Tag: perpetual war

Israeli drones ‘luring people with sounds of babies crying before opening fire’

REPORTS have emerged of Israeli drones playing recordings of women and children crying to lure Palestinians to locations where they can be targeted before opening fire.

Residents of Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp – situated in the north – said they were woken up on Monday night to sounds of babies crying and women calling out for help.

When they went to help, they reported Israeli drones opening fire on them.

According to witnesses at the scene, up to ten people were injured by the drone fire overnight.

One resident told the Middle East Eye that they heard a woman screaming for help, saying, “Help me, my son was martyred”.

When people went to help the woman, they were instantly shot by drones and had to be taken to hospital as a result.

Other refugees inside the Nuseirat camp said they heard similar recordings, and that they were being played by Israeli forces to target Palestinians.

One man heard sounds of what he thought were woman and a baby calling for help from the street.

“The voice was coming from outside of the house door – it was a quadcopter with four propellers,” he said.

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Israel has carried out a strike inside Iran, US official tells CNN, as region braces for further escalation

Israel has carried out a military strike inside Iran, a US official told CNN Friday, a potentially dangerous escalation in a fast widening Middle East conflict that Iranian government officials have so far sought to play down.

Iran’s air defense systems were activated in the cities of Isfahan and Tabriz after three explosions were heard close to a major military airbase near Isfahan, state media reported early Friday morning.

Maj. Gen. Abdolrahim Mousavi, the commander-in-chief of Iran’s army, said the explosions in the sky above Isfahan were related to anti-aircraft systems shooting at what he called a suspicious object, which did not cause any damage, Iranian state news IRNA reported. Other Iranian officials said air defenses intercepted three drones and there were no reports of a missile attack.

Iran has not identified the source of the strike.

The United States was given advance notification Thursday of an intended Israeli strike in the coming days, but did not endorse the response, a second senior US official said. Secretary of State Antony Blinken later confirmed the US “has not been involved in any offensive operations,” but was focusing on Israel’s defense and de-escalation.

The US was “informed at the last minute” about the attack on Iran, Italy’s foreign minister Antonio Tajani said at a news conference to conclude a meeting of the Group of Seven (G7) nations in Capri, Italy, which Blinken also attended.

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Cruelty of Language: Leaked NY Times Memo Reveals Anti-Palestinian Bias of US Media

The New York Times coverage of the Israeli carnage in Gaza, like that of other mainstream US media, is a disgrace to journalism.

This assertion should not surprise anyone. US media is driven neither by facts nor morality, but by agendas, calculating and power-hungry. The humanity of 120 thousand dead and wounded Palestinians because of the Israeli genocide in Gaza is simply not part of that agenda.

In a report – based on a leaked memo from the New York Times – the Intercept found out that the so-called US newspaper of record has been feeding its journalists with frequently updated ‘guidelines’ on what words to use, or not use, when describing the horrific Israeli mass slaughter in the Gaza Strip, starting on October 7.

In fact, most of the words used in the paragraph above would not be fit to print in the NYT, according to its ‘guidelines’.

Shockingly, internationally recognized terms and phrases such as ‘genocide’, ‘occupied territory’, ‘ethnic cleansing’ and even ‘refugee camps’, were on the newspaper’s rejection list.

It gets even more cruel. “Words like ‘slaughter’, ‘massacre’ and ‘carnage’ often convey more emotion than information. Think hard before using them in our own voice,” according to the memo, leaked and verified by the Intercept and other independent media.

Though such language control is, according to the NYT, aimed at fairness for ‘all sides’, their application was almost entirely one-sided. For example, a previous Intercept report showed that the American newspaper had, between October 7 and November 14, mentioned the word ‘massacre’ 53 times when it referred to Israelis being killed by Palestinians and only once in reference to Palestinians being killed by Israel.

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NASA warns China is conducting military programs in space under the guise of civilian exploration

NASA has warned that China could be preparing for a lunar takeover in the coming years, using its civilian space program as guise for military operations.

Bill Nelson, NASA administrator, fears the Asian nation’s ‘extraordinary strides’ in the last decade are more than just for science, but to exert dominance over the moon.

China has launched a craft to the moon and brought samples back to Earth, has its own space station circling the planet and is eyeing 2030 for when it will send humans to the natural satellite.

While NASA is set to land humans on the lunar South Pole in 2026, Nelson has raised concerns that China has the capabilities to beat them there.  

‘China has made extraordinary strides, especially in the last 10 years, but they are very, very secretive,’ Nelson told members of the House Appropriations Committee at a 2024 budget hearing. 

‘We believe that a lot of their, so-called civilian space programs is a military program,’ Nelson continued. ‘And I think, in effect, we are in a race.’

Nelson made the statements to a committee this week as support for why NASA needs a $25.4 billion budget for 2025.

The country plans to establish a landing base on the moon’s surface within the next five years, making it all the more necessary for the US to ramp up its efforts and investments to send astronauts to space. 

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Germany Buries the Evidence of Complicity in Genocide: Nicaragua Exposes It

Last Thursday, Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, the British-Palestinian war surgeon, gave his first address as the newly-appointed rector of Glasgow University, chosen in recognition of his work at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza. The following day he flew to Berlin, where he had been invited to address a major conference about Palestine. On arrival he was taken away by police, interrogated for several hours and eventually told he had to leave Germany and wouldn’t be allowed to return until at least the end of April. Any attempt to speak to the conference via Zoom could result in a fine or even a year’s prison sentence. By the time he was released he couldn’t have taken part in the conference anyway, since it had been already invaded by at least 900 police and closed down. Berlin’s mayor said that it was ‘intolerable’ that the conference was taking place at all.

Speaking about his experience afterwards, Dr Abu-Sittah referred to the fact that Germany had – also last week – been defending itself at the International Court of Justice against charges by Nicaragua that it is an accomplice to genocidal war. ‘This is exactly what accomplices to a crime do’ he said. ‘They bury the evidence and they silence or harass or intimidate the witnesses’.

Watching the live feed of Germany’s lawyers at the Hague a few days earlier had been an odd experience. They gave the impression of being affronted that Germany had been accused of such crimes, especially by a small country which, they argued, had no stake in the case. Also, Israel could not yet be said to be committing genocide, because the ICJ has not yet determined the case brought against it by South Africa, which Germany had supported Israel in contesting. Because Israel was not party to the new case, it should simply be thrown out.

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AI Is Now Dogfighting With Fighter Pilots In The Air

Last year, the uniquely modified F-16 test jet known as the X-62A, flying in a fully autonomous mode, took part in a first-of-its-kind dogfight against a crewed F-16, the U.S. military has announced. This breakthrough test flight, during which a pilot was in the X-62A’s cockpit as a failsafe, was the culmination of a series of milestones that led 2023 to be the year that “made machine learning a reality in the air,” according to one official. These developments are a potentially game-changing means to an end that will feed directly into future advanced uncrewed aircraft programs like the U.S. Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft effort.

Details about the autonomous air-to-air test flight were included in a new video about the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Air Combat Evolution (ACE) program and its achievements in 2023. The U.S. Air Force, through the Air Force Test Pilot School (USAF TPS) and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), is a key participant in the ACE effort. A wide array of industry and academic partners are also involved in ACE. This includes Shield AI, which acquired Heron Systems in 2021. Heron developed the artificial intelligence (AI) ‘pilot’ that won DARPA’s AlphaDogfight Trials the preceding year, which were conducted in an entirely digital environment, and subsequently fed directly into ACE.

“2023 was the year ACE made machine learning a reality in the air,” Air Force Lt. Col. Ryan Hefron, the ACE program manager, says in the newly released video, seen in full below.

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The attack on Nevatim airbase: the truth behind the propaganda

By now, most of the world knows that Iran launched a multi-faceted attack against Israel about 48 hours ago.  The “fallout” from that attack is now becoming frighteningly clear, and it has Defense Experts TERRIFIED.

As the attack was in-progress, Iran undertook a very unusual, and apparently foolish, series of steps.  They announced they had launched drones and then cruise missiles against Israel.  They announced this despite the fact the drones and missiles still had 57 more minutes to travel before reaching their targets!   

Expert Observers thought it very strange – and foolish – that an attacker would give out such information while the very weapons they launched had not yet arrived.  It gave Israel and its allies time to go after those weapons, which they did.

Well . . . it turns out this was not strange or foolish – it was planned.  Iran launched the old dregs of their arsenal!  First generation drones. First generation cruise missiles.  What they launched was the junk they had laying around for years!  Slow moving, loud, junk.  Iran WANTED Israeli defenses to focus on that old junk, and not on what they would fire next: Ballistic Missiles.

Many of the drones simply fell out of the sky from malfunctions.  Others were easily intercepted by fighter jets from Israel, the US, and the UK, with some help from French naval assets in the Mediterranean Sea. 

There was a much-heralded “99% interception success rate” broadcast around the world for all to hear.  Turns out, there’s a problem.  A MAJOR problem: Iran’s Ballistic Missiles.   A few of them, got through.

Almost no one noticed this “problem” because there has been no media coverage of it, until this article.

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Ukraine’s Opposition To The Assimilation Of Its Refugees Is Extremely Hypocritical

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba warned on Friday that “It has become clear that assimilation would be extremely fast if we do not change our policy towards Ukrainians abroad”, calling on these refugees to “remain Ukrainian” with the innuendo that they shouldn’t plant roots in the West.

He didn’t explicitly say so, but it’s strongly hinted that he hopes that those millions who’ve fled the latest phase of the Ukrainian Conflict over the past two years will eventually return home to their country.

Kiev-based economist Alexey Kushch said in an interview with Ukrainian journalist Yury Romanenko last week that “I estimate that [after the conflict is over] Ukraine’s demographic profile <…> will be made up of 25 million people, including ten million senior citizens, five million children and two to three million disabled persons and veterans receiving social benefits. About seven to eight million working adults will make up the core of the economy.”

These two developments coincided with Ukraine’s passing of a new conscription law that doesn’t include a demobilization clause, which the media reported has left troops feeling “betrayed” while a member of the Rada described it as a “point of no return” in terms of turning citizens against the government. Kuleba obviously hopes that unassimilated Ukrainians will feel so unwelcome in the West that they’ll return home to risk their lives in the meatgrinder and then rebuild their country when the conflict ends.

Basically, he’s manipulating them on a faux “patriotic” pretext into creating problems for themselves abroad so that they’ll consider moving back to Ukraine, but his rhetoric is extremely hypocritical since it’s the opposite of how Kiev itself treats minorities.

It was observed that “The West Would Never Talk About Its Minorities The Way That Ukraine Talks About Its Russian One” after Rada speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk denied their very existence and associated rights last fall.

In other words, Kuleba wants Ukrainian refugees not to assimilate into their host societies, with a wink and a nod that they should exploit the liberal–globalist West’s related legislation and socio-cultural norms to preserve their culture as much as possible.

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WHY? Seattle Police Department Announces They Are ‘Closely Monitoring Conflict Between Israel and Iran’

The Seattle Police Department has announced that they are ‘Closely Monitoring Conflict Between Israel and Iran’ for some reason.

Don’t the police in Seattle have A LOT more pressing issues to keep an eye on, right at home in their own city?

Is it possible that this is some bizarre effort to endear the police to the crazy leftists in Seattle who are obsessed with what’s happening in the Middle East?

They actually put out an announcement about this.

From their blotter:

SPD is Closely Monitoring Conflict Between Israel and Iran

The Seattle Police Department is closely monitoring the conflict between Israel and Iran and are working with local and federal agencies to ensure the safety of Seattle community members.

As a precaution, we will proactively increase patrols around infrastructures and sensitive areas. SPD’s Community liaisons are working with community leaders as a prevention measure. Currently there are no specific or credible threats.

As always SPD is committed to the safety of Seattle community members.

People have thoughts about this.

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Russia’s Military Is Bigger Than Before Invasion

A top US general told Congress last week that Russia’s military is 15% bigger today than it was before the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, an acknowledgment that the goal of “weakening” Russia has failed.

“The army is actually now larger — by 15% — than it was when it invaded Ukraine,” Gen. Christopher Cavoli, the head of US European Command, told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

Cavoli said that over the past year, Russia had increased its “front-line troop strength from 360,000 to 470,000,” which he said was due to Russia raising the maximum age of conscription from 27 to 30.

He described that this means Russia will have the ability to elarge “the pool of available military conscripts by 2 million for years to come.”

“In sum, Russia is on track to command the largest military on the continent,” he said. “Regardless of the outcome of the war in Ukraine, Russia will be larger, more lethal, and angrier with the West than when it invaded.”

Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell recently made similar comments, saying the US had “assessed over the course of the last couple of months that Russia has almost completely reconstituted militarily.”

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