Tag: perpetual war

Under the fog of war, Ukraine cancels its 2024 presidential elections

A very significant political event occurred in Ukraine earlier this month, and almost nobody noticed.

President Volodymyr Zelensky, the leader of the war-torn country, just received approval from his parliament to extend Martial Law another 90 days. There have been many parliamentary extensions of the wartime mandate, but this one carried special significance because the 2024 presidential elections in Ukraine were scheduled for March 31, 2024, coinciding with the end of Zelensky’s five year term. Now that Martial Law is in place to cover that time period, Ukraine’s presidential elections have been canceled indefinitely.

There is currently no set date for a next election, as lawmakers in the Verkhovna Rada (parliament) have failed to entertain the matter. They only agreed that elections should take place no sooner than six months after the end of the war with Russia.

While it’s not particularly unreasonable to want to postpone elections during a devastating war, the case of Ukraine deserves a closer examination, given the series of events leading up to the decision to extend Martial Law.

In November, a former Zelensky adviser named Oleksiy Arestovych announced that he would be challenging Zelensky for the presidency, promising to focus on a negotiated settlement to end the war with Russia. Arestovych was fiercely critical of Zelensky’s approach to the conflict, maintaining that a settlement was in the best interests of Ukrainians. Far from a pro-Moscow shill, the Russian government has an active arrest warrant out for him.

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3 NATO member countries to build BUNKERS along their border with Russia

Three member nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have announced plans to build bunkers along their border with Russia amid growing fears of World War III.

The three nations – Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia – agreed to the decision as a result of the Russia-Ukraine war, according to the Sun. The Baltic trio will construct an “extensive network of fortifications” along the borders with Russia to deter Moscow from invading their countries. The project is estimated to cost around £51.2million ($64.4 million).

The construction will begin in Estonia, with its government planning some 600 bunkers grouped around the border crossing points of Narva in the north and Voru in the south, Newsweek revealed in a report. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have long been considered the most likely targets for Russian President Vladimir Putin should he look to attack NATO countries – a claim he promptly denied. (Related: WWIII looms: Russia warns West of catastrophic consequences if their already strained relations further deteriorate.)

Susan Lillevali of the Estonian Ministry of Defense (EVK) explained that the overall intention of the bunkers is to ensure readiness “to fight the enemy from the first meter and first hour.” She added: “These installations serve, first, the purpose of avoiding military conflict in our region, as they could potentially change the enemy’s calculus.”

“Counter-mobility and fortification measures have played a significant role in wars in our region in history, for example in Finland. As the war in Ukraine has demonstrated they are perfectly valid also in this century. The war in Ukraine has shown that taking back already conquered territories is extremely difficult and comes at great cost of human lives, time and material resources.”

The Baltic nations’ bunkers are part of readiness measures the entire continent has been engaged in for some time now. Aside from bolstering defense, Europe has also been warned to ramp up weapons stocks to “wartime levels” in anticipation of a potential Russian attack.

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As war drums beat louder, the Regime will revel in crushing its internal enemies in the name of frustrating its external enemies

Previous waves of censorship have hit the “Online Right” particularly hard such as the 2017 backlash to the Trump presidency and the covid saga.

As the war drum beats ever louder, we must remember that war and threats to national security are permanent states of exception that a regime can use to ram through all manner of draconian laws and limits to free expression. So, it’s important to prepare for what comes next instead of only reacting after the fact.

Previous episodes of censorship may have acted as a filtering process.  Thanks in large part to covid, “the Regime” has the technical and regulatory frameworks to cancel people. We can also thank the pandemic for allowing the Regime to know who is and is not susceptible to trusting their narrative.  Rest assured, the list of dissenters has already been drafted and names noted of the rotten apples that must be tossed out of the barrel. 

In an essay, Morgoth explores a hypothetical scenario where “the Regime” can claim that those naysaying the “war effort” are a danger to national security and can therefore be dealt with accordingly.  The essay explores the options facing the Online Right, dissenters who speak out online, in an era of heightened geopolitical tension and national security risks.

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EU state will give all its artillery to Ukraine – PM

Denmark will transfer all of its artillery to Ukraine, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said during a panel debate at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday. According to her, despite production issues, Copenhagen and the EU in general have enough arms stockpiled to supply the country with the necessary weaponry.

Kiev has increasingly complained of personnel and ammunition shortages on the front lines, appealing to its Western supporters for more financing and arms. However, Brussels is yet to finalize its next aid package, while the EU’s earlier pledge to provide Ukraine with one million artillery rounds by March this year has not been met.

“If you ask Ukrainians – they are asking us for ammunition now, artillery now. From the Danish side, we decided to donate our entire artillery to Ukraine,” Frederiksen stated, adding that other EU member-states should follow suit.

“I am sorry to say, friends, but there is still ammunition in stock in Europe. This is not only a question about production because we have weapons, we have ammunition, we have air defense, that we don’t have to use ourselves at the moment, that we should deliver to Ukraine,” she said.

Frederiksen noted that it would be ineffective to wait for the US aid package to come through to make decisions on supplies to Ukraine. US lawmakers failed to approve additional funding of around $60 billion for Kiev before going on winter break, and are expected to resume discussions on the package on February 28.

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Hochul Says Israel Should Have Annihilated Gaza, Offers Bizarre Scenario of Canada Attacking Buffalo

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who is not famous for her foreign policy expertise, told a Jewish group last week that Israel should have annihilated Gaza and compared it to a hypothetical scenario where Buffalo was attacked by Canada.

“If Canada someday ever attacked Buffalo, I’m sorry, my friends; there would be no Canada the next day,” the democrat told the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of New York on Thursday, according to CBS News.

Hochul, who has been a major backer of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, later apologized.

Hochul’s position is not unusual in the U.S. and in Israel, where most Israelis don’t think enough is being done to punish Palestinians.

Amichai Eliyahu, Israel’s Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage minister, stood by his comment that his country should strike the Gaza Strip with a “nuclear bomb” because there are no innocent civilians in the coastal enclave.

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New Book Claims Biden Doesn’t Think He Did Anything Wrong in Botched Withdrawal From Afghanistan

A new book claims that behind closed doors, Biden doesn’t think he did anything wrong in his disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, that left 13 service members dead and saw Afghans clinging to the wheel wells of departing American airplanes.

This is an excellent reminder of just how detached from reality Biden is right now. His poll numbers cratered after the withdrawal and have never recovered.

Americans across the country were horrified by how the withdrawal was handled and outraged by the deaths and the amount of equipment that was left behind in the process.

FOX News reports:

Biden privately defiant that he didn’t botch Afghanistan withdrawal: book

Behind closed doors, President Biden strongly believes that he made the right decisions on the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal that led in part to the deaths of 13 American soldiers, according to an upcoming book.

An excerpt from “The Internationalists: The Fight to Restore Foreign Policy After Trump,” obtained by Axios, suggests that Biden remains defiant that the history books will look favorably on his decision to leave Afghanistan after American troops spent 20 years fighting the nation’s longest war.

Following the withdrawal, “no one offered to resign, in large part because the president didn’t believe anyone had made a mistake. Ending the war was always going to be messy,” author Alexander Ward writes.

Biden allegedly told his top aides, including White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, that they had done their best given the situation and vowed to stand by them.

“There wasn’t even a real possibility of a shake-up,” a White House official told Ward.

The author claims that Biden knew he was making promises to get people out of Afghanistan that he could not keep as confusion and chaos unfolded at the Kabul airport.

You can see the exact moment the withdrawal unfolded in Biden’s approval polls.

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Iran claims ownership over Antarctica and plans military base there

Iranian navy Rear Adm. Shahram Irani declared that his country has “property rights” in Antarctica, particularly the South Pole, in a newly surfaced video.

“With regard to the South Pole, we have property rights there, and they belong to the public,” Irani said in the video of a television broadcast from last fall.

He added, “Our plan is to raise the flag there, inshallah. It is not only military work but also scientific work that needs to be carried out.”

Irani said that the move would benefit Iran’s scientific community.

“Our scientists are getting ready for a joint operation, encompassing the efforts of all our people, in keeping with the guidelines of our leader, inshallah,” he said.

The Washington, D.C.-based Middle East Media Research Institute translated the interview on Iran’s Channel 1 television channel in late September 2023.

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British intelligence operative’s involvement in Ukraine crisis signals false flag attacks ahead

Shadowy UK intel figure Hamish de Bretton-Gordon was at the forefront of chemical weapons deceptions in Syria. Now in Ukraine, he’s up to his old tricks again.

With Washington and its NATO allies forced to watch from the sidelines as Russia’s military advances across Eastern Ukraine and encircles Kiev, US and British officials have resorted to a troubling tactic that could trigger a massive escalation. Following similar claims by his Secretary of State and ambassador the United Nations, US President Joseph Biden has declared that Russia will pay a “severe price” if it uses chemical weapons in Ukraine.

The warnings emanating from the Biden administration contain chilling echoes of those issued by the administration of President Barack Obama throughout the US-led dirty war on Syria.

Almost as soon as Obama implemented his ill-fated “red line” policy vowing an American military response if the Syrian army attacked the Western-backed opposition with chemical weapons, Al Qaeda-aligned opposition factions came forth with claims of mass casualty sarin and chlorine bombings of civilians. The result was a series of US-UK missile strikes on Damascus and a prolonged crisis that nearly triggered the kind of disastrous regime change war that had destabilized Iraq and Libya.

In each major chemical weapons event, signs of staging and deception by the armed Syrian opposition were present. As a former US ambassador in the Middle East told journalist Charles Glass, “The ‘red line’ was an open invitation to a false-­flag operation.”

Elements of deception were especially clear in the April 7, 2018 incident in the city of Douma, when an anti-government militia on the brink of defeat claimed civilians had been massacred in a chlorine attack by the Syrian army.

Veteran inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) found no evidence that the Syrian army had carried out any such attack, however, suggesting the entire incident had been staged to trigger Western intervention. Their report was subsequently censored by organization management, and the inspectors were subjected to a campaign of smears and intimidation.

Throughout the Syrian conflict, a self-proclaimed “chemical warrior” named Hamish de Bretton-Gordon was intimately involved in numerous chemical weapons deceptions that sustained the war and ratcheted up pressure for Western military intervention.

This February 24, just moments after Russia’s military entered Ukraine, de Bretton-Gordon surfaced again in British media to claim that Russia was preparing a chemical attack on Ukrainian civilians. He has since demanded that Ukrainians be provided with a guide he wrote called, “How To Survive A Chemical Attack.”

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“What Are They, the 51st State?”: Congressman Questions Why Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin Has Ukraine Flag Alongside US Flag in His Office

In a post on X Twitter on Thursday, Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-TX) questioned why Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin had a Ukraine flag alongside the United States flag in his office, as seen on video of a teleconference from Wednesday, “Why does Sec. Def have a Ukrainian flag in his office? What are they, the 51st State?”

Former trump National Security Advisor Gen. Mike Flynn (USA, Ret.) concurred, “.@DeptofDefense spokesperson, this is a great question. WTH!?”

Austin was speaking from his home office in Northern Virginia to a meeting in Brussels of the Ukraine Defense Contract Group. Austin was scheduled to attend the meeting in person but a recent re-hospitalization for complications from treatment for prostate cancer forced him to change plans. Austin returned to the Pentagon on Thursday.

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SPACE FORCE WILL TAKE COMMAND OF FUTURE LIVE TARGET-TRACKING SATELLITES

The U.S. Space Force is set to take command of a new fleet of satellites that will provide real-time monitoring of ground targets around the globe, offering unprecedented surveillance capabilities. 

Known as the Ground Moving Target Indicator (GMTI), and in development by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the Space Force will be the lead operator of this new and advanced satellite system, reports Space News. This initiative represents a significant modernization effort, as it will replace aging aircraft systems like the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS).

Last year, the US government allocated $5 billion to develop the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor (HBTSS) system. The eventual launch of this system will test how well satellites can track missiles in flight. The Space Force and its component Space Development Agency (SDA) have aimed to deploy over 135 satellites to track advanced missiles, with a focus on enhancing missile defense capabilities, especially as Russia and China have both been rapidly developing these technologies. The architecture’s configuration and its relation to missile defense are still under consideration, and there are ongoing discussions about the deployment of sensor constellations for global coverage and specific regional needs.

Now, the NRO is partnering with the Space Force and will have access to the data from GMTI, but the military chain of command will drive the program based on priorities approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon. The Space Force is working on the requirements for the new sensors and will oversee the acquisition program’s progress, while the NRO is responsible for the actual acquisition of the classified sensor payloads based on its own design.

Space Force guardians will be responsible for tasking and controlling where the satellites direct their sight, based upon requests from commanders in the field. U.S. Space Force Lt. Gen. DeAnna Burt, while speaking at a panel discussion at the Air & Space Force Association’s Warfare Conference in Aurora, Colorado, called the new technology an “operational imperative.”

According to Burt, the plan is that the GMTI system will replace what current spy aircraft are doing, and essentially move that aspect of intelligence gathering into the space domain. While nearly all of this is classified, the system will be able to monitor and track targets in real time, operating on land, sea, and in the sky. Moreover, all that intelligence can then be put into the hands of operators in the field. 

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