Tag: perpetual war

Let Them Eat Dirt

There was never any possibility that the Israeli government would agree to a pause in the fighting proposed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, much less a ceasefire.

Israel is on the verge of delivering the coup de grâce in its war on Palestinians in Gaza – mass starvation.

When Israeli leaders use the term “absolute victory,” they mean total decimation, total elimination. The Nazis in 1942 systematically starved the 500,000 men, women and children in the Warsaw Ghetto. This is a number Israel intends to exceed. 

Israel, and its chief patron the United States, by attempting to shut down the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which provides food and aid to Gaza, is not only committing a war crime, but is in flagrant defiance of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). 

The court found the charges of genocide brought by South Africa, which included statements and facts gathered by UNWRA, plausible. It ordered Israel to abide by six provisional measures to prevent genocide and alleviate the humanitarian catastrophe. The fourth provisional measure calls on Israel to secure immediate and effective steps to provide humanitarian assistance and essential services in Gaza. 

UNRWA’s reports on conditions in Gaza, which I covered as a reporter for seven years, and its documentation of indiscriminate Israeli attacks illustrate that, as UNRWA said, “unilaterally declared ‘safe zones’ are not safe at all. Nowhere in Gaza is safe.” 

UNRWA’s role in documenting the genocide, as well as providing food and aid to the Palestinians, infuriates the Israeli government.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused UNRWA, after the ruling, of providing false information to the ICJ. Already an Israeli target for decades, Israel decided that UNRWA, which supports 5.9 million Palestinian refugees across the Middle East with clinics, schools and food, had to be eliminated.

Israel’s destruction of UNRWA serves a political as well as material objective. 

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DISGUSTING: US Senate Advances $95 Billion Aid Package to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan in Rare Super Bowl Sunday Vote — Here are the 18 Republicans Who Voted with Democrats

In an unusual session held on Super Bowl Sunday, the US Senate voted to move forward a substantial $95 billion aid package that will support Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, with no southern border security provisions. The vote garnered support from RINOs, with a final tally of 67-27.

The vote came in response to Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.)’s steadfast refusal to expedite voting on the bill, which he vehemently criticized as “rotten” and detrimental to national interests.

Senator Paul, expressing his staunch opposition, declared he would not allow the bill to pass immediately, emphasizing his concerns over prioritizing foreign aid over domestic issues.

According to the Hill, Schumer offered Republicans the chance to vote on amendments in exchange for expediting the legislative process.

“By a vote of 67-27, The Senate invoked cloture on Murray substitute amendment 1388 to H.R.815, legislative vehicle for supplemental appropriations,” the Senate Press Gallery wrote on X.

Sixty-seven senators voted in favor of war funding, while 27 senators opposed the expenditure, all of whom were Republicans.

On Super Bowl Sunday, the following 18 Republican senators supported the Ukraine war funding:

  • Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV)
  • Bill Cassidy (R-LA)
  • Susan Collins (R-ME)
  • John Cornyn (R-TX)
  • Joni Ernst (R-IA)
  • Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
  • John Kennedy (R-LA)
  • Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
  • Jerry Moran (R-KS)
  • Markwayne Mullin (R-OK)
  • Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
  • Mitt Romney (R-UT)
  • Mike Rounds (R-SD)
  • Dan Sullivan (R-AK)
  • John Thune (R-SD)
  • Thom Tillis (R-NC)
  • Roger Wicker (R-MS)
  • Todd Young (R-IN)

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) acknowledged the unusual scheduling.

“I can’t remember the last time the Senate was in session on Super Bowl Sunday, but as I’ve said all week long, we’re going to keep working on this bill until the job is done,” Schumer said.

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Air Force To Totally Revamp Its Structure To Compete With China

To counter the growing threat especially from China, the Air Force is undergoing major changes in how it operates and is organized. Dubbed “Reopitmization for Great Power Competition,” details of the initiative will be unveiled Monday at the Air and Space Forces Warfare Symposium in Denver by Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall and other senior leaders, an Air Force official told The War Zone.

The changes will run the gamut from how the Air Force organizes its operational units to how it acquires new weapons systems, Andrew Hunter, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, suggested on Friday.

“We’re driving towards…the ability to do integration across our organizational stovepipes in the acquisition community but also on the operational community across the department to a much higher degree,” said Hunter, speaking at an Atlantic Council event.

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Putin Confirms Boris Johnson Sabotaged Peace Deal With Ukraine

During his interview with Tucker Carlson, Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed that then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson sabotaged a peace deal with Ukraine that would have ended the war 18 months ago.

During an interview conducted in November last year, David Arahamiya, the leader of Ukraine’s ruling party, revealed that Johnson had scuppered a peace deal that would have put an end to hostilities just a few months after the Russian invasion.

“They [Russia] were ready to end the war if we took neutrality—as Finland once did—and made commitments that we would not join NATO. This was the key point,” said Arahamiya.

However, despite the negotiations going well, Johnson “unexpectedly arrived in Kyiv on April 9th, 2022” and told President Zelensky that he, “Shouldn’t sign anything with them at all—and let’s just fight.”

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Putin Claims War In Ukraine Was Started By A CIA Coup

During the interview with Tucker Carlson, Russian leader Vladimir Putin stated that the war in Ukraine “did not start in 2022,” but rather was a result of a 2014 coup in the country, directly backed by the CIA.

Putin recalled the moment he decided he had to invade, noting “initially it was the coup in Ukraine that provoked the conflict.”

Putin claimed that a decade ago the United States proposed a joint effort to for a diplomatic settlement in Ukraine and the then President Yanukovich agreed not to deploy troops or police. However, an armed opposition, which Putin alleges was run by the CIA, orchestrated a coup in Kiev.

Putin further stated that “the representatives of three countries, Germany, Poland, and France, arrived. They were the guarantors of the signed agreement. Despite that, the opposition committed a coup and all of these countries pretended that they didn’t remember they were guarantors of the peaceful settlement.”

He continued, “President Yanukovich agreed to all conditions which included holding an early election he had no chance of winning”, Putin stated, adding “Why the coup? Why the victims? Why threaten Crimea? Why threaten the Donbas? That’s what I don’t understand.”

“The CIA did its job to complete the coup,” he continued, adding “The political mistake was colossal. All this could be done without victims.”

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US Army spent billions on a new helicopter that now will never fly

The U.S. Army is ending its latest effort to build a new armed scout helicopter, known as the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft, an abrupt change of direction that marks one of the department’s most significant program cancellations of the last decade.

The service had already spent at least $2 billion on the program and had requested another $5 billion for the next five years, according to budget documents.

The helicopter program arrived in 2018 with lofty expectations. Army leaders hoped it would serve as a model for new acquisition approaches for its most complex and most expensive weapon systems. Prototypes from Bell Textron and Lockheed Martin’s Sikorsky were expected to fly later this year. And, perhaps most importantly, the aircraft was slated to provide a long-needed armed scout solution after decades of starts and stops.

But Thursday, the Army’s top acquisition officials described a new vision and major aviation overhaul. In addition to ending FARA, the Army plans to get rid of its entire Shadow and Raven unmanned aircraft fleets, said Doug Bush, the service’s acquisition chief.

It will also stop fielding its new replacement for UH-60 Lima-model Black Hawk utility helicopter — the Victor-model — to the Army National Guard and instead field UH-60 Mike-models, the latest variant used in the active force, Bush said.

Finally, the service will delay procurement of its next-generation helicopter engine, which was set to be used in all UH-60s, AH-64 Apache attack helicopters as well as to power FARA.

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The shocking inhumanity of Israel’s crimes in Gaza

Dozens of patients stand in line for hours outside the pharmacy booth in the Kuwaiti Hospital compound. They all start out by asking the pharmacist the same question: is my medication available? The answer for most is no.

Amid the long lines of the elderly, the ill, and mothers carrying their children, a man appearing to be middle-aged leaning on a young boy arrives, speaking in a loud voice and asking to be allowed to jump the line — he’s just been released from prison, and can barely stand.

“I spent sixty days of constant beating and humiliation,” he says. “They just released me, and I need to just get my medicine. Please let me take it without having to wait any longer.”

Everyone lets him through, allowing him to collect his medications from the booth and leave. 

I stand beside him in the hospital courtyard, asking him how he came to be arrested by the Israeli army — and how he was eventually released.

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The Silence of the Damned

There is no effective health care system left in Gaza.

Infants are dying. Children are having their limbs amputated without anesthesia.

Thousands of cancer patients and those in need of dialysis lack treatment. The last cancer hospital in Gaza has ceased functioning. An estimated 50,000 pregnant women have no safe place to give birth. They undergo cesarean sections without anesthesia.

Miscarriage rates are up 300 percent since the Israeli assault began. The wounded bleed to death. There is no sanitation or clean water. Hospitals have been bombed and shelled. Nasser Hospital, one of the last functioning hospitals in Gaza, is “near collapse.”

Clinics, along with ambulances — 79 in Gaza and over 212 in the West Bank — have been destroyed. Some 400 doctors, nurses, medics and healthcare workers have been killed — more than the total of all healthcare workers killed in conflicts around the world combined since 2016.

Over 100 more have been detained, interrogated, beaten and tortured, or disappeared by Israeli soldiers. 

Israeli soldiers routinely enter hospitals to carry out forced evacuations — on Jan. 24, troops entered al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis and demanded doctors and displaced Palestinians leave — as well as round up detainees, including the wounded, sick and medical staff.

On Jan. 30, disguised as hospital workers and civilians, Israeli soldiers entered Jenin’s Ibn Sina Hospital in the West Bank and assassinated three Palestinians as they slept. 

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Revealed: An Israeli businessman’s post-genocide plan for Gaza

An Israeli entrepreneur who participated in the genocide in Gaza has pitched a plan to a European firm for the territory’s future.

The Gaza Strip – which the plan assumes would be conquered and controlled by Israel – would be divided into two zones. In the northern zone, Palestinian collaborators would be permitted to live in relative comfort, while those who refuse to serve and obey their Israeli masters would be banished to a southern “area of terror.”

The Electronic Intifada has seen a copy of this so-called “day-after plan.”

The pitch exposes the frightening colonial mindset and condescendingly racist view of Palestinians pervasive in Israel. It also reveals an underlying desire to conquer and control every inch of Palestine, including Gaza.

The plan was submitted by Or Bokobza, an Israeli reserve officer in the Sayeret Matkal elite commando unit, who was deployed in Gaza for several weeks during October and November.

Bokobza lives in New York City, but was in Israel on 7 October when the Palestinian resistance group Hamas led a military operation that destroyed the Israeli army’s Gaza Division, which is responsible for enforcing Israel’s siege on the territory.

Bokobza “immediately reported for duty and was deployed to root out the Hamas fighters that day,” according to a glowing profile in The Wall Street Journal.

Bokobza, who spent eight years in Israel’s army, far longer than the mandatory service requirement, has also participated in “every war since 2005.”

He is also the chief executive of Venn, a company that makes software for large-scale residential landlords to manage, monitor and extract maximum rents and revenue from tenants. It has received $100 million in venture capital, according to The Wall Street Journal.

At least 15 percent of his employees also enlisted as reservists with Israel’s military after the genocidal war on Gaza was declared.

Now Bokobza undoubtedly hopes to profit from the destruction and slaughter – although his proposal is pitched as good for Israel and even good for Palestinians in Gaza.

Another Israeli businessman Eran Haggiag is also named in the proposal, The Electronic Intifada learned. Haggiag is a co-founder of Bokobza’s company Venn.

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