Tag: perpetual war

Rats scurry before the cat’s arrival: CIA official busted for leaking Israel’s plans for Iran attack online

Suddenly, they have standards again.

Playtime is over. Cat’s coming back.

What else can one conclude with this kind of news from the New York Times?

A C.I.A. official has been charged with disclosing classified documents that appeared to show Israel’s plans to retaliate against Iran for a missile attack earlier this year, according to court documents and people familiar with the matter.

The official, Asif W. Rahman, was indicted last week in federal court in Virginia with two counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information. He was arrested by the F.B.I. on Tuesday in Cambodia and brought to federal court in Guam to face charges.

The documents were prepared by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which analyzes images and information collected by U.S. spy satellites. It conducts work in support of clandestine and military operations.

Mr. Rahman, who worked abroad for the C.I.A., was set to appear in Guam on Thursday.

The information in the documents is highly classified and details interpretations of satellite imagery that shed light on a possible strike by Israel on Iran. They began circulating last month on the Telegram app.

That was quick.

Based on the sparse info in the story, he appears to have been a highly vetted CIA officer with responsibility abroad, and his absence of social media presence suggests a clandestine capacity. He was busted on U.S. Election Day in Cambodia, meaning, the lawmen had been working on the matter before that, probably dating from the leak itself reported on Oct. 19. The Cambodia locale was the kind of place they might lure someone for an arrest, so he could have been based pretty much anywhere within flying distance of Phnom Penh. But betting markets and polls had shown that Trump was the likely next president around the time of the leak, so they may have been motivated to get this guy based on what was coming. He may have been motivated to leak based on the same likelihood. The institution strives to save itself, preserving some kind of appearance of professionalism, which was hardly the case in the recent past.

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Russian Nuclear Weapons Are Keeping NATO Troops Out Of Ukraine: Top Admiral

A top NATO military official said that NATO forces would have deployed to Ukraine to drive Russian soldiers from the country if Russia did not have nuclear weapons. 

Chair of the NATO Military Committee, Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer, explained to the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Prague Defense Summit in the Czech Republic that Russia’s nuclear weapons are deterring a NATO deployment to Ukraine.

“I am absolutely sure if the Russians did not have nuclear weapons, we would have been in Ukraine, kicking them out,” he stated. 

Bauer said the challenge for the West is finding where Russia’s redlines on nuclear use are, noting that Washington mistakenly miscalculated that sending tanks and F-16s to Ukraine were the Kremlin’s redlines. 

Admiral Bauer was discussing the difference between the Ukraine conflict and other NATO wars such as the Afghanistan occupation. He stated the main difference between Moscow and Kabul is Russia’s nuclear stockpile.

In Afghanistan, American and NATO forces quickly forced the Taliban from Kabul in 2001. Then, the Western alliance engaged in a two-decade nation-building project while the Taliban fought using insurgent tactics. 

The top NATO official went on to say the Afghan War was not of strategic importance. “Afghanistan was never of strategic importance. If we’re really honest Afghanistan was not of strategic importance.”

He continued, “We spent 20 years there and we did a lot of things and people lost their lives but if you ask the question, ‘was it of strategic importance?’ In Afghanistan, the answer is no.”

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Section 12 means British police are treating their own officers as terrorists now

A police officer has been arrested by counter-terrorism police in Gloucester over social media posts regarding Israel and Palestine. It’s no longer just journalists and social media users that police are targeting, it’s their own officers now.

The officer is suspected of “supporting Hamas” in breach of Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000. Police have explained they’re going through the officer’s devices for analysis and say we should not jump to conclusions.

This is fair enough, and given the details are sparse, I’m not going to discuss the ongoing investigation, or the officer’s potential guilt or innocence. I am, however, going to discuss how police have handled similar cases in which they appear to have overstepped the mark because there are concerns to be addressed. Those concerns involve whether the law is being followed in this and similar investigations.

Police recently visited the home of journalist Asa Winstanley and took his devices for analysis, even though he was not under arrest. It seems they wanted to look through his devices to find the excuse to arrest a journalist.

If police were correctly applying the law in this instance, this would tell us that our laws are authoritarian. If they were not correctly applying the law, this would tell us they are acting in an authoritarian manner. Either way, we would be witnessing a form of authoritarianism. It is therefore reasonable to ask in each case if police are correctly applying the law. We need clarity because we have the impression our rights are under attack. This is obviously unacceptable in a so-called free society.

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US government worker charged with leaking classified documents on Israel’s plans to strike Iran

A man who worked for the U.S. government has been charged with leaking classified information assessing Israel’s earlier plans to attack Iran, according to court papers filed Wednesday.

The man, identified as Asif William Rahman, was arrested by the FBI this week in Cambodia and was due to make his first court appearance in Guam.

He was indicted last week in U.S. court in Virginia on two counts of willful transmission of national defense information — felony charges that an carry significant prison sentences.

It was not immediately clear whether Rahman had a lawyer or which federal agency employed him, but officials say he had top secret security clearance.

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Pentagon Leaker Who Published Sensitive Information Revealing Ukraine Was Losing War to Russia is Sentenced to 15 Years in Federal Prison

US National Guardsman Jack Teixeira was officially charged in April 2023 with leaking secret Pentagon documents. Teixeira was charged with six counts of willful retention and transmission of classified documents relating to national defense.

Classified documents detailing the Ukraine war, Middle East, China, Africa and Israel ended up on a gaming platform. Senior intelligence officials at the time called the leak “a nightmare for the Five Eyes,” in a reference to the United States, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, the so-called Five Eyes nations that broadly share intelligence.

What really upset the Biden regime and the military-industrial complex was that Teixeira leaked documents that exposed Biden’s lies about Ukraine.

According to the one Teixeira leak, US and UK special forces are on the ground in Ukraine.

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Kiev Admits Ukrainian Defenses Crumbling as Russia Makes Fastest Donbass Advances Since 2022

Ukrainian officials admit that Russian forces are advancing in the Donbass faster than ever since 2022 and that Ukrainian defenses are crumbling amid manpower shortages, the Financial Times newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Ukrainian military officials, soldiers and analysts also believe that the next few months will be critical in the Ukraine conflict, the newspaper said. Ukraine will reportedly try to stabilize its defenses and strengthen its position to secure more favorable conditions in possible negotiations with Moscow that Kiev may be forced to hold by US President-elect Donald Trump.

More Ukrainian medical personnel will also be sent to the eastern front ahead of heavy fighting expected in the coming days and weeks, the paper added, citing an unnamed Ukrainian army spokesperson.

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Ukraine Disturbed Over ‘No Place’ for Mike Pompeo in New Trump Team – Report

President-elect Donald Trump announced last week that former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will not serve in the incoming US administration.

Kiev is concerned about the fact that former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will not be part of the new US administration following Donald Trump’s election victory, The Economist reports.

Senior Ukrainian officials “were disturbed” when Trump announced “there would be no place for Pompeo, seen as more sympathetic [to Ukraine]”, the media adds, quoting one of the officials as saying that it is “a very negative development”.

“The worry now is that Trump’s offer to Ukraine will come to resemble something closer to ideas put forward by J.D. Vance, the incoming vice president,” something that “would essentially rule out [Ukraine’s] NATO membership“, among other things, the report also said.

This comes after the president-elect denied media reports about his intention to nominate Pompeo as the new secretary of defense.

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Amid Gaza’s Humanitarian Catastrophe, US Claims Israel is not Hindering Aid

The State Department Deputy Spokesperson, Vedant Patel repeatedly declined on Tuesday, after being pressed by reporters, to say if the criteria mentioned in the American letter had been met

The State Department announced on Tuesday that it has concluded that Israel is not hindering humanitarian aid to the besieged Gaza Strip and thus Tel Aviv is not breaching US law, Reuters news agency reported.

The declaration came on the day of a deadline previously set by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in a letter on October 13 for Israel to implement a set of steps within 30 days to attend to the dire humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip.

The letter had warned that “failure to do so may have possible consequences on U.S. military aid to Israel.”

The US administration’s denial that Israel is impeding aid entry to the besieged enclave also coincided with a scorecard issued by eight aid organizations indicating that Israel has indeed failed to comply with a number of requirements.

The State Department Deputy Spokesperson, Vedant Patel repeatedly declined on Tuesday, after being pressed by reporters, to say if the criteria mentioned in the American letter had been met, Reuters said.  

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Violent Israeli raids hit Beirut suburb after massacre in Mount Lebanon

Violent Israeli airstrikes continued to rain down on the southern suburb of Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, on 13 November, following a heavy night of continuous attacks on the area. 

“Enemy warplanes targeted, in the third raid on the southern suburb, a building near Al-Zahraa Broasted in Mshrafiyeh,” Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) reported at around noon on Wednesday. 

Israeli strikes targeted the Ghobeiry area and Haret Hreik several times during the morning hours. Buildings in Laylaki, Bir al-Abed, and at the Rawdat al-Shahidayn–Shiyah intersection were also hit.

Tel Aviv issued evacuation orders to Haret Hreik and Ghobeiry earlier on 13 November. Heavy and successive airstrikes had pounded the southern suburb overnight.

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NATO & Vaccines: The Twin Sacred Cows

On February 9, 1990, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker assured Mikhail Gorbachev that if the Soviet leader would cooperate with German unification, NATO would not expand “one inch eastward.” This was just one of many assurances of Soviet security made by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991.

On December 12, 2017, the National Security Archive at George Washington University declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents about these assurances. As the National Security Archive reported at this time:

The documents show that multiple national leaders were considering and rejecting Central and Eastern European membership in NATO as of early 1990 and through 1991, that discussions of NATO in the context of German unification negotiations in 1990 were not at all narrowly limited to the status of East German territory, and that subsequent Soviet and Russian complaints about being misled about NATO expansion were founded in written contemporaneous memcons and telcons at the highest levels. 

The documents reinforce former CIA Director Robert Gates’s criticism of “pressing ahead with expansion of NATO eastward [in the 1990s], when Gorbachev and others were led to believe that wouldn’t happen.” The key phrase, buttressed by the documents, is “led to believe.”

As we now know, the U.S. broke these assurances—a decision characterized by George Kennan, America’s chief architect of Soviet containment policy during he Cold War—as “A Fateful Error” in his Feb. 5, 1997 New York Times editorial.

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