopolitical control, and the old reflex of imperial overreach. This is not defense. This is theater—one part provocation, one part political opportunism, and no part necessity.

Among the clearest voices cutting through the rhetoric is professor John Mearsheimer, perhaps the most prominent American realist in international relations. He does not mince words: Venezuela is not a threat to the United States. Its military lacks both the capacity and the intention to project power beyond its borders. Suggesting otherwise is “laughable,” he notes, because the true irritant is ideological. Venezuela’s Bolivarian model—imperfect and embattled as it is—represents a deviation from Washington’s preferred political order, a deviation the US has repeatedly sought to crush in Latin America for decades. For Mearsheimer, even if one entertained the fantasy of using force to change the regime, the idea collapses immediately under logistical absurdity and moral bankruptcy. Invading a nation of 28 million people, and then attempting to occupy and “stabilize” it, would be catastrophic in cost, chaotic in outcome, and impossible to justify.

The national security pretext collapses further under the testimony of Sheriff David Hathaway, a former Drug Enforcement Administration supervisory agent with firsthand experience in Latin America. He dismisses the drug-trafficking narrative not just as false, but as deliberately false. Cocaine originates in Colombia and Peru, not Venezuela, and the US fentanyl crisis has nothing to do with Caracas. There is no vast Maduro-led drug conspiracy, Hathaway explains, only a political fiction designed to mimic past excuses for intervention. He is blunt in stating that Washington has repeatedly used narcotics accusations as camouflage for intrusion, sabotage, and coercion. This is not about drugs. It is about dominance.

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Government Unchained: The Year The Constitution Lost Its Guardrails

“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”—Abraham Lincoln

We now live in a nation where constitutional rights exist in theory, not in practice.

Yet what good are rights on paper when every branch of government is allowed to ignore, circumvent, chip away at or hollow them out in practice?

Two hundred and thirty-four years after the ratification of the Bill of Rights on December 15, 1791, the safeguards meant to shield “We the people” from government abuse are barely recognizable.

In ways the Founders could scarcely have imagined—and would never have tolerated—the safeguards meant to restrain government overreach have become little more than empty platitudes.

America’s founders understood that power corrupts and absolute power—especially when it comes to power-hungry governments fixated on amassing institutional power at the expense of individual freedoms—corrupts absolutely. That’s why they insisted on binding down the government “with the chains of the Constitution.”

In 2025, those chains have been cut link by link.

These links were not severed in secret. They snapped under the weight of executive orders issued without congressional authority, judicial doctrines that shield misconduct from accountability, and a Congress that no longer defends its own constitutional prerogatives.

If Americans are finally learning the true significance of constitutional limits, it is because the government keeps violating them—and daring anyone to stop it. Time and again, the message is being drummed into our heads that constitutional limits no longer apply when they inconvenience those in power.

Any government that treats rights as privileges—contingent on economic status, citizenship, race, orientation, religious beliefs, or political alignment—has already abandoned the Bill of Rights.

And a government that does so with the courts’ blessing is not a constitutional republic.

When rights become privileges, what we are left with is a two-tier system of freedom: those afforded the privilege of enjoying their constitutional rights vs. those targeted for exercising those same rights.

The Bill of Rights was intended as a bulwark. Each amendment was drafted as a barrier against a specific form of tyranny.

In 2025, every one of those barriers buckled under the weight of government corruption, political expediency, partisan politics, and institutional neglect.

The following is what it looked like to live without the protections of the Bill of Rights in the American police state.

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Trump: Strikes on Venezuelan land could begin ‘pretty soon’

President Donald Trump indicated on Thursday that U.S. military strikes on Venezuelan soil could come “pretty soon,” following a recent seizure of a Venezuelan oil tanker.

On Thursday, President Trump was asked by a reporter whether the military campaign against Venezuela is still about stopping drugs from entering the United States, or if the administration is motivated by the nation’s oil resources after the interdiction of a Venezuelan oil tanker.

“Well, it’s about a lot of things, but one of the things it’s about is the fact that they’ve allowed millions of people to come into our country from their prisons, from gangs, from drug dealers, and from mental institutions, probably proportionately more than anybody else,” Trump responded.

“We had 11,888 murderers come into our country, many of them are from Venezuela. We had thousands of Tren de Aragua – the gang – come in from [Venezuela], which they say is the most violent gang,” he continued. “So it has to do with a lot of things, they’ve treated us badly, and I guess now we’re not treating them so good. If you look at the drug traffic, drug traffic by sea is down 92%… anybody getting involved in that right now is not doing well.”

“… And we’ll start that on land too, it’s gonna be starting on land pretty soon,” Trump added without providing further detail.

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REPORT: American Military Shot In Syrian Attack – Possibly ISIS

Members of a US-led coalition delegation and Syrian security forces were injured in a shooting near Palmyra while on a mission related to plans to fight ISIS, reports Al Jazeera.

US helicopters evacuated the wounded to the al-Tanf base.

An American soldier was wounded in gunfire targeting a U.S. delegation in central Syria, reported AFP

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NATO Leader Mark Rutte Urges Europe to Prepare For ‘Widespread Suffering’ and WW3 With Russia Within Five Years

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte is urging member states to prepare for World War III with Russia and its dictator, Vladimir Putin.

During a speech in Berlin on Thursday, the former Dutch prime minister said that “dark forces of oppression are on the march again” and that Europe is facing a “scale of war our grandparents or great-grandparents endured.”

He declared:

We must all accept that we must act to defend our way of life, now. Because this year, Russia has become even more brazen, reckless, and ruthless, towards NATO and towards Ukraine.

Russia’s economy is now geared to wage war, not to make its people prosperous.

Russia is spending nearly 40 per cent of its budget on aggression, and around 70 per cent of all machine tools in Russia are used in military production.

Taxes are going up, inflation has skyrocketed, and petrol is rationed.

How is Putin able to maintain his war against Ukraine? The answer is China. China is Russia’s lifeline. China wants to prevent its ally from losing in Ukraine. Without China’s support, Russia could not continue to wage this war.

For instance around 80 per cent of critical electronic components in Russian drones and other systems are made in China.

So when civilians are made in Kyiv or Kharkiv, Chinese technology is often inside the weapons that kill them.

NATO’s own defences can hold for now but with its economy dedicated to war, Russia could be ready to use military force against NATO within five years.

How deterrence is achieved, through retaliation, through pre-emptive strike, this is something we have to analyse deeply because there could be in the future even more pressure on this”

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Israel Used Palantir Technology In Its 2024 Lebanon Pager Attack

Palantir software was used by Israel in its 2024 pager attacks in Lebanon, according to a new book by Alex Karp, co-founder of the Palantir tech company. On September 17, thousands of pagers belonging to Hezbollah members, including civilians not involved in any armed activity, were detonated across Lebanon.

Many showed “error” messages and vibrated loudly prior to exploding, luring Hezbollah members or, in some cases, their family members to stand close by at the point of detonation. The next day more communication devices exploded, including at the public funerals of Hezbollah members and civilians who had been killed the previous day.

While many Israeli figures celebrated, praised and even joked about the attacks, United Nations experts called them a “terrifying” violation of international law. In total, 42 people were killed and thousands wounded, many left with life-altering injuries to the eyes, face and hands.

Karp’s new biography reveals that Israel deepened its use of the company’s technology after it launched the war on Gaza in October 2023, deploying it in numerous operations.

“The company’s technology was deployed by the Israelis during military operations in Lebanon in 2024 that decimated Hezbollah’s top leadership,” wrote Michael Steinberger, author of The Philosopher in the Valley: Alex Karp, Palantir, and the Rise of the Surveillance State.

“It was also used in Operation Grim Beeper, in which hundreds of Hezbollah fighters were injured and maimed when their pagers and walkie-talkies exploded (the Israelis had booby trapped the devices).”

He said that the demand for Palantir’s assistance by Israel “was so great that the company dispatched a team of engineers from London to help get Israeli users online“.

The involvement of a range of tech companies in Israel’s attacks on its neighbors in recent years, as well as for attacking and surveilling Palestinians, has sparked anger from rights campaigners and UN officials.

In a report produced by UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese in July, several tech companies were accused of profiting from crimes including illegal occupation, apartheid and genocide in occupied Palestine. The report referenced AI systems that were developed by the Israeli military to process and generate targets during the war on Gaza.

“There are reasonable grounds to believe Palantir has provided automatic predictive policing technology, core defense infrastructure for rapid and scaled-up construction and deployment of military software, and its Artificial Intelligence Platform, which allows real-time battlefield data integration for automated decision making,” the report said.

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Why Is Europe Feverishly Preparing For World War III?

If there is going to be peace, why are we witnessing the largest military buildup in Europe since the end of the Cold War?  When it comes to the major players on the geopolitical stage, it is far more important to watch what they do than it is to listen to what they say.  And right now the actions that the major European powers are taking are telling us that they are preparing for a huge war with Russia.

Ukraine was supposed to be the final piece of the puzzle for the European Union.

It is an enormous chunk of territory, and it is absolutely teeming with natural resources.

For most European leaders, it is unthinkable that Ukraine could be allowed to fall back into Russian hands, but at the moment more Ukrainian territory is being taken by the Russians with each passing day.

In fact, it is being reported that the city of Seversk has just fallen…

Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, said that the “Southern” group of troops had taken control of the city of Seversk in the DPR.

“The city of Seversk has been liberated,” Gerasimov said during a report to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Every time the Russians move forward, European leaders feel even more pressure to send troops into Ukraine.

Apparently the British already have at least some soldiers in Ukraine, because one of them just died…

The British soldier who died in Ukraine on Tuesday has been named as L/Cpl George Hooley, 28, of the Parachute regiment.

Keir Starmer told the Commons on Wednesday that Hooley had died in a “tragic accident” away from the frontlines while watching a test of “a new defensive capability” with members of the Ukrainian military.

“His life was full of courage and determination,” Starmer said. “He served our country with honour and distinction around the world in the cause of freedom and democracy, including as part of the small number of British personnel in Ukraine.”

Did you notice that Starmer was purposely vague about how many British troops are in Ukraine?

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Hungover Russians delayed Ukraine’s ‘Pearl Harbor’-style attack on Moscow: report

An abundance of hungover Russian drivers forced Ukraine to pause its “Pearl Harbor”-style attack on Moscow’s bomber fleet, just one of the hiccups that nearly thwarted the secret operation, according to a new report.

After Kyiv successfully sneaked dozens of drones into Russia for the unprecedented attack this past spring, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) hoped to launch the assault around Russian Victory Day on May 9 to humiliate the Kremlin.

Instead, the festivities around the holiday, as well as Russian Labor Day, and Orthodox Easter, created an unexpected issue — a lack of active drivers to carry out the mission, the Wall Street Journal reported.

For Operation Spider’s Web to be a success, Ukraine was relying on a group of unwitting Russian drivers to transport their drones to the desired locations, with the truckers believing they were only hauling mobile wooden cabins.

Unfortunately, there was a small pool of drivers to choose from during the holiday as hungover drivers took the day off, making it far too risky to carry out the mission, SBU officials told the WSJ.

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House passes $900B defense bill with pay hike for troops, Golden Dome tech and more

The US House of Representatives passed the annual defense bill Wednesday, outlining a $900 billion budget that would give troops a 4% pay bump, help counter China and Russia, support new technologies like the Golden Dome missile defense system and promote military readiness, among other provisions.

The House voted 312-112 to adopt the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2026.

The Senate will have to approve the bill before sending it to President Trump’s desk for a signature, though an earlier version cleared the upper chamber in October.

It’s expected to take it up next week.

Before the vote, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) had touted that the more than 3,000-page bill was aimed at “codifying 15 of President Trump’s executive orders, ending woke ideology at the Pentagon, securing the border, revitalizing the defense industrial base, and restoring the warrior ethos.”

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