Tag: perpetual war

Biden Pledges More Arms To Ukraine After Christmas Strikes

President Joe Biden on Christmas Day said he has directed the Pentagon to continue its “surge of weapons deliveries to Ukraine,” following a wave of Russian air attacks on Ukrainian cities and energy infrastructure early Christmas morning.

“The purpose of this outrageous attack was to cut off the Ukrainian people’s access to heat and electricity during winter and to jeopardize the safety of its grid,” Biden said in a statement.

“Let me be clear: the Ukrainian people deserve to live in peace and safety, and the United States and the international community must continue to stand with Ukraine until it triumphs over Russia’s aggression.”

The president said that the United States will “continue to work tirelessly” to back Ukraine against Russian forces in the ongoing war.

Ukraine’s air force said that the early morning attack by Russia using 78 air and ground missiles and 106 Shahed drones damaged critical equipment in Ukraine’s power grid, causing outages on Christmas Day.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy decried the deliberate attack on Christmas day as “inhumane.”

Ukraine shot down “more than 50 missiles and a significant number of drones” and was still hit as there are power outages in a number of regions as engineers are trying to restore power, Zelenskyy said.

“Russian evil will not break Ukraine and will not spoil Christmas,” Zelenskyy said.

The strikes wounded at least six people in the northeastern city of Kharkiv and killed one in the region of Dnipropetrovsk, the governors there said.

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Israel ‘severely weakened’ war protocols to allow rampant killing of civilians in Gaza: Report

The Israeli army has “severely weakened” its protocols to protect civilians during military operations since the start of the war in Gaza, allowing mid-ranking officers to order indiscriminate strikes from the air force, according to a New York Times (NYT) investigation. 

According to NYT, officers were granted the authority right after 7 October to risk the killing of up to 20 civilians in each airstrike. The order had “no precedent” in Israel’s military history. 

“Mid-ranking officers had never been given so much leeway to attack so many targets, many of which had lower military significance, at such a high potential civilian cost,” NYT said, adding that under this order, “the military could target rank-and-file militants as they were at home surrounded by relatives and neighbors.” 

Previously, Israeli strikes were approved only after officers found that no civilians would be hurt. In some cases, the military had granted them the leeway of risking up to five civilian deaths. Nonetheless, this did not stop brutally deadly strikes against civilians in previous conflicts. 

An anonymous military officer told NYT that Israel changed its protocol because it believed it was existentially threatened. 

“Israel severely weakened its system of safeguards meant to protect civilians; adopted flawed methods to find targets and assess the risk of civilian casualties; routinely failed to conduct post-strike reviews of civilian harm or punish officers for wrongdoing; and ignored warnings from within its own ranks and from senior US military officials about these failings,” according to the investigation. 

NYT reviewed dozens of army records and conducted interviews with over 100 Israeli soldiers and officials, including those who had a hand in vetting targets for airstrikes and attacks. 

As part of this loosening of protocol, Tel Aviv greatly expanded its set of targets for preemptive strikes and the number of civilians it could risk killing. As a result, nearly 30,000 munitions were fired into the besieged Gaza Strip in the first seven weeks – more than the next eight months of the war combined, NYT said. 

“On a few occasions, senior commanders approved strikes on Hamas leaders that they knew would each endanger more than 100 noncombatants – crossing an extraordinary threshold for a contemporary western military,” it added. 

This policy has been evident throughout the course of the war in Gaza. One attack in the northern strip in October this year resulted in the killing of at least 100 Palestinians. 

In early June, Israel launched an indiscriminate rescue operation in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza to retrieve Noa Argamani and three other Israeli captives. Nearly 300 Palestinians were massacred in the process.

“The military struck at a pace that made it harder to confirm it was hitting legitimate targets. It burned through much of a prewar database of vetted targets within days and adopted an unproven system for finding new targets that used artificial intelligence at a vast scale,” the NYT investigation revealed. 

Insufficient models to assess the risk of civilian loss were used repeatedly. In the first two months of the war, 15,000 Palestinians were killed by Israel. 

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Is it really possible to destroy Russia?

In times of war and with the threat of nuclear conflict, it is important to reflect on the future of the countries involved in the main geopolitical disputes. Western propaganda often tries to reinforce a narrative suggesting that Russia could be destroyed, but the geopolitical reality is very different. Many in the West believe that, in a nuclear war scenario, Russia would be vulnerable, but this view disregards the country’s unique resilience, its vast territorial expanse, and the historical and cultural factors that sustain its ability to survive. In a potential “post-apocalypse” scenario, even a large-scale nuclear war would not be enough to irreversibly destroy Russia. The complexity of Russia’s geography, along with its self-sufficiency and the resilient mindset of its people, ensures its survival, regardless of the severity of the destruction.

Obviously, this type of scenario is not one of a simple military confrontation, where the conventional firepower of both sides would be used to achieve victory. In a global nuclear war, surely everyone would “lose.” However, Russia, due to its geographical, historical, and cultural characteristics, would remain a viable nation, regardless of what happened to its major cities, which would be targets of Western missiles. Even if the West managed to destroy Russia’s major urban centers and critical infrastructures, the country would still retain a vast physical survival base, from the Urals to the Far East, and from the Arctic to Lake Baikal. In other words, Russia, despite any destruction that the West could cause, would continue to be the largest nation in the world, with sufficient resources to ensure self-sufficiency and the long-term continuity of the nation.

Russia has the advantage of its vast territory, which makes it almost immune to total destruction. While Western Europe, with its small size and high population density, virtually has no uninhabited areas where it could survive a nuclear conflict, and the United States only benefits from the relative isolation of Alaska, Russia possesses an extensive and rich area. This territory, which still holds part of its population in regions far from major urban centers, would allow for significant recovery after a global catastrophe. This vast region, with its abundant natural resources, would ensure that Russia not only survives immediately but also has the ability to physically rebuild itself for the future.

It is essential to understand that the Russian mentality, very different from the Western one, is deeply rooted in the country’s historical experience, especially regarding major military events, such as the recent and tragic Second World War. Russia managed to withstand one of the greatest massacres in history and, even amid extreme conditions, rebuild its manufacturing capacity by relocating heavy industry to Siberia and expanding essential infrastructure to sustain the fight against Nazism. This experience of overcoming extreme adversity not only reflects the resilience of its people but also a structure capable of recovering the country’s productive strength in times of crisis.

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Another Expert Report Finds Israel Is Committing Genocide. The West Yawns

Three separate reports published this month by leading international human rights and medical groups have detailed the same horrifying story: that Israel is well advanced in its genocide of the Palestinian population in Gaza.

Or, to be more accurate, they have confirmed what was already patently clear: that, for the past 14 months, Israel has been slaughtering tens of thousands of Palestinians with indiscriminate munitions, while at the same time gradually starving the survivors to death and denying them access to medical care.

Genocides can happen with gas chambers. Or with machetes. Or they can be carried out with 2,000lb bombs and aid blockades. Genocides rarely look the same. But they are all designed to arrive at the same endpoint: the elimination of a people.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) agree that Israel is striving for extermination. It has not hidden its intent, and that intent is confirmed by its actions on the ground.

Only the wilfully blind, which includes western politicians and their media, are still in denial. But worse than denial, they continue to actively collude in this, the ultimate crime against humanity, by supplying Israel with the weapons, intelligence and diplomatic cover it needs for the extermination.

Last week, MSF issued its report, titled Life in the Death Trap That is Gaza, concluding that Israel was intentionally “unravelling the fabric of society”.

The medical charity observed: “The violence unleashed by Israeli forces has caused physical and mental damage on a scale that would overwhelm any functioning health system, let alone one already decimated by a crushing offensive and a 17-year-long blockade [by Israel].”

MSF added: “Even if the offensive ended today, its long-term impact would be unprecedented, given the scale of the destruction.”

Rebuilding the society and dealing with the health consequences will “span generations”.

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OpenAI Is Using Its Technology To Kill

Earlier this month, the company that brings us ChatGPT announced its partnership with California-based weapons company, Anduril, to produce AI weapons. The OpenAI-Anduril system, which was tested in California at the end of November, permits the sharing of data between external parties for decision making on the battlefield. This fits squarely within the US military and OpenAI’s plans to normalize the use of AI on the battlefield.

Anduril, based in Costa Mesa, makes AI-powered drones, missiles, and radar systems, including surveillance towers, Sentry systems, currently used at US military bases worldwide as well as the US-Mexico border and on the British coastline to detect migrants on boats. On December 3rd, they received a three-year contract with the Pentagon for a system that gives soldiers AI solutions during attacks.

In January, OpenAI deleted a direct ban in their usage policy on “activity that has high risk of physical harm” which specifically included “military and warfare” and “weapons development.” Less than one week after doing so, the company announced a partnership with the Pentagon in cybersecurity.

While they might have removed a ban on making weapons, OpenAI’s lurch into the war industry is in total antithesis to its own charter. Their own proclamation to build “safe and beneficial AGI [Artificial Generative Intelligence]” that does not “harm humanity” is laughable when they are using technology to kill. ChatGPT could feasibly, and probably soon will, write code for an automated weapon, analyze information for bombings, or assist invasions and occupations.

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Now It Can Be Told… After All the Harm Has Been Done

This week, the New York Times reported that the U.S. government made war in Afghanistan while helping to “recruit, train and pay for lawless bands of militias that pillaged homes and laid waste to entire communities.” Those militias “tortured civilians, kidnapped for ransom, massacred dozens in vendetta killings and razed entire villages, sowing more than a decade of hatred toward the Afghan government and its American allies.”

Written by a former Kabul bureau chief for the Times, the article appeared under a headline saying that “U.S.-backed militias” in Afghanistan were “worse than the Taliban.”

Now they tell us.

The new reporting made me think of a chapter in my book War Made Invisible titled “Now It Can Be Told.” Here’s an excerpt:

Timing is crucial in media and politics — and never more so than when war is at stake. It’s completely unsatisfactory for journalists to toe the war line for years and then finally report, in effect: Now it can be told — years too late.

Virtually the entire U.S. media establishment gave full-throated support to the U.S. attack on Afghanistan in early October 2001. Twenty years later, many of the same outlets were saying the war was ill-conceived and doomed from the start.

Immediately after the invasion of Iraq began in March 2003, with very few exceptions, even the mainstream news organizations that had been expressing trepidation or opposition swung into line to support the war effort. Two decades later, many of the same media outlets were calling the invasion of Iraq the worst U.S. foreign-policy blunder in history.

But such framing evades the structural mendacity that remains built into the military-industrial complex, with its corporate media and political wings. War is so normalized that its casualties, as if struck by acts of God, are routinely viewed as victims without victimizers, perhaps no more aggrieved than people suffering the consequences of bad weather.

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Deception & Politics From Washington to Tel Aviv

In these difficult times, the voice of the late Palestinian-American scholar, Edward Said is ever present, “Writing is the final resistance we have against the inhuman practices and injustices that disfigure human history.”

For more than fourteen painful months Israel has passed off its inhuman actions against the people of Gaza as “defensive.”

We are to believe that the massacre of tens of thousands of civilians and attacks on its Arab neighbors are somehow Israel’s “right.”  Championed by the Biden administration, Tel Aviv has grown ever more bold and barbaric in its efforts to crush the resistance and expand its “undeclared” borders; simply, because it can.

Since it proclaimed itself a state on Palestinian land in 1948, Israel has been and continues to be engaged in the largest dispossession of an ethnic group in modern history.  And following its victory in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, Israel has emerged an expansionist, occupying and annexationist power, ruling over vast Arab lands and people.

The United States has, particularly since 1967, been the bulwark for Israel’s expansionist dreams. U.S.-Israeli supremacist intentions, papered over and buried for decades, are now clear for all to see.

Out of the ashes of World War II, the newly created United Nations, with U.S. pressure, helped legalize land theft.  In 1947, the General Assembly (made up of 58 nations) said “yes” to the creation of a Jewish state on 62 percent of historic Palestine. 

At the time of the unequal division, 68 percent of the population were Arab Palestinian Muslims and Christians, while only 30 percent were Jewish.

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Ukraine Spit In Poland’s Face By Flying The Bandera Flag Atop A Polish APC

Polish-Ukrainian relations might continue worsening due to Ukraine’s provocations and Poland’s responses to them that it promulgates with society’s sentiments in mind.

The Polish milblog platform WarNewsPL shared footage on X late last week showing the Ukrainian Armed Forces flying the Bandera flag of the “Ukrainian Insurgent Army” (UPA) atop a Polish armored personnel carrier (APC). This prompted Polish Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz to post around an hour later that this is “a provocation that should not have happened” and declare that he’s organizing an urgent meeting with the Ukrainian attaché in Warsaw “to clarify the matter.”

There are several reasons why this is so scandalous. First, the UPA is considered a terrorist group in Poland due to it targeting the Polish state and civilians during the interwar period, after which they genocided Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia during World War II. Second, Ukraine refuses to this day to exhume and properly bury those genocide victims’ remains despite already doing the same for over 100,000 Wehrmacht troops. And third, Poland has given more vehicles to Ukraine than anyone else.

Flying Bandera’s UPA flag atop a Polish APC accordingly amounts to Ukraine spitting in Poland’s face. The public paid for this vehicle that the state donated to its neighbor as part of the aid that it’s provided in solidarity with Kiev’s cause. Ukraine wouldn’t even be able to fight to this day had it not been for Polish aid and Poland tacitly promising continued support if Kiev abandoned spring 2022’s peace talks. It’s therefore so disrespectful that Ukraine would fly that terrorist and genocidal flag atop a Polish vehicle.

“Most Poles Now Want Peace In Ukraine Even At Kiev’s Expense” according to the results of a November survey by a publicly financed research institution so this latest provocation will predictably increase that majority even further the next time that Poles are polled. It could also complicate the ruling liberal-globalist coalition’s plans to provide more military equipment to Ukraine on credit instead of continuing to give away the rest of its depleted stockpile for free since public opinion is quickly turning against Kiev.

Correspondingly, the already small amount of Poles that are in favor of their forces deploying to Ukraine under any pretext (only 14% per the results of the European Council on Foreign Relations’ summertime survey) will probably further decrease as well. These shifts in public sentiment could make such a scenario politically impossible until at least after May’s next presidential election since the ruling liberal-globalist coalition might not dare to risk losing votes to their conservative-nationalist rivals before then.

Seeing as how “Poland’s Participation In Any Ukrainian Peacekeeping Mission Could Lead To World War III” since Poland could retaliate against Russia in Belarus and/or Kaliningrad should its troops come under fire in Ukraine, thus setting into motion a possibly uncontrollable escalation, this would be for the best. Influential Azov officer Roman Ponomarenko’s anti-Polish rant that he shared on Telegram after Kosiniak-Kamsyz’s post will further fuel anti-Ukrainian sentiment in Poland.

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Are The Danes Up For A Two Front War?

Word is that Denmark plans to increase defense spending on Greenland, following Trump’s statement that acquiring Greenland for the US is “an absolute necessity.” The Danes had better watch their backs, because Russians like Trump’s idea—they see Trump’s idea as an endorsement, in effect, of a multipolar world:

Russians Respond to Donald Trump’s Greenland Proposal

Excerpts:

Russian media personalities have responded to President-elect Donald Trump’s proposal regarding buying Greenland in a state broadcast show. In his show Evening with Vladimir Solovyov on Russia-1, host Vladimir Solovyov and others responded to Trump’s idea to potentially buy Greenland and voiced their support.

On his evening show, Solovyov and his guests largely cheered on Trump’s proposal to buy Greenland. Sergey Mikheyev, one of Solovyov’s pundits said that Trump’s proposal is in accordance with “the American mindset” that his predecessors attempted to “disguise and hide”.

“Trump simply says it straight—we are everything and you are nothing,” Mikheyev noted.

“This is especially interesting because it drives a wedge between him and Europe, it undermines the world architecture, and opens up certain opportunities for our foreign policy,” Mikheyev said, adding that if Trump “really wants to stop the third world war, the way out is simple: dividing up the world into spheres of influence.”

Stanislav Tkachenko, a top academic at the St. Petersburg State University also voiced his support for Trump’s discussion of buying Greenland and said that Russia should “thank Donald Trump, who is teaching us a new diplomatic language.”

“That is, to say it like it is. Maybe we won’t carve up the world like an apple, but we can certainly outline the parts of the world where our interests cannot be questioned.”

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Why Has The Threat Of Iranian Nukes Suddenly Become Such A Huge Narrative?

Western officials suddenly have a tremendous amount to say about the threat that Iranian nukes could potentially pose to us.  Is it that the threat has increased, or are they trying to justify something that they have planned in early 2025?  I don’t know, but all of this talk about Iranian nukes is certainly not good.  Without a doubt, the Iranian nuclear program has been moving forward for a long time, but now we may be reaching a point of confrontation which could have enormous implications for the entire Middle East.

Earlier today, I came across a Telegraph article that was ominously entitled “Weakened Iran could hit back with a nuclear bomb, Trump told by White House”…

Iran could move to build a nuclear bomb after being weakened by wars in the Middle East, the White House has warned Donald Trump.

Joe Biden’s national security advisor said he had briefed the incoming president on the “risk” of Tehran obtaining the weapons.

It comes as Mr Trump is reportedly considering airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities when he becomes commander in chief again.

Apparently Jake Sullivan and other national security minions in the Biden administration are trying really hard to convince Donald Trump that Iran’s nuclear program is an imminent threat that must be dealt with very soon.

But if Iran’s nuclear program is such a threat, why didn’t the Biden administration do something about it during the past four years?

Why wait until now?

Someone should ask Jake Sullivan that question.

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