Tag: perpetual war

Why raping Palestinians is legitimate Israeli military practice

The Israeli sexual torture scandal, whereby nine soldiers were arrested on 29 July for allegedly physically and sexually torturing Palestinian men, was depicted in western media as a deviation from Israel’s usual torture methods.

The idea is that Israeli torturers of Palestinian prisoners do not usually subject them to rape.

Four of the arrested soldiers were later released following widespread riots.

The US State Department, presumably appalled by such torture, described a video reportedly showing the alleged rape as “horrific” and insisted that “[t]here ought to be zero tolerance for sexual abuse, rape of any detainee, period… If there are detainees who have been sexually assaulted or raped, the government of Israel, the IDF [Israeli army] need to fully investigate those actions and hold anyone responsible accountable to the full extent of the law”.

The White House, also presumably a stranger to the practice of abusing political prisoners held in US dungeons, remained calm but found reports of Israeli sexual torture “deeply concerning”.

The European Union followed suit and claimed to be “gravely concerned”.

But this is hardly a new development in the cruelty of the Israeli colonial-settler regime. The Israeli army has been systematically using physical and sexual torture against Palestinians since at least 1967, as human rights groups revealed years ago.

Indeed, sadism has been characteristic of the Zionist colonists’ treatment of Palestinians since the 1880s, as even Zionist leaders complained at the time.

This sadism and the sexual torture that often accompanies it are rooted not only in European colonial hubris but also in orientalist views that Arabs only “understand force” and are allegedly more susceptible to sexual torture than white Europeans.

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‘Realists’ Think We Need To Prepare for a Draft So We Can Win a War With China

Doubling down on their recent war-game exercises and report on the (un)readiness of the U.S. to activate a military draft, Taren Sylvester and Katherine Kuzminski of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) have a new article in War on the Rocks, “Preparing for the Possibility of a Draft Without Panic,” laying out why they think the U.S. needs to prepare for a draft in order to be able to win an all-out war with China over Taiwan.

CNAS and War on the Rocks like to describe themselves as “realists”. But their arguments for stepped-up planning and preparation for a draft are strikingly unrealistic, in at least four respects.

First, Sylvester and Kuzminski – like the Selective Service System and the Department of Justice – entirely ignore whether, much less how or at what cost, a draft could be enforced.

The practical difficulty of enforcing a draft in the face of widespread evasion and resistance was the Achilles heel of the last U.S. draft, and has to be central to any realistic plan for a future draft.

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Kamala Harris Continues Support for Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza

Over 40,000 dead with thousands more buried under the rubble from tens of thousands of US bombs in Gaza has made no dent on Kamala Harris’s conscience. Nor has a death toll predicted by the UK medical journal Lancet that upwards of 185,000 will soon be dead from disease, starvation to go along with endless US weapons of civilian destruction in the most grisly genocidal ethnic cleansing this century.

Of course, Harris has more sense than to cheer on the Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Here campaign frames her support this way: “Harris has been clear: she will always work to ensure Israel is able to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups”. She claims to be troubled by the suffering caused by endless US bombs there, but refuses to support an embargo on genocide weapons.

Hubby Doug Imhoff chimed in “Let me just make this clear: the vice president has been and will be a strong supporter of Israel as a secure democratic and Jewish state, and she will always ensure that Israel can defend itself, period. Because that’s who Kamala Harris is.” If Imhoff were honest and decent, he’s could do so by simply replacing “democratic” and “Jewish” with “Apartheid” and “genocidal.”

When anti genocide protesters confronted her Harris about her genocide support during a campaign speech in Detroit, Harris shot back “You know what? If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.” That has become the go-to Democratic response to pushback against Democratic support for Israeli genocide in Gaza: ‘Don’t’ mention US enabling genocide… we’ve got an election to win.

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US Continues To Prep For War On China

We’ve been focused lately very much on Russia, Iran, and the Middle East. But the current state of war is very much a global one. Yes, China is at the center of Anglo-Zionist war plans, but the position of China geostrategically inevitably draws in all of SE and South Asia. So let’s look at that region briefly, because there are important events taking place.

The US has been openly “predicting” (promising?) that it will attack China by 2025. Yes, I did carefully consider what I just wrote. China has no intention of attacking the US, so if a war breaks out it will only have been instigated by the US. Now, this doesn’t mean that war will begin with a massive missile attack. It is more likely to begin as an economic war or, more specifically, an energy war. That is the type of war the US has been preparing for years—via regime change/color revolutions in all countries that are located along China’s trade routes—Pakistan, Bangla Desh, Myanmar, Thailand—to insure that they will participate in a blockade of China.

This is also more or less the template that the US has been following in our war on Russia and Iran. Yes, we are in a hot war with Russia, but not a full out war as regards our own military. The same could occur in the Far East—if we could find a proxy like Ukraine that would be willing to accept national destruction. I continue to believe that the Chinese on Taiwan are smarter than that.

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Ukrainian Shelling Causes Fire at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant

Ukrainian shelling started a fire at one of the cooling towers at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, according to Zaporizhzhia’s Russian-installed governor, Yevgeny Balitsky.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said its experts stationed at the ZNPP, which has been under Russian control since February 2022, saw dark smoke rising at the plant after hearing multiple explosions. They were told by plant officials that one of the cooling towers was targeted by an alleged Ukrainian drone attack.

The IAEA said there was no reported impact on nuclear safety as a result of the fire, and Balitsky said radiation levels around the plant were normal.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is claiming that the fire was started by Russians who control the plant. The ZNPP is located in the town of Enerhodar on the south bank of the Dnieper River. Russia controls the territory on the southern bank, while Ukraine controls the territory on the northern side.

Zelensky wrote on X that a video of the fire at the plant was recorded from the city of Nikopol, which is across the river. “Enerhodar. We have recorded from Nikopol that the Russian occupiers have started a fire on the territory of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant,” he wrote.

Zelensky also said the radiation levels at the plant were normal. “However, as long as the Russian terrorists maintain control over the nuclear plant, the situation is not and cannot be normal,” he added.

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EU’s Borrell Says ‘No Justification For These Massacres’ After Israeli Strike Kills Nearly 100 Gazans

The Washington Post and several international outlets are reporting another mass casualty event in Gaza – this time a reported Israeli airstrike on a school in Gaza City sheltering refugees. Gaza’s Civil Defense Force says the attack killed at least 93 people, including women and children.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it targeted a Hamas command center and has accused Gaza sources of inflating the death toll. However, gruesome images show many mangled and charred civilian bodies strewn all over the ground in the strike aftermath.

Gaza officials say the al-Taba’een school in Gaza City was housing about 6,000 internally displaced Palestinians before it was struck. Hamas-run emergency services have called it a “horrific massacre” and European officials have responded with condemnation.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell expressed shock and horror, saying on X: “Horrified by images from a sheltering school in Gaza hit by an Israeli strike, with reportedly dozens of Palestinian victims. At least 10 schools were targeted in the last weeks. There’s no justification for these massacres.”

“The recovery operations are indescribable … The schoolyard was filled with bodies,” one local emergency response officials has said. The IDF has reacted to the widespread reports by saying the information in the media does “not align” with its own intelligence and information. 

The IDF claimed that terrorists have been “operating within a Hamas command and control center embedded in the Al-Taba’een school” and charged that Hamas has again used civilian population as “human shields”. 

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Last Year’s Pentagon Leaks Proved That Zelensky Was Plotting To Invade Russia Since January 2023

So much has happened since spring 2023’s Pentagon leaks that few even remember that they happened, but they’re more relevant than ever amidst Ukraine’s ongoing invasion of Russia’s Kursk Region since they proved that Zelensky had been plotting this since January 2023. The Washington Post reported on this aspect of those leaks in May 2023, writing that the US was already aware by then that Zelensky thought that this move would “give Kyiv leverage in talks with Moscow.”

This wasn’t lost on the Russians either since RT promptly published an article about it, which was analyzed here at the time, thus raising questions about why there weren’t better border defenses in place just in case. These reports circulated right before Ukraine’s ultimately failed counteroffensive, so it’s possible that the border was fortified as a precaution ahead of that happening, but then Russia grew complacent with its on-the-ground gains in Donbass over the past year and let its guard down.

About that, this analysis here from last week pointed out that Ukraine’s invasion of Kursk Region should incentivize Russia to finally eliminate groupthink. It’s difficult to believe that there were no reports whatsoever about a build-up along the border ahead of time, thus meaning that higher-ups might have dismissed whatever they were speculatively told by their underlings as “irrational”. Therein lies the problem since Ukraine always ends up surprising Russia but relevant lessons have yet to be learned.

Whether it’s long-range drone strikes against its strategic airfields, early warning systems, and even the Kremlin or naval drone attacks against its Black Sea fleet, all of which are aided by the Anglo-American Axis, Russia should have expected by now that every one of its soft spots is a likely target. Nevertheless, it’s regularly caught with its pants down, though folks also shouldn’t forget that it still intercepts a lot of drones and foils many impending plots too.

With that being said, more could have been done to protect the border from the invasion that Zelensky had been plotting for a year and a half. Prior to the latest events, he employed terrorist proxies for cross-border raids into Belgorod Region, which might have deceived Russia into thinking that Ukraine abandoned its plans for a conventional invasion. That could explain why the only forces that it deployed along the border were counter-sabotage units who were unprepared to fend off a real invasion.

Such a decision still represents a lapse in judgement, however, when recalling that Ukrainian military-intelligence chief Budanov drew attention to Kursk Region in mid-May shortly after the start of Russia’s push into his country’s Kharkov Region. He said at the time that “they are holding a small group of forces in the border area, in the town of Sudzha. From our side, it is the Sumy direction, but the situation has not yet allowed them to take active action and start, let’s say, implementing their plan.”

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Peace is Just a Word

So I was watching the UN Security Council Emergency Meeting on the situation in the Middle East and I thought, “what is this?” Maybe the question “why” would have been more apt.

We see it time and time again, important well-paid people sitting in chairs making long-winded statements about peace and justice and more peace and eventually it all just turns into a jumbled jambalaya’d stew of predictable and usual opinions.

Some of these people are heart-felt in their pleas. Most are carefully diplomatic. Some seem reluctant.

And nothing ever seems to ever be achieved: Just words hollow in the hum of air-conditioning wafting into oblivion.

Peace is just a word.

And I was thinking, maybe if they brought in the drag queens?

I mean, if you think about it…. As we already know there are 17 reasons for everything happening in the world right now, i.e. the 17 WEF goals. One of those as we all know by now involves diversion, equity and inclusion (DEI) and thus the whole trans thing flaring up here and there. And that means any single thing that has the title of global, international, world or earth or nations or planet will bring out the drag queens to ensure social engineering is at the forefront. It is a given. But not this time? (Granted we’re not sure about the IMF but we can presuppose it is DEI inclined somehow.)

We don’t see drag queens at the UN Security Council meetings. And that is obviously not equal or inclusive and no wonder we have endless wars and everything. A drag queen performance done well would bring more communal enjoyment and conviviality to the proceedings and eventually would probably broker peace far better than the existing crew.

If there were only drag queens at these meetings then whenever China e.g. began to speak, some big-haired blonde could break into “I wanna be loved by you and nobody else but you….” Or whenever Israel and Iran begin sparring someone could start singing Shania Twain’s “I’m gonna getcha good”.

Turkey and Hungary could be “I wanna dance with somebody” and the Ukrainians could be doing “I will survive.” It would explain things splendidly and with style even! But that is not the point.

The point would be having more people watching the UN proceedings. Because it is a damn terrible life knowing what is going on in the world and have to discuss the weather with the vast majority of our fellow citizens.

Does no one else see this?

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Ukrainian offensive into Russian territory is first direct attack into Russia since 1941

The Ukrainian offensive deep into Russian territory marks the first direct attack on the country since 1941, according to the French newspaper Le Figaro.

The operation, which began in the Kursk region, is not merely a diversion but signifies a new direction in the conflict, the newspaper suggested.

On Aug. 7, Ukrainian forces seized at least three localities in the Kursk region, as confirmed by local media reports on the same day. Mykhailo Podolak, an advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, also confirmed the offensive on Aug. 8.

In recent months, particularly last spring, Ukrainian forces faced additional challenges due to a Russian attack on the Kharkiv region. Although the aggressors failed to penetrate deeper into Ukraine, it added further strain to the already stretched Ukrainian military.

The operation in the Kursk area might be an attempt to force Russians to redeploy their troops to this region, thereby relieving defenses on other fronts, and possibly even to recapture territories occupied by Russia.

There is also a possibility that the operation is intended to be demonstrative, to convey that, after months of difficult situations, Ukrainians are again in control of the battlefield dynamics.

“The idea (behind this attack) is to show that Ukrainians are still brave, formidable, and not merely retreating,” said an anonymous representative of the French military. The Kursk region is poorly defended compared to areas around Donetsk, where the heaviest fighting is ongoing.

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Is the stupidity of Australians terminal?

On 15 September 2021, Australia’s Anthony Albanese Labor Government agreed with America’s Biden and UK’s Sunak to form together against China in the Southern Hemisphere a Pacific Ocean mutual-‘defense’ Treaty like America’s 1949 original one for the Northern Hemisphere and the Atlantic Ocean (NATO), to be called AUKUS, for U.S., UK, and Australia, thus jointly committing themselves to wage a war against China, which is Australia’s main trading-partner. For Australians, it’s insanity.

Ever since 2022, Australia’s Lowy Institute polling organization has polled Australians about this, and has been finding that, pretty consistently, half of Australians think that AUKUS “will make Australia/our region more safe”; only 8% say “less safe”.

On 14 June 2023, Australia’s Financial Review headlined “Labor’s internal dissent over AUKUS is building”, and reported that behind the scenes, “criticism of AUKUS that has been levelled by Labor elders Paul Keating and Gareth Evans, as well as” others, was growing in the Labor Party.

Finally, on 8 August 2024, Britain’s Guardian bannered “Aukus pact will turn Australia into ‘51st state’ of the US, Paul Keating says: Former prime minister argues Australia has made itself a target by aligning with American ‘aggression’ towards China”. It reported that on that night, Australia’s former Prime Minister, Keating, was interviewed at length about AUKUS, and,

Australia had no quarrel with China, Keating said, and concerns about China’s designs on Taiwan were not justified because the island was “Chinese real estate”.

“Taiwan is not a vital Australian interest,” he said, adding that the American attitude to Taiwan was like China deciding that Tasmania needed help to secede from Australia.

“What Aukus is about in the American mind is turning Australia into suckers, locking us up for 40 years with American bases all around … not Australian bases,” he said.

“So Aukus is really about, in American terms, the military control of Australia. I mean, what’s happened … is likely to turn Australia into the 51st state of the United States.”

Keating told the show’s presenter, Sarah Ferguson: “We’re now defending the fact that we’re in Aukus.

“If we weren’t in Aukus, we wouldn’t need to defend it. If we didn’t have an aggressive ally like the United States – aggressive to others in the region – there’d be nobody attacking Australia. We are better left alone than we are being ‘protected’ by an aggressive power like the United States. …

Keating, a longstanding opponent of Labor’s support for the pact, said Australia had not been threatened by China, whose expanding military presence, he said, was in line with its position as the world’s second superpower.

“What do they expect [the Chinese] to do?” he said. “To move around in row boats? Canoes, maybe?

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