Tag: perpetual war

Officials: Musk Meets with Iranian UN Ambassador

Officials have claimed that Elon Musk met with Amir Saeid Irvani, the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations, on Monday. The purported meeting suggests a shift from the “maximum pressure” campaign undertaken by the first Trump administration.

The Iranian officials, who spoke to the New York Times about the meeting, reported the meeting as “good news” and “positive.”

Trump’s communications director, Steven Cheung, neither confirmed nor denied the existence of the meeting, telling the Times: “We do not comment on reports of private meetings that did or did not occur.”

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UN Committee Says Israel Is Carrying Out a Genocide, HRW Says Israel Is Committing War Crimes

On Thursday, a report published by a special UN committee said Israel’s actions in Gaza are “consistent with the characteristics of genocide,” while Human Rights Watch released a report saying Israel was committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing.

The UN report, released by the UN Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices, said Israel has used “criminal means” to achieve its military goals, including the use of starvation as a weapon.

“This included intentionally causing death, starvation, great suffering, and serious injury, using starvation as a method of warfare, and intentionally directing attacks against civilians,” the report reads.

The committee, which was formed in 1968, also discussed the occupied West Bank, where it said Israel has an “apartheid system of injustice.” The report said the “killing of and serious bodily or mental harm caused to Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are violations under international law.”

The HRW report focused on Israel’s forcible displacement of Palestinians in Gaza. “Israeli authorities have caused massive, deliberate forced displacement of Palestinian civilians in Gaza since October 2023 and are responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity,” HRW said. “There is no plausible imperative military reason to justify Israel’s mass displacement of nearly all of Gaza’s population, often multiple times.”

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Trump’s Hegseth Caper and the Delusion of ‘Peace Through Strength’

Well, you can say this much about the Donald’s off-the-wall pick of Fox’s weekend news commentator, Pete Hegseth, for Secretary of Defense: At least it wasn’t a hard-core neocon like House Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala), Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) or the horrid Senator Tom Cotten of Arkansas. Better a cheerleader for patriotism and valorization of the military than war-mongering interventionists like those three blemishes on the Republican brand.

Well, maybe. Yet what this insensible pick also shows, if any more proof is needed, is that Donald Trump is a clueless, lightweight political demagogue who has no intention of bringing the Empire Home. Nor does he have the remotest chance of making the American economy great again. That’s because if you don’t dismantle the war machine and slash the hideously bloated national security budget by upwards of $500 billion per year, the already debt-saturated US economy is going to be KO’d by an exploding public debt.

For want of doubt, however, here is the Donald’s rationale for selecting a guy to run the $1 trillion/2.9 million employee Pentagon who has never managed anything bigger than a household of three successive wives and the accumulation of seven kids:

“Nobody fights harder for the Troops, and Pete will be a courageous and patriotic champion of our ‘Peace through Strength’ policy… Pete has spent his entire life as a Warrior for the Troops, and for the Country… With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on notice – Our Military will be Great Again, and America will Never Back Down.

What unmitigated breast-beating rubbish!

For crying out loud, the last thing America needs is another Warrior for the Troops. Instead, what it really needs is a Fearless Slayer of the sacred cows and obese pigs of the military/industrial complex who gorge themselves at the Pentagon’s trough.

Likewise, the pointless, costly Forever Wars stem from too much of the false “strength” of a globe-spanning War Machine that thrives upon inventing enemies, exaggerating threats to national security and provoking conflicts. We are referring, for instance, to the Washington-funded and orchestrated coup in Ukraine during February 2014 that deposed a duly-elected, Russia-friendly President and fostered the hellacious civil war now raging in Ukraine.

The fact is, the very slogan “peace through strength” is a vestigial relic of the Cold War. In today’s world it is utterly irrelevant because subsequent to the Soviet Union’s disappearance into the dustbin of history there remains no rival military superpower which poses a remote threat to the liberty and security of the American homeland. In the year 2024 America doesn’t need “strength” to deter hostile like-sized enemies because, well, there are none.

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US calls on Taiwan to stop supplying AI chips to China

Washington has officially demanded that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), one of the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturing companies, stop supplying China with chips used in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Reuters reported on November 10. However, Washington’s pressure on China’s semiconductor industry also includes Taiwan once Donald Trump comes to power next year.

TSMC is one of the largest chip producers and cooperates with several technology companies, such as Nvidia and AMD, and specialises in integrated circuit, also known as a microchip, a small device made up of several interconnected electronic components that are etched onto a small piece of semiconductor material.

Taiwan produces about 90% of the world’s most advanced semiconductors, mostly by TSMC, and ensuring these chips do not reach China is a priority for Washington, an effort that will only intensify when Trump becomes president.

“The US ordered Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co to halt shipments of advanced chips to Chinese customers that are often used in artificial intelligence applications,” Reuters reported, citing sources familiar with the subject.

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Israel ignores Biden ‘ultimatum’ over Gaza aid, but U.S. will continue sending weapons regardless

Last month the Biden administration announced that the Israeli government had 30 days to increase humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza or else the country could lose access to some U.S. weapons.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin established the deadline in a letter to Israel’s ministers, in which it laid out 16 conditions that Israel would have to meet. “Failure to demonstrate a sustained commitment to implementing and maintaining these measures may have implications for U.S. policy,” it read.

When asked about the move during a press briefing State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller reiterated the need for Israel to act.

“The bottom line is we felt it was appropriate, if we are making clear to the Government of Israel that there are these changes that need to be implemented, that we give them an appropriate period of time to implement it – implement them,” he told reporters. “We didn’t think it was appropriate to send a letter and just say this has to happen overnight; we gave them a – made clear there’s a short window in which we want to see changes, because the humanitarian situation is so dire on the ground.”

That deadline has now passed and a group of aid organizations (including Oxfam and Save the Children) have published a detailed report showing that Israel has failed to meet any of the conditions mentioned in the Blinken/Austin letter.

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Will Trump End Washington’s Proxy War in Ukraine?

Donald Trump’s election as president is fueling speculation that he will terminate U.S. financial and logistical support for Ukraine’s war effort against Russia.  Trump himself has contributed to that speculation during his June 28, 2024 debate with President Biden when he said, “If we had a real president, a president that was respected by [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, he would have never invaded Ukraine.”  Indeed, Trump has boasted that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours.

His critics, both in the United States and the other NATO countries, however, contend that he would likely do so by abandoning Ukraine and appeasing Russia.  Allegations that Trump was a “puppet” of Russian President Vladimir Putin cast a pall over his entire first term as president, and there are no signs that his opponents have abandoned that tactic.  It was an absurd accusation, since Trump’s policy toward Russia actually was more hardline than that of his predecessors.  Not only did he ship arms to Ukraine (a step that Barack Obama had refused to take) but he engineered the U.S. withdrawal from two major arms control agreements (Open Skies and Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces) that Putin and other Russian leaders considered vital to their country’s security.  The Trump administration also continued NATO’s provocative expansion into Eastern Europe despite the Kremlin’s escalating warnings about such unfriendly moves.

The notion that Trump was “soft” on Russia during his first term was (and remains) a destructive, highly politicized myth.  Over the past four years, though, Trump and at least some supporters in Congress, the news media, and the foreign policy community seem to have gained an understanding that Washington’s current Russia policy has been disastrous and requires drastic reforms.  It is less certain whether he will muster the courage to ignore the smears and make the necessary policy changes to begin repairing relations with Russia.

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New survey says over 61 thousand dead in Sudan’s Khartoum state with death toll likely higher than reported

More than 61,000 people are estimated to have died in Khartoum state during the first 14 months of Sudan’s war, with evidence suggesting the toll from the devastating conflict is significantly higher than previously recorded, according to a new report by researchers in Britain and Sudan.

The estimate includes some 26,000 people who suffered violent deaths, a higher figure than one currently used by the United Nations for the entire country.

The preprint study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine’s Sudan Research Group, released on Wednesday before peer review, suggested that starvation and disease are increasingly becoming the leading causes of death reported across Sudan.

The estimated deaths from all causes in Khartoum state were at a rate 50 percent higher than the national average before the conflict between the army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces erupted in April 2023, researchers said.

The UN says the conflict has driven 11 million people from their homes and unleashed the world’s biggest hunger crisis. Nearly 25 million people – half of Sudan’s population – need aid as famine has taken hold in at least one displacement camp.

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Russian Forces Liberate Voznesenka, Target Ukrainian Military Infrastructure

The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) reported that the Tsentr battlegroup pushed deeper into Ukrainian defenses and took control of the settlement of Voznesenka in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR).

“Units of the Tsentr Battlegroup continued their advance into the enemy’s defense and liberated the settlement of Voznesenka in the Donetsk People’s Republic,” the MoD statement said.

The Russian army also launched strikes on Ukrainian airfields and energy facilities which supply the defense industry. Air defense intercepted six HIMARS rockets and downed 78 drones.

“Operational-tactical aviation, strike drones, missile troops, and artillery of the Russian Armed Forces’ groups struck the infrastructure of military airfields, energy facilities supporting Ukraine’s military-industrial complex, as well as concentrations of enemy personnel and military equipment in 142 locations,” the report stated.

Other Developments

The Sever battlegroup reported eliminating up to 80 Ukrainian servicemen, two armored fighting vehicles and seven motor vehicles while targeting units of the 71st Jaeger Brigade and the 113th and 120th Territorial Defense Brigades near Volchansk and Liptsy in the Kharkov region.

The Zapad battlegroup improved its tactical positions, neutralized personnel and equipment from seven Ukrainian brigades and repelled two counterattacks, inflicting up to 570 casualties. Destroyed assets included a US M113 armored personnel carrier, several artillery systems, electronic warfare stations and three ammunition depots.

The Yug battlegroup inflicted losses of up to 655 servicemen, three tanks, an infantry fighting vehicle, and an armored personnel carrier in combat with formations of eight Ukrainian brigades in various areas. Destroyed equipment included Western-made artillery pieces, a Croatian multiple rocket launcher, electronic warfare stations and two ammunition depots.

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Ukrainian losses: situation in Kursk Region

The Ukrainian armed forces have lost up to 430 troops in the Kursk area over the past day, the Russian Defense Ministry reported.

In total, the enemy has lost more than 32,580 troops since the fighting began in the region.

TASS has gathered the key news about the unfolding situation.

Operation to neutralize Ukrainian forces

– Russia’s Battlegroup North defeated six Ukrainian armed formations in the areas of the settlements of Daryino, Leonidovo, Malaya Loknya, Nikolayevo-Daryino and Novoivanovka.

– Russian tactical aircraft and artillery hit clusters of Ukrainian manpower and equipment in the Kursk Region.

– Operational/tactical aircraft and missile forces hit amassment areas and enemy reserves in the Sumy Region.

– The operation to destroy Ukrainian forces is ongoing.

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Trump forms new alliance to stop aid to Ukraine

Ukraine could stop receiving aid from the West under the influence of an alliance led by newly elected US President Donald Trump, writes The Independent newspaper. Despite this development, though, Trump has found interest in elements of the so-called “Victory Plan” of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“A surprising trinity of Donald Trump, Hungary’s right-wing prime minister Viktor Orbán and Pope Francis could spell the end to hopes for continued support for Ukraine,” The Independent reported.

As the article pointed out, in recent years, Hungary has been practically alone among Western countries in wanting to end the conflict in Ukraine, and the only figure who shared Budapest’s position was Pope Francis. However, the views of the new American president and the leadership of Hungary coincide on a number of issues, including peace in Ukraine, so new opportunities for cooperation have emerged.

“The Pope, along with Hungary, has called for a ceasefire and talks ‘to break the cycle’ of war and achieve peace,” the article stated.

Following Trump’s victory in the US elections, Orbán said that his country’s isolation is over and that a growing number of EU leaders are cautiously switching to a peaceful resolution to the conflict in Ukraine. This growing pressure on Zelensky will eventually force him to begin negotiations directly with Russia, even after promising to never speak with the Kremlin.

“Last week at the European Political Community summit, Mr Orbán boasted of how ‘the world is changing’ with Mr Trump re-elected, while renewing his demands for a Ukrainian ceasefire,” noted the British newspaper. “The clash with Mr Zelensky, who was at the summit, saw the Ukrainian leader note that the Hungarian prime minister is the one NATO member state leader to oppose Ukraine’s membership of the defence alliance.”

Speaking to The Independent, Hungary’s ambassador to the Vatican, Eduard Habsburg-Lothringen, said: “During Donald Trump’s first presidency, Hungarian-American political relations were at their peak, with dialogue and negotiations taking centre stage in resolving conflicts that threaten world security.”

“Following the decision of the American electorate a few days ago, we really have good hope that Hungarian-American political cooperation will return to its peak: we share similar views on peace, illegal immigration and the protection of families. I believe there is a better chance than ever that peace will finally return to Ukraine after almost a thousand days of war.”

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