Tag: perpetual war

Media Distorting North Korean Role in Russo-Ukraine War

On November 24, Newsweek ran a story by Ellie Cook with the headline “Russian and North Korean Troops Shrink Ukraine’s Gains in Kursk.”

The title made it seem like North Korea was fighting on the front-lines with the Russians to push back the Ukrainian offensive in Kursk.

However, the opening of the article stated: “Moscow is taking territory back from Ukrainian forces in Russia’s western Kursk region, according to new assessments, as the U.S. says it expects North Korean reinforcements to head for front-line clashes soon.”

Further down in the piece, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is quoted as stating that he “expected to see North Korean soldiers engaged in combat soon.”

Meaning that they were not yet in combat, so Newsweek’s title was misleading.

Cook went on to write that “the State Department confirmed in mid-November that North Korean soldiers were ‘engaging in combat operations with Russian forces’ after undergoing training in how to use drones, artillery, and carry out ‘basic infantry operations.’”

These latter statements contradict what Austin said and what Cook reported on at the beginning of her article.

The contradictory statements and record of deceit of the U.S. State Department make one question what the real story is with North Korea.

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Netanyahu Knew All Along – Israeli Government Staffer Reveals All

Eli Feldstein is accused of unlawfully acquiring sensitive military information and leaking it to influence public opinion.

The lawyer representing Eli Feldstein, spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security office and accused of leaking classified security documents, has stated that Netanyahu was aware of both the documents and the plan to leak them, Israeli media reported on Wednesday.

Feldstein’s lawyer, Oded Savoray, reportedly accused the prime minister of “shirking responsibility for an event he caused” and stated that Feldstein chose not to remain silent, effectively sacrificing himself for Netanyahu.

“There was a stage in the investigation where he decided to stop taking the fall for the Prime Minister and his office,” attorney Savoray told the Kan public broadcaster, referring to Feldstein’s assertion that Netanyahu knew about the document before it was published in German tabloid Bild.

“(Feldstein) did not say that Netanyahu ordered the document to be released to foreign media, but that he knew about the document and the decision to release it to the media,” the lawyer added.

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Tough Diplomacy, Not Invasion, Is the Way Forward With Iran

Back in September, Israel successfully destroyed a bunker buried 60 feet underground, killing virtually all of Hezbollah’s senior leadership. Executing the operation involved about a dozen F-15s, each carrying six 2000-pound GBU-31v(3) joint direct attack munitions (JDAMs) bunker-buster bombs. First the residential high rises over the underground bunker were systematically destroyed. Then a brilliantly planned operation was executed, involving dropping dozens of bunker-busters in a precisely timed pattern that eventually blasted through 20 yards of soil and rock to destroy the bunker. Only a few militaries in the world could have executed such an intricate and complex operation.

The point of the above description is not to praise Israeli military competence, but to show just how hard it is to destroy a bunker. This sheds concerning light on analysis by the Institute for Science and International Security that finds that two of Iran’s most important nuclear weapons facilities buried under at least 80 to 145 meters of rock (262 to 475 feet), with further protection from reinforced concrete that is very resistant to penetration and the ground shockwave produced by a bunker buster’s explosives. This makes taking them out problematic; the world’s most powerful conventional bunker buster, the United States’ 30,000-pound GBU-57 bunker buster can penetrate only about 40 meters of moderately hard rock.

Still, multiple precision strikes by massive ordnance penetrators delivered by our B-2 stealth bombers could almost certainly severely damage or destroy Iran’s less deeply buried facilities. Even the more deeply buried facilities could be crippled by collapsing their main entrances, although such facilities almost certainly have backup entrances that would allow them to continue with some level of function.

But even if our B-2s can evade Iran’s Russia-supplied anti-stealth radars and deliver enough GBU-57s to damage or destroy all the known facilities involved with nuclear weapons production and delivery, we still don’t really, truly know how much weapons-grade enriched uranium or plutonium—which can be quickly made into implosion-type fission bombs—the Islamic Republic has been able to acquire and hide away in secret locations.

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Neocons Try Again in Syria

A day after Israel agreed to a ceasefire in Lebanon last week the long dormant war in Syria reignited as jihadist forces seized the city of Aleppo and advanced virtually unhindered in its quest to overthrow the Syrian government until finally meeting resistance from the Syrian Army backed up by Russia. This is the last chance for neocons in the United States to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad before Donald Trump, who tried to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, resumes the presidency in 49 days.

On the neocon list of ways to make the world safer for Israel, Iran originally occupied pride of place. “Real men go to Tehran!” was the muscular brag. But Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was persuaded to acquiesce in a less ambitious plan – to “do Iraq” and remove the “evil dictator” in Baghdad first.

As the invaders/occupiers got bogged down in Iraq, it seemed more sensible to “do Syria” next. With the help of “friendly services,” the neocons mounted a false-flag chemical attack outside Damascus in late August 2013, blaming it on President Bashar al-Assad, whom U.S. President Barack Obama had earlier said, “had to go.”

Obama had called such a chemical attack a red line but, mirabile dictu, chose to honor the U.S. Constitution by asking Congress first. Worse still for the neocons, during the first days of September, Russian President Vladimir Putin pulled Obama’s chestnuts out of the fire by persuading Syria to destroy its chemical weapons under U.N. supervision.

Obama later admitted that virtually all of his advisers had wanted him to order Tomahawk cruise missiles into Syria.

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Police Raid Pro-Palestine Students’ Home in FBI-Led Graffiti Investigation

In the early morning hours of November 7, more than 12 police officers showed up outside at an address in Springfield, Virginia, knocked, broke down the door, and raided the family home of two Palestinian American students at George Mason University.

University and Fairfax County police refused to show the family the warrant. One Fairfax County detective with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force — cross-designated as a local and federal agent — was also present. The family and Mason faculty supporting them, however, believe they know what the FBI-led investigation was about: the young family members’ pro-Palestine activism.

Two of the Palestinian American family’s daughters attend George Mason. One is an undergraduate student and the co-president of Mason’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. The other is in a master’s program at Mason and a former president of the school’s SJP chapter.

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Ukraine’s best hope for peace looks a lot like Donald Trump

Last week, people who fear a third world war got more reasons to worry. Ukraine, with permission from the White House, struck Russian territory with long-range missiles supplied by the United States. Russian President Vladimir Putin has long warned that such an attack would mean that NATO and Russia “are at war,” and he has raised the specter of nuclear retaliation. Granted, these threats could be bluffs, but last week Putin gave them some credibility by (a) loosening the conditions for Russia’s use of nuclear weapons, (b) firing a multiple-warhead, nuclear-capable missile at Ukraine for the first time in the war, and (c) declaring, in a speech after the strike, that Russia would be entitled to attack any nations that aid Ukraine’s strikes into Russian territory.

While Putin’s caution during previous crises suggests he’s not about to reach for the nuclear button just yet, his dramatic response has complicated any path to a peace deal. Meanwhile, some liberal voices have predicted that Trump’s looming presidency, far from hastening an end to the conflict as Trump has promised to do, will prolong it. If Trump were to cut off arms to Ukraine, he’d remove an important incentive for Putin to call it quits, according to Ben Rhodes, a former White House official under Barack Obama. Among conservatives who advocate foreign policy restraint, there is worry that Trump’s hawkish cabinet nominees portend a departure from the peace agenda he campaigned on. As for hawkish critics of Trump on both left and right, many believe that he may end the war by just giving away the farm to Putin.

These concerns are valid. But Trump has good reasons to try proving the doubters wrong. He understands that foreign policy debacles can crater a president’s approval ratings, and he has staked his reputation on being able to end a conflict that started and continues to escalate on President Joe Biden’s watch. “I’m the only one who can get the war stopped,” he told Newsweek this September. Brokering a respectable peace would be a boon to his legacy and an embarrassment for his political opponents—and Trump loves splattering egg on the faces of his detractors. So there is room for optimism alongside the worry. Trump may well manage not only to stop the war but also to get Ukraine the best deal it could realistically hope for.

Some say Trump’s Ukraine promises are hollow since he hasn’t outlined a viable peace deal. But Trump maintains, plausibly enough, that he can’t reveal details of a plan without boxing himself in. It would be better, he says, to hammer out a deal with Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky behind closed doors, which means keeping mum on specifics for now. Despite Trump’s reticence, there are signs of the kind of deal he’d push for—and signs that both Putin and Zelensky would go for it.

This fall, J.D. Vance, Trump’s running mate and now vice president-elect, laid out a likely settlement: The current battle lines become a “heavily fortified” demilitarized zone to prevent future Russian aggression; Kyiv retains its sovereign independence; and Russia gets assurances that Ukraine won’t join NATO. Moscow would presumably also get to keep the lands in eastern and southern Ukraine that it now holds.

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Visualizing Ukraine’s Collapsing Front Lines Amid The Steady Russian Onslaught 

As we detailed earlier, the White House is currently overseeing a ‘massive surge’ in arms to Ukraine with just 50 days left before President-elect Trump enters office. The US is also this week announcing $725 million in more aid, which is the latest defense package for Ukraine drawn directly from US inventories.

It will include a second shipment of antipersonnel mines, and comes the same day that Germany also unveiled another $680 million in Ukraine aid. The Western allies have asserted that they want to see Zelensky and Ukraine forces in as favorable a position as possible before negotiations to end the war inevitably proceed (something which Trump has repeatedly promised from day one of his second administration). But the prime question remains: what good will the rapid infusion of more weapons do when the real problem is Ukraine’s collapsing manpower? To illustrate the reality of Russia’s rapid advance of the past several months…

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Russian state media says Oreshnik missiles can hit American bases within minutes

Russia’s Oreshnik missiles have been in the spotlight since last week, when one of them hit the Ukrainian city of Dnipro and spurred three hours of explosions that damaged the city’s infrastructure. The strike was so strong that Ukrainian officials likened it to that of an intercontinental ballistic missile.

Hours later, Russian President Vladimir Putin publicly bragged about the new weapon, which he characterized as a “conventional intermediate-range” missile that was given the code name Oreshnik and traveled at a speed of Mach 10, which is 10 times the speed of sound and around 2.5 to 3 kilometers per second.

He issued a warning to Russia’s enemies that “there are currently no ways of counteracting this weapon.”

Ukrainian military intelligence has said they believe the missile is a newer ICBM. They report that it traveled at Mach 11 and took 15 minutes to make its way there across a 620-mile journey. It was reportedly equipped with six warheads that boasted six sub-munitions each. They believe Russia has stockpiled up to ten of these missiles.

Either way, these missiles are incredibly fast, reaching their target in just minutes and giving defending militaries very little time to prepare or react. Moreover, because they gain kinetic energy as they follow their arc back down from the atmosphere to their destination, they become more difficult for surface-to-air missile systems to intercept.

Even more alarmingly, the Oreshnik missile is capable of delivering nuclear warheads, which is not a comforting thought at a time when Russia has been increasing its threats of nuclear war amid the ongoing fighting in Ukraine.

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Will the West’s Gamble in Syria and Georgia Succeed?

If you are looking at the war in Ukraine, the attempted Maidan coup in Georgia and the Salafist jihadi offensive in Syria as separate, unconnected events, you are mistaken. The United States, with the collaboration of several NATO countries — the UK in particular — has embarked on a desperate campaign to try to salvage victory from looming defeat.

During the Cold War, the American public was sold a flaming-bag of dog excrement that portrayed the Soviet Union as an implacable foe intent on sowing communist revolutions around the world. Most Americans accepted that narrative and justified wars in Vietnam, Angola and Central America as existential threats that required ever increasing defense budgets.

But then, the Soviet Union imploded in 1991, and the Berlin Wall — an iconic symbol of the Cold War — was dismantled and the raison d’etre of fighting communism vanished. What to do? Follow Abraham Lincoln’s plan for reconciling with the South in the aftermath of the Civil War? Hell no. Russia still had to be treated as an enemy.

The fascism that is at the heart of the American establishment — i.e., a cozy, corrupt relationship were corporations grow wealthy from supplying over-priced military technology by bribing the Congress to pony up billions of dollars — continued to look for enemies abroad and launched meaningless, but profitable, wars of expedition in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Serbia and Syria. None of those ventures succeeded in bringing peace and stability to those nations.

Why fight these wars? To what purpose? The answer is simple: gain control of the vast resources controlled by Russia, China and Iran. During the first quarter of the 21st Century, the US milked the Global War on Terror to justify expanding a security state that resembles the heinous conduct of the Soviet Union in its darkest moments. Yet, while ostensibly focused on fighting Islamic extremism, we have seen the United States knowingly and wittingly arm and train some of the very Islamic radicals we claimed we were fighting.

Which brings us to the re-ignition of the war in Syria. Turkey is a useful and willing pawn in this lethal game. The goal? Create conditions to justify a war with Iran and weaken both Russia and China. Unfortunately, most Americans are still willing to accept the propaganda and will support these efforts until there is an economic or military crisis that inflicts pain and suffering on the US.

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Boris Johnson admits Ukraine conflict is “proxy war” against Russia

Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson admitted that the West organized a proxy war against Russia, an effort that has not only caused untold deaths and apocalyptic carnage in Ukraine but has raised fears of a nuclear conflict, especially after Moscow announced its intentions to review its nuclear policy following Kiev regime missile attacks on Russian territory.

It is recalled that as prime minister (July 2019-September 2022), Johnson encouraged the Europeans to send more weapons to Ukraine after he urged the Kiev regime to abandon negotiations with the Kremlin and continue a futile war effort. In effect, the former prime minister saw an opportunity to use Kiev as a proxy to continue London’s centuries-old foreign policy tradition of hostility with Moscow.

“We’re waging a proxy war, but we’re not giving our proxies the ability to do the job. For years now, we’ve been allowing them to fight with one hand tied behind their backs and it has been cruel,” Johnson told The Telegraph.

The former British prime minister also said that a multinational group of European peacekeeping forces should be responsible for protecting any possible future ceasefire line in Ukraine.

“I don’t think we should be sending in combat troops to take on the Russians. But I think as part of the solution, as part of the end state, you’re going to want to have multinational European peace-keeping forces monitoring the border [and] helping the Ukrainians,” he said. “I cannot see that such a European operation could possibly happen without the British.”

However, while Johnson said that British troops should not be deployed to fight the Russians, he did stress that London was “morally responsible” for Ukraine and supported the use of British Storm Shadow missile against Russia.

“[Britain took] far too long [to] break the taboo” on providing Storm Shadow cruise missiles to Ukraine and the accompanying policy permission to fire the weapons into Russia, he said, adding: “We could have forced the pace.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned on November 28 at a press conference in Kazakhstan that major “decision-making centres” in Kiev would be devastated by the powerful Oreshnik missile in response to Ukrainian strikes on Russia and warned that all weapons could be used if the Kiev regime were to acquire nuclear arms.

“We do not rule out the use of Oreshnik against the military, military-industrial facilities or decision-making centres, including in Kiev,” Putin said, adding that although the weapon was “comparable in strength to a nuclear strike” if used several times on one location, they were not currently fitted with nuclear warheads.

“The kinetic impact is powerful, like a meteorite falling,” the Russian president explained. “We know in history what meteorites have fallen where and what the consequences were.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hypocritically accused Putin of a “despicable escalation” even though it was Kiev that had long been requesting permission from the US, Britain and France to fire long-range missiles provided by them against military targets inside Russia. Following the granting of permission, the Kiev regime launched British Storm Shadow missiles and American ATACMS to strike targets inside Russia for the first time, prompting anger from the Kremlin.

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