Tag: perpetual war

Qusra Is Just a Warning: Israel’s Blueprint for the West Bank

If you want to understand the bleak future awaiting the occupied West Bank, do not look away. Just pay attention to the events unfolding in the small Palestinian town of Qusra, south of Nablus.

The story of the future of the West Bank begins here.

While much of the media is treating reports emerging from the area as simply another episode of “settler violence,” it is not. Qusra represents something far more consequential: a glimpse into the new Plan Dalet that Israel has in store for Palestinians.

Plan Dalet was the military blueprint through which Zionist forces conquered much of historic Palestine, village by village, during the Nakba.

The plan did not suddenly emerge in 1948. It built on military schemes dating back to 1945, developing into a strategy for conquering Palestinian towns and villages, destroying communities and expelling their inhabitants.

The significance of this history today is not merely symbolic. The Nakba was a process, implemented in stages. So, too, is the annexation of the West Bank.

Nor is this merely an intellectual argument. Israeli officials have openly invoked a new Nakba as an intended outcome. In November 2023, Avi Dichter declared: “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba,” adding, “Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it’ll end.”

True to form, this new Nakba carries many of the characteristics of the old one: coordinated violence, massacres, ethnic cleansing, forced displacement and land confiscation.

The genocide in Gaza represents the zenith of this violence – a more devastating manifestation, but a continuation of the original sin upon which the Israeli state was established.

While all eyes were on Gaza beginning on October 7, 2023, the West Bank was largely ignored, allowing Israel the space to escalate violence in all its forms to levels unseen in decades.

The result has been staggering. Since October 7, 2023, Israeli forces and settlers have killed more than 1,100 Palestinians in the West Bank, including over 240 children, and wounded thousands more. Tens of thousands have been detained, while more than 33,000 Palestinians remain displaced from the Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams refugee camps alone.

Now, back to Qusra.

Beginning on August 9, armed Israeli settlers surrounded three Palestinian homes in the Ras al-Ain area on the outskirts of the town.

They blocked access to the houses, erected tents outside them and cut water and electricity supplies. Families, including young children, were effectively trapped inside.

The Israeli military subsequently declared the surrounding area a closed military zone, restricting access by Palestinians, activists and journalists.

What emerged was not simply settler violence but a division of labor: settlers create the crisis; the army imposes the restrictions; Palestinian movement is curtailed; and the victims themselves are pressured to leave.

And the siege continued. As I write these words, the siege of the Qusra homes has concluded its second week.

Qusra is not incidental to this strategy. Israel has already confiscated its land for the settlement of Migdalim, while nearby outposts including Esh Kodesh have long been associated with attacks and attempts to seize Palestinian agricultural land.

Control of such areas is essential to the larger project of connecting settlement blocs, fragmenting Palestinian territory and transforming Palestinian communities into isolated enclaves.

A few years ago, the Israeli government behaved as though its plan to formally annex large swathes of the West Bank had been placed on hold. Yet, since October 7, annexation has moved from aspiration to obsession – in both words and action.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir oversaw the mass distribution of weapons after October 7, arming thousands of civilian security-squad members with rifles amid an already heavily armed settler population.

Meanwhile, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has systematically worked to transfer powers over the West Bank from military administration to Israeli civilian authorities – one of the clearest institutional mechanisms of annexation.

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Poland, US Discuss Establishing Permanent American Military Bases

Poland and Pentagon officials are in discussions about possibly locating several American military bases in the country, Polish Deputy Defense Minister Paweł Zalewski said after a meeting of the North Atlantic Council at NATO headquarters in Brussels Aug. 27.

Zalewski said he met with Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby about plans for the bases and defense policy.

“The American presence in Poland can encompass various defense capabilities,” Zalewski told Polish Radio after the meeting. “We believe it doesn’t have to be concentrated in one place. Of course, there are several locations we want to discuss with the U.S. side where such a presence would be truly massive. However, we are still talking about several bases and several locations.”

Poland formally requested new permanent U.S. military bases in June after Trump pledged to send 5,000 additional troops to the country. About 10,000 U.S. troops are already stationed in Poland, which spends about $15,000 for each, according to the country’s defense department.

Poland’s priorities are to secure defense capabilities the country currently lacks, such as reconnaissance and command functions, rather than simply increasing troop numbers, Zalewski said.

The bases would be a permanent strategy for the United States and not just a reaction to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, according to Poland.

“A permanent U.S. presence would reflect America’s long-term strategic interest in the country, not merely respond to the recent activities of Russia,” Zalewski said.

The discussion also included nuclear weapons logistics, according to the deputy defense minister.

He added, however, that Poland didn’t want nuclear warheads stationed in the country.

“Poland does not want to have nuclear warheads on this territory,” Zalewski said. “We want to participate in NATO nuclear deterrence but that does not mean to have nuclear warheads on our territory.”

Poland’s Minister of National Defense Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz appeared to clarify the comments in a statement on X later in the day.

“To dispel any doubts: Poland remains steadfastly interested in participating in the NATO Nuclear Sharing program,” Kosiniak-Kamysz said in the post. “We are also conducting talks regarding the proposal for participation in the European nuclear protective umbrella. Our government’s stance on these issues is unequivocal.”

The Pentagon didn’t respond to a request for comment about the bases by publication time.

Colby visited Belgium this week to meet with European allies and press them to increase their defense expenditures as Washington evaluates its policy toward the region.

The Pentagon asked the allies to assess their commitment to U.S. foreign policy goals as part of a European Force review launched in June by War Secretary Pete Hegseth. The review examines the future deployment of about 80,000 U.S. troops across Europe, with nearly half of them expected in Germany.

Colby introduced the new framework, which he dubbed “NATO 3.0,” earlier this year.

Some countries are concerned the review will result in U.S. troop cuts in Europe. President Donald Trump has threatened to withdraw troops from countries that refused to help the United States secure the Strait of Hormuz during the Iran conflict.

In May, the Pentagon ordered the withdrawal of 5,000 troops from Germany after tensions flared between Trump and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz over the Iran war.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said Friday that Europe and Canada had accepted a more equitable share of defense spending since last year.

“Still, there is much more to be done and we’ll get there,” Rutte said.

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Ukraine Says Russia is a Planning Ground Invasion of Kyiv as War Grinds Towards Fifth Year

Ukraine says it has intelligence indicating Russia is preparing for a fresh ground offensive against the capital of Kyiv.

The claim raises the prospect of another attempt to threaten the Ukrainian capital more than four years after Russia launched its invasion.

Pavlo Palisa, deputy head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office, said Russian military leadership have been instructed by the Kremlin to plan and prepare offensives targeting Kyiv and Chernihiv.

Ukrainian intelligence has received and verified information about the preparations, according to Palisa.

However, officials have not yet detected Russian forces massing in sufficient numbers to launch such an operation.

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Russia Hits Kiev Ammo Dump Next To Homes; Ukraine Admits 90% Of Retail Food Logistics Wrecked

A Russian drone struck a Ukrainian Defense Forces ammunition storage site in the village of Myla Friday evening, just west of Kiev. The resulting fire and hours of secondary detonations killed at least 37 people, injured dozens more, damaged around 50 residential buildings and a care home for the elderly and disabled, and forced the evacuation of hundreds. Among the dead was the local community head who had gone to help.

In response, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the placement of a weapons depot next to civilians was “terrible negligence.” The first impact, he said, hit a depot storing shells, mines, other munitions, and drones that “definitely shouldn’t have been there” – while prosecutors in Kiev opened a criminal investigation into the legality of storing explosives next to civilian housing. This is the second such incident in two months. A July strike on a depot in nearby Vyshneve produced similar secondary blasts, deaths, and later detentions of state defense-company executives.  

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New Documents Confirm Fauci’s NIAID Provided Cover for CIA Bioterrorism Research — CIA Helped Obtain the Viruses and Controlled What Data Could Be Shared

As The Gateway Pundit has reported for years, Fauci was never merely a public-health doctor.

After the anthrax attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney and the Bush administration remade NIAID into the civilian hub of U.S. biodefense.

Billions poured in. High-containment labs proliferated. Dual-use research on the most dangerous pathogens exploded, work that Fauci later funneled, through EcoHealth Alliance, to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The new documents fill in how early that partnership with the intelligence community really was.

According to Sen. Rand Paul:

“JUST RELEASED: The official hearing record of Anthony Fauci’s “testimony” before my Committee—which ultimately led the Committee to hold him in contempt. Beginning on page 96: previously unreleased documents I entered into the permanent congressional record, like this one showing CIA funds were transferred to Fauci’s NIAID.”

An undated interagency agreement obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation confirms that Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases worked directly with the CIA on sensitive research involving viruses and biological threats.

The eight-page agreement shows that the CIA’s Biological Technology Center initiated a collaboration with NIAID involving “forensic microbiology” research for the intelligence community.

Fauci served as director of NIAID from 1984 until 2022.

According to the documents, the CIA planned to leverage existing civilian research programs at NIH to support intelligence-related biological research.

Unclassified NIH virus research would be used to “augment and complement” the CIA’s own research and development.

The CIA would even help Fauci’s agency obtain the pathogens needed for the research.

The arrangement also gave the spy agency control over what could be released publicly.

Although the resulting research was reportedly considered sensitive rather than classified, NIAID could not share the data without first receiving permission from the CIA.

In other words, Fauci’s supposedly civilian public-health institute was working alongside America’s premier spy agency on research involving dangerous biological agents, with the CIA controlling access to the findings.

The project reportedly sought to expand the government’s ability to conduct comparative forensic analyses of complete viruses rather than examining only individual genes.

This is not ancient history. It is the origin story of the same apparatus that later funded bat-coronavirus experiments in Wuhan, steered the intelligence community away from the lab-leak hypothesis, and produced the “Proximal Origin” paper that media and public-health officials treated as gospel.

Documents released this year by Sen. Rand Paul and then-DNI Tulsi Gabbard showed Fauci briefing CIA officials, feeding the IC a hand-picked list of NIAID-funded scientists, and denying under oath that he had discussed viral research with intelligence agencies.

The new CIA–NIAID agreement shows the relationship was baked in from the start.

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Will WAR Bankrupt the West?

War and sovereign debt are merging into a vicious spiral that will determine which nations survive the coming monetary crisis. Governments entered the conflicts in Ukraine and Iran, along with the escalating confrontation between the United States and China, already buried beneath debt accumulated through decades of fiscal incompetence. Now they are increasing military spending, subsidizing domestic industries, restructuring supply chains, and borrowing even more money to prepare for conflicts their own foreign policies helped create.

The United States, China, France, the United Kingdom, and Japan already carry gross government debt exceeding an entire year of economic output. Russia has drained much of its National Wealth Fund to finance the war in Ukraine while Western governments froze approximately $300 billion in Russian sovereign assets. Gulf states are being forced to expand defense spending amid the conflict with Iran, and Europe has committed itself to raising NATO-related expenditures toward 5% of GDP by 2035. Trump wants to increase annual US defense spending by $500 billion to reach $1.5 trillion, but Washington is already borrowing simply to pay interest on the debt it accumulated before this latest round of wars began.

These people speak about military spending as if the money materializes from thin air without consequences. Government does not possess wealth of its own. Every missile, drone, weapons package, foreign aid program, and military deployment must be financed through taxation, borrowing, or inflation. Taxation drains the productive economy, borrowing competes for private capital, and inflation silently confiscates purchasing power from everyone. Politicians choose debt because it conceals the cost until after the election, allowing them to play emperor today while leaving future generations with the bill.

The yield on the 10-year US Treasury has nearly tripled over five years to 4.3%, which means Washington is financing a vastly larger debt at far higher interest rates. This is elementary mathematics that the political class refuses to confront. A government may survive $10 trillion in debt when rates are near zero, but the same fiscal structure becomes impossible when the debt multiplies and borrowing costs normalize. Every additional dollar devoted to interest is a dollar that cannot maintain infrastructure, reduce taxes, or support genuine economic development. Government then borrows more to cover the interest, increasing the debt that created the problem in the first place.

The attempt to separate national economies from geopolitical rivals will impose another enormous cost. Europe abandoned cheap Russian energy and then wondered why its industries became uncompetitive. The West wants to reduce dependence on Chinese manufacturing and rare earths, but rebuilding those supply chains will require subsidies, tariffs, controls, and years of expensive investment. Iran’s position around the Strait of Hormuz demonstrates how quickly a regional conflict can threaten a route that previously carried roughly one-fifth of the world’s daily oil supply. Every attempt to create economic security through political coercion raises prices, reduces efficiency, and demands still more government borrowing.

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Homeland Security warns of Chinese parts in election machines, will require paper ballot audits

The Homeland Security Department will require random audits of paper ballots in the midterm elections, citing long-simmering concern that the nation’s largest voting technology companies use Chinese parts in their voting machines, according to a letter from Secretary Markwayne Mullin released Thursday.   

Mullin sent the letter to the White House Transparency Task Force earlier this week outlining the dangers posed by Chinese components in American voting machines and the way that these components could be exploited by hackers or other malicious actors.

The letter highlighted longstanding concerns first raised in a bipartisan manner before the 2020 election, but which officials appear to have taken little action on in the intervening years.

“Voting machines with components manufactured by foreign adversaries introduce significant security risks,” Mullin wrote. “These vulnerabilities mean that malicious actors could potentially compromise election infrastructure at any stage of the supply chain, even before the machines are assembled or deployed.” 

The secretary explained, “If a component is tampered with during manufacturing, it could serve as a point-of-entry for hackers, allowing for the possibility of synchronized attacks across multiple machines and jurisdictions.”

Two Biden administration Intelligence Community memos in 2024 identified China as “the most active and persistent cyber threat” and assessed that China, along with Iran and Russia, has “the technical capability to access some U.S. election-related networks and systems.”  

You can read Mullin’s letter below: 

08.20.2026 – WHTF Letter Commerce – S1 SIGNED.pdf

Earlier this year, the Trump administration took drastic action to ban the import of all internet routers manufactured in foreign countries because of the unacceptable security risks posed by Chinese hacking capabilities.

Internet routers connect computers, cellphones, and other electronic devices to the internet, the backbone of the modern economy.

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US Threatens the UK: Increase Defense Spending, or Lose Support for Sovereignty Over the Falkland Islands

European territories in the Western Hemisphere are not safe anymore.

Today, The Telegraph has issued a bombshell report (picked up by several other outlets by now) that reveals that the US is threatening to oppose Britain’s sovereignty over the Falkland Islands unless Andy Burnham increases the UK defense spending.

The proposal is reportedly among measures being prepared at the Pentagon to force NATO nations to fulfill their 5 percent of the GDP defense spending pledge.

The Telegraph reported:

“A senior US official told The Telegraph that Britain was likely to receive ‘special attention’ in Washington’s review of its allies’ commitment to Nato, which will examine whether member nations have credible paths toward the target.

Officials in Washington believe that while Britain has the potential to be a leading defense partner, the defense investment plan, announced by Sir Keir Starmer in June, was not enough of a ‘step in the right direction’.

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Trump Stuns By Outright Dismissing Notion Putin Preparing To Attack A NATO State

President Trump has added fuel to the fire of controversy and speculation over the question of why CIA Director John Ratcliffe made a surprise and highly rare trip to Moscow on Tuesday.

Media accounts which seek to explain the nature of his meeting with top Kremlin intelligence officials, while apparently being snubbed by Putin in terms of a direct interaction, have shifted in days since the visit. The early ‘consensus’ was that he delivered a stern warning for Russia not to attack any NATO state. But President Trump has poured cold water on this explanation, appearing to dismiss it outright in his latest comments. 

“I’ve had good talks with him. He’s not going to be attacking a NATO territory,” Trump said of Putin on Thursday while talking to reporters in the Oval Office.

Trump didn’t answer specifically when pressed on if the president directed Ratcliffe to deliver a warning to Putin to not attack NATO. “I don’t want to comment on that but they’re not going to attack,” Trump said.

While many times over the course of the Ukraine war, European heads of state have claimed that Russia is expansionist and seeks to attack countries in Europe beyond Ukraine, this has not ever been a public allegation of Trump, who has tended to downplay it as a possibility. 

Trump did deny the reports centered on Ratcliffe in an interview with Axios Thursday, saying “Ratcliffe sees his Russian counterpart once every six months or once every year. They have a very good relationship. There was no message and there was nothing unusual.”

And when asked over whether he’s concerned that Putin might attack NATO or deeper inside Europe, Trump replied, “I am not concerned … at all. There is no problem.” According to more:

The president called Ratcliffe’s trip “standard business” and expressed puzzlement over the media accounts of it.

But the reality is that no CIA director has made such a trip in well over four years. The prior time was November 2021, when then-CIA Director William Burns traveled to Moscow to meet with senior Russian officials and issued a stark warning against invading Ukraine.

It was also highly unexpected in terms of timing, given the stalemated nature of the Ukraine conflict, and the fact that zero peace negotiations are happening. There has not even so much as been any efforts at achieving a short-term ceasefire, akin to last year’s Christmas truce.

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US Military Shoots Down 3 Mexican Cartel Drones With Laser

A laser system was used to shoot down three drug cartel drones in southern Texas, close to the Mexican border, the U.S. military said on Aug. 27.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command, in a joint statement, said an Army Multipurpose High Energy Laser (AMP-HEL) was used overnight on Aug. 25-26 in the Rio Grande Valley.

The Joint Task Force-Southern Border (JTF-SB) deemed the three drones to be hostile and posing a physical threat to U.S. military personnel and their partners in U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

Maj. Gen. Curtis Taylor, commander of JTF-SB, said the successful operation against the drones was a testament to the readiness, vigilance, and technological edge of his force.

US Will ‘Not Tolerate Hostile Surveillance’

“Cartel networks are increasingly employing unmanned aircraft systems to facilitate illicit human-smuggling and actively spy on our personnel and law enforcement partners,” Taylor said. “By integrating layered countermeasures alongside advanced directed-energy capabilities like this laser system, we have made it clear that we will not tolerate hostile surveillance.”

Ammon Blair, a former U.S.Border Patrol agent and senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Secure & Sovereign Texas Initiative, told The Epoch Times in March 2025 that he recalled hearing cartel-operated drones overhead while working along the Texas border.

“You’d be running, and you’d have a drone right above your head and tracking every move you made,” Blair said at the time.

In February, the airspace around El Paso International Airport was closed for 7 hours for “special security reasons.”

The White House told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement at the time that Mexican cartel-operated drones had breached U.S. airspace and that the Department of War took action to disable them.

In other parts of Mexico, cartels have used drones to drop explosives in deadly attacks, but there is no suggestion the drones in the Texas incident were armed.

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