Tag: perpetual war

Ukrainian traitor MP is assassinated in Moscow by Kyiv hit squad who shot him in the head 18 months after he urged Putin to use weapons of mass destruction

Kyiv said it orchestrated the assassination of a pro-Kremlin Ukrainian politician today, after the body of an ex-lawmaker who had defected to Russia was found outside Moscow with a gunshot to the head.

A source in Ukraine’s defence sector told AFP that its SBU security services had orchestrated the assassination of Illia Kyva, a former Ukrainian lawmaker who was kicked out of parliament and defected to Russia weeks after Moscow launched its military offensive last year.

Kyva’s body had been discovered today in the Moscow suburbs, Russian news agencies reported. 

His death came 18 months after he urged Putin to use weapons of mass destruction. 

Speaking on national TV, Ukraine’s military intelligence spokesperson Andriy Yusov said: ‘We can confirm that Kyva is done. Such a fate will befall other traitors of Ukraine, as well as the henchmen of the Putin regime.’

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Democratic Senator Wants Illegal Immigrants To Join The Military

Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) wants illegal immigrants to be given the opportunity to join the U.S. Military in return for citizenship.

Durbin made the comments during a recent Senate speech.

Noting how low enlistment levels represent a “grave threat to our national security,” Durbin and that these shortfalls could be met by recruiting illegal aliens.

“Do you know what the recruiting numbers are at the Army, Navy, and the Air Force? They can’t reach their quotas each month. They can’t find enough people to join our military forces. And there are those who are undocumented who want the chance to serve and risk their lives for this country. Should we give them a chance? I think we should,” said Durbin.

Durbin says “undocumented” young people who can pass physical and background tests should be able to “serve in our military and if you do it honorably we will make you citizens of the United States.”

Meanwhile, in related comments, commentator Gavin McInnes wondered if waves of illegal migrants were being allowed to enter the country so they could be used as part of a standing army for World War 3.

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PENTAGON WON’T SAY WHERE IT’S SENDING U.S. TROOPS — TO AVOID EMBARRASSING HOST NATIONS

THE U.S. MILITARY has deployed thousands of troops to the Middle East since Hamas’s surprise October 7 attack on Israel but refuses to disclose the military bases or even host nations of the deployments — not for security reasons, but to spare the host nations embarrassment.

One such base, the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, welcomed several new F-15 attack jets last month, the same aircraft used to bomb facilities used by Iranian-backed militias in Syria at least twice since October, following attacks on U.S. troops by groups supported by Iran. 

Despite the hostilities, the Pentagon has declined to acknowledge the base or the military buildup taking place on it for political reasons, even as the growing U.S. presence and increasing activities contribute to rising tensions with Iran.

“A confluence of factors are driving the U.S. and Iran towards a direct military conflict, including the buildup of forces, the retaliatory actions in Syria by U.S. forces, and Iranian proxies’ provocations,” Bruce Riedel, nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told The Intercept. “It is a dangerous situation.”

Government records reviewed by The Intercept, along with open-source data, reveal that Muwaffaq Salti continues to act as a low-key U.S. military base central to growing tensions with Iran.

“The main hub for U.S. air operations in Syria is now Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, but the American presence is unacknowledged because of host country sensitivities,” said Aaron Stein in a 2021 report by the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

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NATO Chief: West Should Brace For More ‘Bad News’ From Ukraine

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in a fresh interview warned the Western alliance to brace for more “bad news” from Ukraine, according to Saturday remarks given to Germany’s national ARD television.

He was asked whether he thinks the situation will worsen for Ukrainian forces in the future, after the counteroffensive has been widely acknowledged as a failure. “We should also be prepared for bad news,” he responded. “Wars develop in phases. But we have to support Ukraine in both good and bad times.”

He said that in response to the current “critical situation” the West must boost ammunition production. “I will leave it to the Ukrainians and military commanders to make these difficult operational decisions,” Stoltenberg explained.

“One of the issues we should address is the fragmentation of the European defense industry,” he said. Countries have gone from being enthusiastic supporters and donors of Ukraine’s cause to more lately sounding the alarm over dwindling or tapped defense stockpiles, as ammo production also can’t keep up. 

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The Grim Reality of Israel’s Corpse Politics

After Israeli forces shot and killed thirty-nine-year-old Fadi Samara in May of 2020, his mourning family dug him a grave in his village of Abu Qash, located in the occupied West Bank district of Ramallah.

But nearly four years later, his grave remains empty.

“I take the children to their father’s grave a few times a month even though we still have not received his body,” says Saja Muhammad, Samara’s thirty-one-year-old widow and mother to his five children, ages nine to three.

“It gives the children some comfort,” she continues, sitting on the couch at her family’s home in the city of Biddya in the northern Salfit district, where she returned following Samara’s killing. “We live with the hope that one day his body will be returned to us. And when that day comes his grave is ready to receive him.”

Samara’s body is one of hundreds currently held by Israel, part of a decades-long policy that researchers and rights groups describe as an attempt to control and punish Palestinian families by withholding the corpses of their slain loved ones. Some are buried in nameless graves and others are frozen in refrigerators.

Israeli officials claim this controversial practice is necessary to avoid incitement during funerals of Palestinians killed by Israelis. Israel also withholds the remains of slain Palestinians who are suspected of having carried out attacks against Israelis, using their corpses as bargaining chips for future negotiations with Palestinian leaders.

However, Palestinians, some of whom have waited for months, years, and in some cases decades for the return of their slain loved ones’ bodies, argue that this policy aims to punish them, condemning their lives to perpetual mourning.

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Israel knew Hamas’ attack plan more than a year ago

Israeli officials obtained Hamas’ battle plan for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack more than a year before it happened, documents, emails and interviews show. But Israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the plan as aspirational, considering it too difficult for Hamas to carry out.

The approximately 40-page document, which Israeli authorities code-named “Jericho Wall,” outlined, point by point, exactly the kind of devastating invasion that led to the deaths of about 1,200 people.

The translated document, which was reviewed by The New York Times, did not set a date for the attack, but described a methodical assault designed to overwhelm the fortifications around the Gaza Strip, take over Israeli cities and storm key military bases, including a division headquarters.

Hamas followed the blueprint with shocking precision. The document called for a barrage of rockets at the outset of the attack, drones to knock out the security cameras and automated machine guns along the border, and gunmen to pour into Israel en masse in paragliders, on motorcycles and on foot — all of which happened Oct. 7.

The plan also included details about the location and size of Israeli military forces, communication hubs and other sensitive information, raising questions about how Hamas gathered its intelligence and whether there were leaks inside the Israeli security establishment.

The document circulated widely among Israeli military and intelligence leaders, but experts determined that an attack of that scale and ambition was beyond Hamas’ capabilities, according to documents and officials. It is unclear whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other top political leaders saw the document, as well.

Last year, shortly after the document was obtained, officials in the Israeli military’s Gaza division, which is responsible for defending the border with Gaza, said Hamas’ intentions were unclear.

“It is not yet possible to determine whether the plan has been fully accepted and how it will be manifested,” read a military assessment reviewed by the Times.

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Israeli AI “Assassination Factory” Plays Central Role in the Gaza War

Tel Aviv has been relying on an AI Program dubbed the Gospel to select targets in Gaza at a rapid pace. In past operations in Gaza, the IDF ran out of targets to strike in the besieged enclave.

A statement on the IDF website says the Israeli military is using the Gospel to “produce targets at a fast pace.” It continues, “Through the rapid and automatic extraction of intelligence,” the Gospel produced targeting recommendations for its researchers “with the goal of a complete match between the recommendation of the machine and the identification carried out by a person.”

Aviv Kochavi, former head of the IDF, said the system was first used in the May 2021 bombing campaign in Gaza.  “To put that into perspective, in the past we would produce 50 targets in Gaza per year,” he said. “Now, this machine produces 100 targets a single day, with 50% of them being attacked.”

The IDF does not disclose what it inputs into the Gospel for the program to produce a list of targets.

Thursday, the Israeli outlet +972 Magazine reported Tel Aviv was using AI to pick targets in Gaza. A former Israeli official told the +972 that the Gospel was being used as a “mass assassination factory.” The program is selecting the home of suspected low-level Hamas members for destruction. Sources told the outlet that strikes on homes can kill numerous civilians.

One source was critical of the Gospel. “I remember thinking that it was like if [Palestinian militants] would bomb all the private residences of our families when [Israeli soldiers] go back to sleep at home on the weekend,” they said.

On Friday, the Guardian expanded on the +972 article by reporting that the Gospel plays a central role in the Gaza military operations.

A former senior Israeli military source told the Guardian that operatives use a “very accurate” calculation of the number or rate of civilians fleeing a building before an impending strike. However, other experts disputed that assertion. A lawyer who advises governments on AI and compliance with humanitarian law told the outlet there was “little empirical evidence” to support the claim.

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Press Relayed Israeli Claims of Secret Hospital Base With Insufficient Skepticism

A cover image of the New York Post (11/16/23) depicted a supposedly shocking find. The headline “Guns Behind the MRI Machine” accompanied a photo of what Israeli troops had allegedly uncovered: Hamas guns at Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza.

On the Post cover were fewer than a dozen AK-47s and matching magazines, as well as a few tactical vests. In its subhead, the Post called this “proof Hamas used hospital as  military base in stunning war crime.”

Many other media outlets reported Israel’s claims—and accompanying photos and videos the IDF offered as evidence—with little pushback other than Hamas’s denials and an acknowledgment that the outlet could not independently verify the claims. “IDF ‘Found Clear Evidence’ of Hamas Operation out of Al-Shifa Hospital, Says Spokesperson,” was an NBC News headline (11/15/23); Fox News (11/15/23) had “Watch: Israel Finds Weapons, Military Equipment Used by Hamas in Key Gaza Hospital After Raid, IDF Says.”

Israel’s assault on Al Shifa hospital provoked widespread international outrage, so a great deal hinged on its claim that the hospital was being used as a military base. But there are many reasons to question this display of weaponry, questions that imply that not only did the Israeli military make a weak case, but that some media outlets and pundits were too quick to take this presentation at face value.

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IDF Is Ignoring Warnings About Impending Massacre in Judea, Samaria, Say Sources

‘Planning same thing here, hoarding weapons, training’

Fatah Central Committee Secretary-General and PLO Supreme Council for Youth and Sports head Jibril Rajoub Tuesday said the October 7 attack “didn’t come from nowhere” and was “part of the Palestinians’ defensive war” against “the continued crimes of the occupation in Gaza.”

In an interview with Egyptian MBC TV, Rajoub said “the next, more severe violence will come from the West Bank. What is happening in the West Bank, which includes 700,000 Israeli settlers, is a similar situation and is connected to all aspects of life, holy sites and even olive trees, our schools, mosques and churches. Therefore, the next conflagration will be more violent in the West Bank.”

Meanwhile, Israeli security in Judea and Samaria has been specifically designed in a way that will be vulnerable to a certain type of key that is not immediately perceptible to residents encountering them. Thus, the gates and armaments of Judea and Samaria (and in general the entire security apparatus) have been designed, selected, and controlled universally to be uniquely vulnerable to a specific tool that has been then semi-secretly given to the PA – armored vehicles.

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Israeli Minister in Charge of West Bank Says Territory Is Home to ‘2 Million Nazis’

Bezalel Smotrich, the extremist Israeli finance minister who’s been given sweeping powers over the West Bank, has said the occupied territory is home to “2 million Nazis,” referring to part of the Palestinian population.

It’s estimated that around 3 million Palestinians live in the West Bank. The Times of Israel reported that Smotrich made the comments in an apparent reference to two polls that found two-thirds of West Bank Palestinians supported the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel. However, the polls that were referenced surveyed Palestinians living in both Gaza and the West Bank.

The polls also came after weeks of Israel’s brutal bombing campaign and ground incursion into Gaza, as well as a significant uptick in violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.

Based on polling, Hamas did not have much support before October 7 and the Israeli bombardment that ensued. A poll conducted on October 6 found that 67% of Palestinians in Gaza either had “no trust at all” (44 percent) or “not a lot of trust” (23 percent) in Hamas. The same poll found that 73% of Gazans favored a peaceful solution to the conflict with Israel.

Smotrich, the leader of the Religious Zionism Party, also referenced “Nazis” in the West Bank in comments on X in response to a Fatah official saying the October 7 Hamas attack didn’t happen in a vacuum. “A reminder to those who have not yet sobered up and think that the Nazis in Judea and Samaria are different from the Nazis in Gaza,” Smotrich said, according to Middle East Eye.

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