Tag: perpetual war

Baltic Republics Foment Crises With Russia

Historically, one of the greatest dangers to a major power in the international system is letting smaller allies and clients drag that power into an unwise war. Both the United States and leading European powers seem inclined to make that blunder with respect to the Baltic republics. Too many U.S. policymakers have not only tolerated but also facilitated the obsession those “allies” (i.e. protectorates) have exhibited with defeating Russia in Ukraine and weakening their arch adversary overall.

The belligerent behavior of some of NATO’s smallest members creates the prospect of disastrous results in Europe and beyond. A crucial policymaker, Kaja Kallas, is a former prime minister of Estonia and now serves as the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice‑President of the European Commission. That does not help matters. Kallas is not only one of Ukraine’s most avid supporters, but is also an outspoken Russophobe on a wide range of issues. Kallas has received strong, vocal support from Dutch-born Ursula von der Leyen, an influential German politician and currently President of the European Commission.

Kallas has repeatedly pressed her EU colleagues as well as NATO officials and policymakers in other European governments to make no concessions to Russia with respect to territorial or other issues involving Ukraine. Any compromises, she contends, would reward Moscow’s aggression, and increase the risk of a much larger war.

The former Estonian leader combines such policy rigidity with an alarming degree of arrogance and overconfidence about Europe’s power. In one speech, Kallas asserted that if NATO simply stayed united on policy, Russia stood no chance of prevailing in Ukraine or of achieving any of its other objectives. Horrific wars have emerged throughout history from far less hubris than she routinely displays with respect to the democratic West’s policy toward Russia.

The centerpiece of the current effort by leaders of the Baltic states to exacerbate tensions with Moscow is a propaganda campaign asserting that the Kremlin is plotting to launch military attacks on vulnerable NATO members in the near future. In mid-July, the presidents of Lithuania and Latvia warned that Russia “may be preparing ‘limited kinetic operations’ against NATO’s eastern-flank infrastructure to test Article 5” – the provision in the North Atlantic Treaty proclaiming that an attack on any Alliance member will be considered an attack on all. Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs asserted that “The next few months, or even the next 12 months, will be crucial for Baltic security.”

Predictably, Russian officials dismissed the warnings as cynical cover for NATO’s own military buildup in the Baltic region. There is no question that such a provocative campaign by the Western powers has taken place and continues to do so. Indeed, a sizable buildup of NATO air, naval, and ground forces has been occurring for years. One important move was the re-deployment of U.S. F-22 fighter planes to Estonia from Poland in the spring of 2023. The most significant Russian provocations have been repeated spy plane incursions into the airspace of the Baltic republics and Russia’s other neighbors. Similar maritime incidents have taken place involving Russian naval and civilian vessels. Although Moscow’s moves are foolish and needlessly antagonistic, they are hardly in the same category as the major NATO buildups of troops, warplanes, and naval vessels.

Alarmist warnings from the Baltic governments also are nothing new, so cynical American observers might be tempted to respond to the latest flurry with indifference. However, Poland – a much more significant political and military player than the tiny Baltic countries–has been outlining similar alarming scenarios. There have been numerous warnings in recent weeks by Polish politicians, following multiple media reports that Russia could carry out a limited military or hybrid provocation against Poland in the near future. In late June 2026, a leading Polish outlet called onet.pl reported that U.S. intelligence had alerted its Polish counterparts about the possibility of a Russian attack. Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on July 3 that the warnings should be taken seriously and noted that he had been issuing similar alerts for weeks. “Poland is preparing very intensively for various scenarios,” Tusk said.

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THE WATER WARS HAVE BEGUN

The World Economic Forum has openly proclaimed 2026 the “Year of Water” and has introduced what it calls “Blue Davos,” bringing freshwater, ocean policy, food security, investment, and the so-called blue economy together beneath one institutional umbrella. The Forum states that its annual meeting will concentrate on “freshwater access and management, blue food security and ocean protection.” Those words may sound harmless to anyone who has never studied how political power actually expands, but management always means that someone will decide who receives a resource, how much they may use, what price they must pay, and under what conditions access may be withdrawn.

Why has water suddenly become the great global priority? Why are the same organizations that lectured the world about carbon now speaking about basin-level partnerships, water finance, private-sector participation, international agreements, and scalable systems of allocation? The Forum itself says that “the complexity of the water crisis demands these ideas are scaled up, and fast.” Whenever unelected organizations insist that an alleged crisis requires policies to be scaled rapidly, the public should immediately ask who will acquire the power, who will provide the capital, and who will control the infrastructure after the emergency has passed.

The appearance of Peter Brabeck-Letmathe in this story is not some invention of social media. Brabeck, the former chief executive and chairman of Nestlé, previously chaired the 2030 Water Resources Group and served for years within the World Economic Forum’s leadership. When Klaus Schwab resigned in April 2025, the Forum’s board unanimously appointed Brabeck as interim chairman. He stepped down in August 2025, so it would be false to claim that he remains the current head, but the symbolism was extraordinary.

This thinking treats water as an asset to be measured, priced, financed, traded, and allocated through partnerships between governments and multinational corporations. They will describe this as resilience, sustainability, and efficient management, but history demonstrates that every system of centralized allocation eventually produces political preferences.

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Global Diesel Crunch Deepens As Record US Distillate Exports Race To Supply-Starved Europe

US distillate exports surged to a record last week as global supplies tightened. Disruptions across the Gulf area and various surrounding maritime chokepoints, as well as Ukrainian one-way attack drone strikes that have paralyzed portions of Russia’s energy infrastructure, have been a major boon for US refiners and export terminals along the Gulf of America.

To begin the week, Samantha Dart, co-head of global commodities research at Goldman Sachs, told Bloomberg TV, “The situation in Russia is really one thing that worries us a lot.”

Dart warned, “I’d say on the oil side, as I mentioned before, diesel, I think is the oil product that is most vulnerable right now, not just because you have your seasonal demand strength ahead just in the winter, but on the supply side. And to your point in the beginning, it’s not just that you run war, it’s what’s happening to the Russian refineries as well. And Russia is usually a pretty big exporter of diesel. And now they have restricted it.”

Last month, Goldman analyst Daan Struyven warned that “Diesel is at the epicenter of the supply squeeze.” 

As global supplies dwindle, US energy exporters on the Gulf of America emerged as the winners, shipping a record 1.9 million barrels to overseas customers last week.

Shipments have exceeded 1.5 million barrels a day for five consecutive weeks, with recent cargoes heading to northwestern European ports – the epicenter of a global diesel shortage caused by Gulf area refinery disruptions through Hormuz and Ukrainian attacks on Russian refining capacity.

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Camp David Clash: Trump Hammered Hegseth For Misleading Him On Arms Supply, WaPo Reports

Following reports that US forces have “used up virtually all” of their precision, long-range missiles in futile attempts to first trigger an Iranian regime change and then to compel Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz, now comes reporting that an angry President Trump confronted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in recent days, accusing the Pentagon of misleading him on critical munitions shortages that leave Trump increasingly powerless in the five-month-old fiasco of a war. 

According to sources cited by the Washington Post, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to concern about retaliation, Trump’s ire erupted alongside a cabinet meeting held Friday at Camp David. Trump expressed consternation that he’d been assured that the weapon shortage “had been fixed” when that is apparently far from true.     

According to “multiple officials” who — reading between the lines — clearly seem to have had it with Fox News talking-head-suddenly-turned-Defense-secretary, Hegseth defended his own actions and tried redirecting the blame to Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg, a billionaire GOP donor whom Trump plucked out of his role as co-CEO of Cerberus Capital Management to give him the number-two job at the Pentagon. Hegseth was said to have thrown Feinberg under the bus for both the shortages and failing to keep Trump fully informed.  

The officials characterized Trump as increasingly exasperated by Hegseth, whom they describe as one of the most enthusiastic supporters of launching a war on Iran, saying he persuaded Trump that victory would come quickly and easily. The war that the administration once projected to last three or four weeks is now in its sixth month. Iran has used both its sophisticated missile technology and its inexpensive but huge arsenal of drones to wreak havoc on US and allied forces around the Gulf. Hammered by a shock and awe campaign peppered with the multiple incidents involving mass casualties among innocents — including scores of elementary schoolgirls — the Iranian people have rallied around the Islamic regime, for all its faults. At least 18 US service members lay dead, several hundred have been wounded, and some estimates of the war’s cost to date exceed $100 billion.  

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America Reaps What Trump Sows: The Price of Policing the Globe

“In a sense, blowback is simply another way of saying that a nation reaps what it sows.” — Chalmers Johnson

What goes around comes around.

That is the terrible law of blowback.

When the United States bombs another country, threatens its government, kills its people, occupies its territory or attempts to dictate its future, the consequences do not remain safely contained thousands of miles away.

They come home.

They come home in flag-draped coffins and shattered military families. They come home in retaliatory attacks on American bases and embassies. They come home through terrorist plots, cyber sabotage, disrupted shipping lanes, higher energy prices, depleted weapons stockpiles, and trillions of dollars in debt.

They come home through hacked water systems, vulnerable power grids, heightened domestic surveillance, militarized police and government demands that the American people surrender still more freedom in exchange for the promise of protection from dangers the government itself helped create.

This is blowback.

Blowback isn’t just about war. It’s about the consequences of the rash, heedless and heartless decisions made every day by the actors of the American police state—and the fact that it is “we the people” who will be paying the price for those terrible decisions for years to come.

President Trump’s war with Iran is only the latest reminder that no government can bomb, threaten and police the world indefinitely without eventually bringing the consequences home.

For months, the Trump administration has lurched between war and threatened war, massive bombing campaigns and aborted strikes, demands for surrender and claims that peace is imminent.

There appears to be no coherent plan for ending the conflict.

There is, however, a mounting bill—and it will be paid in American lives, American dollars, American security and American freedom.

This is what happens when a government appoints itself judge, jury, executioner and police officer to the world.

The government creates enemies faster than it can kill them.

It destabilizes one country, then uses the resulting chaos to justify intervening in another. It bombs in the name of peace, occupies in the name of freedom, surveils in the name of security, and retaliates against retaliation in an endless cycle of violence that serves the war machine while leaving ordinary people everywhere less safe.

We have seen this before.

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Major VA study to examine effectiveness of psilocybin on depression, PTSD

The Department of Veterans Affairs is launching research to determine whether psilocybin — the psychoactive ingredient in “magic mushrooms” — can be used safely and effectively to address veterans’ treatment-resistant depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The trial, known as the Psilocybin Intervention for Veterans Overcoming Treatment-Resistant Depression,” or PIVOT, study aims to include at least 240 veterans, all of whom have difficult-to-treat major depressive disorder and some who also have PTSD.

The study will take place at five VA medical centers through June 2031 and will assess patients’ levels of depression before and after treatment, side effects and overall response among participants.

“Far too many veterans are living with mental health conditions that don’t respond to available treatments,” VA Secretary Doug Collinssaid in a statement. “Under President [Donald] Trump, VA is pursuing all avenues to evaluate new treatments and offer meaningful relief for those who have worn the uniform. This clinical trial reflects another step toward this goal.”

Last month, researchers with Ohio State University’s Center for Psychedelic Drug Research and Education published the findings of a small, 12-person study on the safety of using psilocybin to treat severe PTSD in veterans.

After receiving eight hours of psychotherapy and two doses of synthetic psilocybin and integrative therapy, nine participants, or 75%, no longer met the clinical criteria for having PTSD.

According to the research, published July 30 in Communications Medicine, participants showed no serious adverse effects, including suicidal ideation or behavior. Non-serious side effects included headache, anxiety and dizziness.

“For a population with severe treatment-resistant PTSD, these results are striking,” said Stacey Armstrong, associate director and senior researcher at the center.

The PIVOT study will involve veterans with major depressive disorder who have not responded to current treatments, including those with or without a diagnosis of PTSD. In the double-blind, randomized trial, veterans will receive one dose of psilocybin or a placebo, along with therapeutic support. They will receive a second dose one month later, also with support, and will be evaluated two to four weeks following each session.

They also will receive follow-up six months after their participation.

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End Nuclear Proliferation: A Call To Make The Anniversary of Hiroshima Bombing ‘Disarmament Day’

At 8:15 a.m. on Aug. 6, 1945, the morning rush had begun in Hiroshima. Streetcars rattled through the city, office workers settled at their desks and children prepared for another day of school. Then, in an instant, a blinding flash brighter than the sun engulfed the city.

A U.S. B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, had dropped the world’s first atomic bomb used in war. Tens of thousands died within moments as a mushroom cloud climbed into the sky. By the end of 1945, an estimated 140,000 people had died from the blast, burns and radiation.

Among those who witnessed the bombing was Tameto Uemori, a member of a suburban guard unit sent the following day to help victims at the center of the devastation. In his 40s at the time, Uemori witnessed the detonation from miles away, but the next day began searching through the ruins for members of his family. Along the way, he tried desperately to help the wounded. Everywhere he looked were scenes almost beyond imagination: people burned beyond recognition, victims crying out for water and entire neighborhoods reduced to ashes.

Flies and maggots had begun to infest the remains of those who perished, Uemori recalled in a 1987 interview with The Associated Press at the age of 88. He eventually discovered that members of his own family had died in the bombing, including his younger brother. “It was a hot summer day,” he told AP. “So I used a parasol — and the flies came under to escape the sun.”

The memories never left him.

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Fresh Panic As Pentagon Has Used ‘Virtually All’ Its Long-Range Precision Missiles On Iran

US forces “used up virtually all” of their precision, long-range missiles during the course of the Iran war, and during the earlier heavy US-Israeli campaign of Operation Epic Fury, Reutersreported Tuesday.

This has raised serious “concerns about the military’s ​readiness for future conflicts,” informed sources told the outlet. In particular it is the Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) and Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM) which are said to be running critically low.

“Washington has used virtually all of these weapons,” two sources told Reuters, after several media reports and think tank studies had already sounded the alarm over dwindling missiles amid both the Iran war and in the years-long process of supplying Ukraine. Low Patriot defense missile supplies have also been a persisting issue in the headlines.

They are costly and time-consuming in terms of manufacturing replacements. For example a single ATACMS munition costs about $1 million.

One immediate consequence could be that if heavy bombardment of Iran starts up again, the US would have to conduct riskier piloted aerial bombings – instead relying on longer range precision strikes afforded by the land-based systems at safer distances.

And another, somewhat obvious consequence, is highlighted in the following: “But as ​the war drags on, the three people familiar with the matter expressed worry that the falling missile supplies could limit the U.S. ability to deter adversaries, including Russia and China.”

The report added: “A fourth person ⁠familiar with the matter said that while Central Command — which oversees U.S. forces in the Middle East — has nearly used up the land-based missiles it had before the war began, it has been able to reload from U.S. military supplies elsewhere in the ​world.”

President Trump has of late responded to these now widespread reports of badly depleted advanced munitions, explaining that “Our defense companies are, at this moment, making more munitions than they have ever made before, ​in addition to expanding their plants and equipment at record levels.”

Additionally,  Secretary of War Pete Hegseth took to social media to refute the report, calling it false news.

“That banner is NOT TRUE, CNN. Shame on you,” the Pentagon chief said in a post on X. “We don’t hate the Fake News media enough.”

Hegseth was specifically referring to a CNN on-screen banner that read: “Sources: U.S. has used nearly 80% of key missile interceptors in Iran war, top commanders warn stockpiles dangerously low.”

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The Rulers of the Nuclear Powers Are Slow Learners

Although 81 years have passed since the atomic bombing of Japan in August 1945, the rulers of major nations continue their reckless march toward a nuclear holocaust.

The nine nuclear powers (the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea), possessing some 12,100 nuclear warheads, are all busily upgrading and expanding their nuclear weapons arsenals at an accelerating pace.  Nuclear weapons spending rose to an all-time high of $119 billion in 2025 – a 19 percent increase over the preceding year.  The U.S. government alone, which accounted for more than half of this spending, is embarked on a $1.7 trillion, decades-long nuclear weapons buildup.

As the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) has observed, “this overwhelming spending on nuclear weapons shows a willingness to research, develop, finance and build tools to exterminate humanity.”

Moreover, international nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements among the nuclear powers have collapsed.  Russia and the United States own 86 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons and, although they signed numerous treaties in the past to limit or reduce the size of their nuclear arsenals, the last of these treaties, New START, expired this February.

The accelerating nuclear arms race is accompanied by repeated threats of nuclear war.  Russian officials are particularly notorious in this connection.  According to the Voice of America, from early 2022 to late 2024 Russian officials publicly issued 135 nuclear threats, with 27 of them coming from Vladimir Putin.  But America’s Donald Trump has also publicly and repeatedly threatened other countries with nuclear destruction, as has North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.

Early this year, the editors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, assessing this deteriorating situation, moved the hands of their famous “Doomsday Clock” to 85 seconds to midnight, the most dangerous setting in its history.

Of course, there have been a great many warnings that nuclear weapons portend global disaster, including many beginning right after the shocking annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  “Seldom, if ever,” reported CBS radio commentator Edward R. Murrow, “has war ended leaving the victors… with such a realization that… survival is not assured.”  The Chicago Tribune warned that a future atomic war would leave the world “a barren waste, in which the survivors… will hide in caves.”  In France, the resistance leader Albert Camus declared that the modern world had “reached the last degree of savagery,” in which nations were faced with the prospect of “collective suicide.”

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Explosive-Armed Drone Intercepted at German Airport: Cargo Jet Struck In-Flight Moments Later

German security services are urgently investigating a series of apparently related incidents at Leipzig airport, including an armed explosive drone and a potential second drone striking a cargo jet mid-air, with Russia considered a potential suspect.

Leipzig-Halle Airport was closed to air traffic, and incoming flights were diverted overnight into Wednesday after what transpired to be a military-grade explosives-armed drone was found by chance and brought down by hand by a have-a-go hero. The potential for the airport having narrowly avoided a potential multi-vector attack became clear as the drone was found flying low on the airport grounds, a second presumed drone collided with a cargo plane flying nearby, and an “object” was found on the runway, all in rapid succession.

Germany’s Zeit newspaper reports an extraordinary situation in which, according to sources at Leipzig airport, a bus driver taking a group of tourists who had paid for an airport-by-night experience around the runways spotted a quadcopter-type drone hovering at low altitude. The man is reported to have pulled the bus over and physically restrained the drone by hand, pinning it to the ground with his own body weight while calling in the discovery to authorities.

The appearance of a drone at the airport, as allegedly discovered by chance by the bus driver, triggered a full alert that saw all aircraft on approach diverted to their backup airports. Per a sperate report in Die Welt, it was at this time that a DHL cargo jet, on approach to Leipzig-Halle, pulled out of its descent to divert and was then struck head-on by a second flying object.

The damage to the nosecone of the jet was relatively minimal, and the DHL plane was able to land safely elsewhere. The remains of what it struck have yet to be found on the ground, but it is stated that police are considering the possibility that the aircraft was hit by a second drone.

Shortly after, a third incident was recorded as an “object” — and police have not yet stated what it was — was discovered on the southern runway at Leipzig. The Welt report notes that, given the airport is a secure state with no public access to the runways, a working hypothesis among investigators is that this mysterious “object” on the runway may have been air-dropped by a drone.

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