Tag: perpetual war

NBC REJECTS TRUMP VOICE BUT EMBRACES WAR PARTY

“YOU WOULDN’T HIRE a made man, like a mobster, to work at a DA’s office, right?” MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said this week of NBC’s decision to hire former Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel, a decision the network later reversed. “You wouldn’t hire a pickpocket to work as a TSA screener.” 

But NBC does just that with another party: its pro-war stable of retired military generals and admirals who hold forth on wars and threats to national security. A partisan voice if there ever was one, the TV generals and admirals are all the more scandalous because the network presents them as objective “analysts” as they sit on defense industry and corporate boards that profit from forever wars, including ones not being fought by the United States directly. The conflict is not just tolerated by NBC, it is also never disclosed. (NBC did not respond to a request for comment on its current conflict of interest policies.)

“The U.S. needs to get involved in a leadership role here [in Haiti] and very quickly,” retired four-star Adm. James Stavridis said on the air earlier this month, speaking of the deteriorating situation. Stavridis calls for the deployment of a U.S.-led intervention force, warning of the consequences of inaction. “In the ’90s, we had waves of migration, refugee-driven, from Haiti,” he said.

The host, NBC News’s Gabe Gutierrez, to his credit, pushed back. “Admiral, you know this better than anybody else: The history of American intervention in the Americas has not always been that great,” he said. But the network, in giving Stavridis a platform — just as they would have done with McDaniel — doesn’t bother to mention that their “analyst” profits from the use of military force. For example, Stavridis serves as partner of the investment firm Carlyle Group, owner of major defense contractors and which lists the admiral among its Global Aerospace and Government Services Team. 

Keep reading

Navy’s Rush To Test Microwave Weapons Tied To Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile Fears

The U.S. Navy hopes to have a prototype high-power microwave directed energy weapon ready for shipboard testing by the end of 2026. The service sees weapons of this type as critical additional defensive options that will help its warships keep higher-end surface-to-air missiles in reserve for threats they might be better optimized for, including anti-ship ballistic missiles. The experience of American warships shooting down Houthi missiles and drones over the past six months has rammed home concerns about the magazine depth of the Navy’s surface fleets, issues The War Zone previously explored in detail in a feature you can find here.

Details about the Navy’s current high-power microwave (HPM) shipboard defense plans are included in its budget request for the 2025 Fiscal Year, which the service rolled out earlier this month. USNI News was the first to report on aspects of the Navy’s HPM plans from the new budget proposal.

The Navy has working toward a prototype HPM weapon system specifically for this role through a program called REDCAT since at least 2023. The service’s latest budget proposal says the plan is now to rename that development effort METEOR, for reasons that are not entirely clear and that we come back to later. REDCAT and METEOR both appear to be acronyms, but their meanings are unknown.

HPM weapons, in general, are designed to generate bursts of microwave energy that are capable of disrupting or destroying the electronics inside a target system. In a maritime context, HPM systems, as they are understood now, are best suited to providing close-in defense against missiles, drones, and small boats.

Keep reading

Israel’s Holocaust trauma is a myth

Responding to a journalist’s question in October, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett fumed: “Are you seriously … asking me about Palestinian civilians? What’s wrong with you? Have you not seen what happened? We’re fighting Nazis.”

Bennett had been asked what would happen to babies in incubators and other patients who would die after Israel cut off the power to the Gaza Strip.

There are many other examples of prominent Israeli politicians making similar statements. South Africa’s genocide case at the International Court of Justice documented many of them, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloody invocation of “Amalek.”

In the wake of the 7 October attack, an exterminationist mood swept Israel. Israeli peace activist Adam Keller described how Roy Sharon, a radio and TV commentator on the main broadcasting corporation, spoke of his desire to see “a million dead bodies in Gaza.”

Keller wrote that “the streets of Tel Aviv are flooded with red stickers reading ‘Exterminate Gaza!’ Not ‘Destroy!,’ not ‘Flatten!’ – but clearly and explicitly ‘Exterminate Gaza!’ ‘Le-Ha-Sh-Mid!’ – ‘Exterminate!’ Every Hebrew-speaking Jewish Israeli knows from a young age exactly what this word means.”

The lazy explanation for Israel’s genocidal and exterminationist mentality is “Holocaust trauma.” Using the Holocaust as a catch-all explanation is convenient, because it absolves people of the need to look for the real cause of Israeli Zionist violence.

Keep reading

Speaker Johnson Wants to Pass Bill Sending Billions in Arms to Ukraine and Israel

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) says he will work to pass a massive military aid bill for Ukraine and Israel once Congress returns to session next week, a move that could trigger a backlash from his party. House Democrats have vowed to shield the speaker from a GOP rebellion should he support the legislation.

Johnson has underscored the urgency of providing aid to Ukraine and Israel, declaring it a top priority upon the House’s return from Easter recess. “We’ll turn our attention to it and we won’t delay on that,” he told reporters last week.  

Sending billions more in aid to Ukraine is a volatile issue within the Republican Caucus. Johnson won his role as leader of the House, in part, because of his past votes opposing aid to Ukraine. However, since taking over as speaker, Johnson has repeatedly stated that he supports President Joe Biden’s $61 billion aid package for Kiev. 

The issue facing Johnson is how the aid to Ukraine is currently packaged. Initially, the GOP sought to include the funding in a bill that would also supply arms to Israel and Taiwan, as well as devote billions to border security. Last month, the Senate stripped the border funding and immigration reform from the legislation and passed a $95 billion foreign aid bill, including $61 billion for Ukraine and $14 billion for Israel. 

After passing the Senate over a month ago, Johnson has prevented the legislation from coming to a vote in the House. Some Republicans in the chamber say if Johnson brings the bill to the floor, they will vote to remove him as speaker. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he spoke with the speaker by phone on Thursday and pressed Johnson to pass the bill. “In this situation, quick passage of US aid to Ukraine by Congress is vital. We recognize that there are differing views in the House of Representatives on how to proceed, but the key is to keep the issue of aid to Ukraine as a unifying factor,” Zelensky wrote on X.

To overcome the threat from a small number of Republicans, Democrats in the House have hinted that they would support Johnson’s continued role as speaker if he brings the bill for a vote. “If the choice is between Ukraine aid and providing a vote to stop a motion to vacate, or no Ukraine aid, I think there’s a lot of Democrats who would be willing to assist in getting it done,” Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) told the Hill. 

Keep reading

Did The US First Catch Wind Of The Crocus Terrorist Attack By Spying On Kiev?

This accounts for why the US only passed along vague information to Russia since it assumed that the GUR wouldn’t go through with the Crocus plot after ordering them to call it off, but Washington still wanted to discredit its rival’s government and security services, ergo its embassy’s provocative warning at the time.

The New York Times (NYT) cited unnamed sources on Thursday to report that “The adversarial relationship between Washington and Moscow prevented U.S. officials from sharing any information about the (Crocus terrorist attack) plot beyond what was necessary, out of fear Russian authorities might learn their intelligence sources or methods.” This vindicates President Putin, who the West hitherto claimed had downplayed terrorist threats in the run-up to one of the worst attacks in Russian history.

Without actionable intelligence and informed only of the US’ vague warning that large gatherings like concerts could soon be targeted, his security services were unable to stop the plotters, thus meaning that Washington is partially responsible for what happened by withholding specific information about it. Just as scandalously, this bombshell also prompted speculation about the exact sources and methods that America employed to first catch wind of this attack.

While it’s possible that the US learned about this from spying on the radical Telegram channel whose curators reportedly recruited the culprits, such as if the CIA had a mole inside that preacher’s team, the case can compellingly be made that this might have actually been brought to its attention by spying on Kiev. Last spring’s Pentagon leaks confirmed that the US has been spying on Zelensky, which Ukrainian officials told CNN was “unsurprising” but still left them “deeply frustrated”.

Those documents also confirmed that the US was spying on Ukraine’s military-intelligence service GUR as well, from whom they learned about a plot to attack the Russian port of Novorossiysk on the first anniversary of the special operation and then ordered them to stand down to avoid provoking Moscow. Seeing as how the Washington Post (WaPo) reported half a year later that the CIA rebuilt the GUR from the ground-up after 2014, it’s obvious that they embedded moles within that institution from the get-go.

They don’t always learn about terrorist plots ahead of time since their infiltration of the GUR and other Ukrainian government agencies isn’t total, but they’re still usually able to conclude sometime afterwards that Kiev was responsible whenever a serious attack happens in Russia. Such was the case last May when the NYT reported that Kiev was responsible for the Kremlin drone attack, in which piece they also reminded their reader that it was behind other attacks up until that point too.

These include the assassinations of Darya Dugina and Vladlen Tatarsky, cross-border terrorist raids into Russia’s Belgorod Region, and the Nord Stream II bombing. About that last-mentioned one, the claim of Ukrainian complicity might very well be a preplanned red herring for deflecting from American involvement after Seymour Hersh served as the conduit for dissident members of the Intelligence Community (IC) to inform the public that their country was the one that ordered that attack.

Keep reading

Biden Administration Is Provoking War In Bosnia

Already embroiled in conflicts around the world, the Biden Administration is working to provoke yet another senseless war, this time in Bosnia. By threatening to arrest the duly elected leader of the Serbian people living in Republika Srpska, the globalists running the Biden Administration’s foreign policy in the Balkans are actively seeking to undermine the fragile peace in the region in their misguided efforts to create a multi-ethnic state.

Speaking before the National Assembly of Republika Srpska, one of the two entities that comprise Bosnia in accordance with the Dayton Agreement, said “They are threatening me with arrest and I received information that they said that if my security guards resist, they will shoot me… I tell them that we will resist.”

Dodik indicated that the move, the next step in the lawfare initiated by the globalist junta ruling Bosnia against the Serb leader, is be sanctioned by the U.S. Deputy Secretary Gabriel Escobar.

Dodik said that he is in possession of a memo from the intelligence community, which states that the leader of the List for Justice and Order, Nebojsa Vukanović, is under the auspices of the American Embassy in BiH and the National Democratic Institute in Sarajevo, an arm of the U.S. Democrat Party, aimed at organizing sustainable protests against the authorities in Srpska.

Dodik pointed out that the Americans are waging a hybrid war against Republika Srpska and Serbia, adding that the Americans destroyed the Constitution and the Dayton Peace Agreement, stressing that it was a criminal enterprise.

Keep reading

Navy to Test Microwave Anti-Drone Weapon at Sea in 2026 

The U.S. Navy plans to mount a high-powered microwave prototype system on one of its vessels as early as 2026, according to the Navy’s Fiscal Year 2025 budget documents.

The system will come from the Navy’s Project METEOR, which is developing a directed energy weapon system prototype that the service plans to integrate on ships in 2026.

METEOR will “provide capability with low cost-per-shot, deep magazine, tactically significant range, short time engagement for multi-target approach, dual deception and defeat capability,” according to the budget documents.

This system will be the Navy’s first high-powered microwave, a type of directed energy weapon system that the Army, Navy and Air Force are exploring to counter cheap unmanned aerial systems.

Unlike other directed energy systems the Navy uses, the METEOR prototype will use a different kill mechanism to disable targets. Instead of a focused beam of light, HPM systems use microwave energy to inflict damage to electronics inside targets.

The Navy believes that this mechanism, which is unique to HPM systems, will be useful in defeating anti-ship ballistic missiles like the ones fielded by China’s People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force.

“Currently, the Joint Force suffers from a lack of redundant, resilient hard kill/soft kill options against stressing stream raid threats of Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles (ASBM),” reads the FY 2025 budget documents.

“The issue is particularly acute in the [U.S. Indo-Pacific Command area of responsibility] due to the vast geographic distances involved, ship magazine size and adversary actions.”

Keep reading

18 Killed In Gaza Trying To Reach Aid As Pentagon Vows More Airdrops

The Biden administration announced this week that it plans to resume humanitarian aid drops into Gaza amid reports that large-scale famine is looming. However, critics have said that the airdropped crates from large military transport planes are dangerous given the cramped and desperate conditions on the ground below. 

So far the Pentagon has delivered at least 17 airdrops of nearly 500,000 meals, but the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry has said that just on Monday alone 18 people died trying to desperately access the aid, much of which landed in the sea.

Airdropping supplies just off the coast is an apparent safety precaution, after earlier this month Palestinian civilians died after apparently being impacted by falling crates amid parachute failure.

But 12 of the deceased drowned on Monday while trying to access the aid which landed in the Mediterranean. “The aid airdrops pose a real threat to the lives of hungry Palestinians,” Gaza’s government media office warned. Others reportedly perished during stampedes as the aid arrived on land.

The statement further described that some of the recent aid has fallen into active war zones, which presents the risk of hungry civilians getting caught in the crossfire trying to reach it. “This all put the lives of people in real danger,” the office added.

Initially only Jordan was engaged in airdrops, later joined by the US military. Since then and into this week the countries of Germany, Britain, Egypt, Singapore, and UAE have joined and cooperated on airdrops. 

Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh has noted there have been recent instances of parachute malfunctions when delivering the aid. “As always, safety is a top priority when planning these airdrops,” Singh said. “Of note, during [Monday’s] humanitarian airdrop, which included approximately 80 bundles, three bundles were reported to have had parachute malfunctions and landed in the water.”

Keep reading

U.S. History of Using ISIS

Back in 2015, the Guardian published a fascinating report titled Now the truth emerges: how the US fuelled the rise of Isis in Syria and Iraq, which detailed how U.S. and British intelligence were supporting Islamic jihadist rebel groups in Syria with the objective of overthrowing the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The report included a link to a leaked 2012 Department of Defense document about U.S. support for these rebel groups in Syria, including ISIS. This report stuck with me, and I was a reminded of it a couple of years later when Assad was accused in April 2017 of using chemical weapons against Syrian civilians.Buy New $47.97 ($0.53 / Count)(as of 02:32 UTC – Details)

Notably, this chemical weapons attack just happened to occur the day after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson publicly announced that regime change in Syria was no longer official U.S. policy. In other words—we were told—the day after the U.S. announced it was getting off Assad’s case, he committed an atrocity (of zero military value) that would guarantee that the U.S. recommit itself to getting rid of him.

Though most of the legacy press endorsed the assertion that Assad’s forces were behind the attack, a few discerning reporters noted that it could have easily been carried about by one of the Islamic jihadist groups operating in the region to make the Trump administration rethink its abandonment of its regime change objective. Sure enough, a couple of days after the chemical attack, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced that he was reconsidering his announcement the week before.

Now comes the news of a major terrorist attack on the Crocus City Hall in Moscow that has left hundreds dead and injured. The U.S. government claims the attack was carried out by ISIS-K, which has reportedly taken responsibility for it. However, Kremlin officials have alleged that some of the gunmen were trying to escape into Ukraine, utilizing a ‘window’ of support from across the border.

Buy New $63.95 ($5.95 / Ounce)(as of 11:17 UTC – Details)The U.S. government just issued a statement condemning the terrorist attack in Moscow, but this reminds me of U.S. government doublespeak about ISIS back in the 2012-2017 period—that is, publicly condemning ISIS while secretly supporting it in Syria.

My concern now is that the attack on the Moscow theater was—like the Re’im music festival massacre in Israel last October—designed to provoke the absolute maximum violent response.

Keep reading

The Pentagon Ate Our Government

The biggest boost in spending from 2023 to 2024 went to the Pentagon. Of course! Even though the Pentagon has yet to pass an audit. Throw money at it as a reward!

Let’s do some basic math. Add the Pentagon budget, Homeland Security, Military Construction and the VA, and State/Foreign Ops and you get $1.118 trillion. (Basically, the State Department is a tiny branch of the Pentagon.) But even that figure is low, since some Energy spending goes to nuclear weapons, and I can’t imagine that spending on science doesn’t have military applications.

Let’s go with the $1.118 trillion figure as a rough estimate of military spending. Adding up all the numbers of money spent produces a total of $1.627 trillion. That means the percentage of money spent on the Pentagon and related military matters amounts to 68.7% of federal discretionary spending.

Yes, the Pentagon ate our government.

Keep reading