Tag: perpetual war

Congressional Republicans Urge Biden to Provide More Military Funding to Taiwan

The authors of the new letter to Biden reasoned that arming and equipping Taiwan “to make it a stronger and more capable partner” would be an improvement for the “national and economic security” of the United States.

Republican members of the US Congress’ foreign relations and defense committees have penned a letter to US President Joe Biden asking him to ramp up military aid to Taiwan, according to a US media outlet familiar with the contents of the missive.

The letter was reportedly authored by Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Jim Risch and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Mike McCaul, as well as Senator Roger Wicker and Rep. Mike Rogers, Republican leaders of the Senate and House armed service committees, respectively.

“Using every authority, we must arm and equip Taiwan to make it a stronger and more capable partner — which will only help the United States’ national and economic security,” the politicians declared in their letter.

They also argued that the United States “must be willing to accept the tension that comes with supporting Taiwan.”

As the media outlet points out, in December the US Congress did authorize foreign military aid financing for Taiwan – $2 billion per year – but that money comes in the form of “US-backed loans,” and the letter’s authors claim that “without FMF grants, loans are not enough to address the scale of this challenge.”

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Google project is running “prebunking experiment” on social media

Who better than Google to “uphold technology as a force for good” – all joking aside, but that is exactly how the tech behemoth presents Jigsaw, its unit that “explores threats to open societies, and builds technology that inspires scalable solutions.”

According to a blog post, the latest such solution is “the largest prebunking experiment on social media to date” launched in September, with the goal of “countering the threat of disinformation.” Speaking of jigsaws – this also appears to be a piece in the puzzle that is the fierce “war on disinformation” that is being waged by Big Tech and traditional media.

“Prebunking” could be described as “precrime’s little cousin” – it means debunking what is deemed to be lies, tactics or sources before they happen/can act. Developing effective ways to do this can be a force for good – or evil, and so given its track record with censorship, Google (via Jigsaw) conducting this kind of experiment is sure to raise a few eyebrows.

Perhaps to make the whole thing more palatable, Jigsaw tied this effort to an actual war – that in Ukraine – and explains the need to test “prebunking” techniques as a way to protect refugees.

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How Spin and Lies Fuel a Bloody War of Attrition in Ukraine

In a recent column, military analyst William Astore wrote, “[Congressman] George Santos is a symptom of a much larger disease: a lack of honor, a lack of shame, in America. Honor, truth, integrity, simply don’t seem to matter, or matter much, in America today… But how do you have a democracy where there is no truth?”

Astore went on to compare America’s political and military leaders to the disgraced Congressman Santos. “U.S. military leaders appeared before Congress to testify the Iraq War was being won,” Astore wrote. “They appeared before Congress to testify the Afghan War was being won. They talked of “progress,” of corners being turned, of Iraqi and Afghan forces being successfully trained and ready to assume their duties as US forces withdrew. As events showed, it was all spin. All lies.”

Now America is at war again, in Ukraine, and the spin continues. This war involves Russia, Ukraine, the United States and its NATO allies. No party to this conflict has leveled with its own people to honestly explain what it is fighting for, what it really hopes to achieve and how it plans to achieve it. All sides claim to be fighting for noble causes and insist that it is the other side that refuses to negotiate a peaceful resolution. They are all manipulating and lying, and compliant media (on all sides) trumpet their lies.

It is a truism that the first casualty of war is the truth. But spinning and lying has real-world impacts in a war in which hundreds of thousands of real people are fighting and dying, while their homes, on both sides of the front lines, are reduced to rubble by hundreds of thousands of howitzer shells.

Yves Smith, the editor of Naked Capitalism, explored this insidious linkage between the information war and the real one in an article titled, “What if Russia won the Ukraine War, but the Western press didn’t notice?” He observed that Ukraine’s total dependence on the supply of weapons and money from its Western allies has given a life of its own to a triumphalist narrative that Ukraine is defeating Russia, and will keep scoring victories as long as the West keeps sending it more money and increasingly powerful and deadly weapons.

But the need to keep recreating the illusion that Ukraine is winning by hyping limited gains on the battlefield has forced Ukraine to keep sacrificing its forces in extremely bloody battles, like its counteroffensive around Kherson and the Russian sieges of Bakhmut and Soledar. Lt. Col. Alexander Vershinin, a retired US tank commander, wrote on Harvard’s Russia Matters website, “In some ways, Ukraine has no choice but to launch attacks no matter the human and material cost.”

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The Pat Tillman Story Was Hijacked During the Super Bowl

Advocates of peace, truth, and basic human decency on Sunday excoriated the National Football League’s “whitewashing” of former Arizona Cardinal and Army Ranger Pat Tillman’s death in Afghanistan by so-called “friendly fire” and the military’s subsequent cover-up – critical details omitted from a glowingly patriotic Super Bowl salute.

As a group of four Pat Tillman Foundation scholars chosen as honorary coin-toss captains at Super Bowl LVII in Glendale, Arizona were introduced via a video segment narrated by actor Kevin Costner, viewers were told how Tillman “gave up his NFL career to join the Army Rangers and ultimately lost his life in the line of duty.”

The video did not say how Tillman died, what he thought about the Iraq war, or how the military lied to his family and the nation about his death. This outraged many viewers.

“Obviously the army killing Pat Tillman and covering it up afterwards is the worst thing the U.S. military did to him, but the years they’ve spent rolling out his portrait backed by some inspirational music as a recruiting tool is a surprisingly close second,” tweeted progressive writer Jay Willis.

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USA Today: “Little by Little” Russia is Winning Key Ground War

USA Today raised some eyebrows when it deviated from the usual narrative by acknowledging “little by little” Russia is winning the ground war in a pivotal area of Ukraine, citing a quote given by a pro-Ukraine spokeswoman.

The admission was in relation to the battle for the city of Bakhmut in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.

Russia has been fighting fiercely to take back the city since last summer, and now appears to be pouring more manpower into the region to finish the job.

“They have been trying to take the city since July,” Iryna Rybakova, press officer for Ukraine’s 93rd Brigade, told BBC. “Little by little they are winning now. They have more resources, so if they play the long game they will win. I can’t say how long it will take.”

Moscow has established control of both main roads into the city, with only one back route left open, making it increasingly difficult to get supplies to Ukraine troops.

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Pentagon Wants To Return Special Ops Propagandists To Ukraine

An article by The Washington Post titled “Pentagon looks to restart top-secret programs in Ukraine” contains some interesting information about what US special ops forces were doing in Ukraine in the lead-up to the Russian invasion last year, and what they are slated to be doing there in the future. 

“The Pentagon is urging Congress to resume funding a pair of top-secret programs in Ukraine suspended ahead of Russia’s invasion last year, according to current and former U.S. officials,” writes the Post’s Wesley Morgan. “If approved,the move would allow American Special Operations troops to employ Ukrainian operatives to observe Russian military movementsand counter disinformation.”

Much further down in the article we learn the specifics of what those two top-secret programs were. One of them entailed US commandos sending Ukrainian operatives “on surreptitious reconnaissance missions in Ukraine’s east” to collect intelligence on Russia. The other entailed secretly administering online propaganda, though of course The Washington Post does not describe it as such.

“We had people taking apart Russian propaganda and telling the true story on blogs,” WaPo was told by a source described as “a person in the Special Operations community.”

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Setting The Record Straight – Stuff You Should Know About Ukraine

On February 16, 2022, a full week before Putin sent combat troops into Ukraine, the Ukrainian Army began the heavy bombardment of the area (in east Ukraine) occupied by mainly ethnic Russians. 

Officials from the Observer Mission of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) were located in the vicinity at the time and kept a record of the shelling as it took place. What the OSCE discovered was that the bombardment dramatically intensified as the week went on until it reached a peak on February 19, when a total of 2,026 artillery strikes were recorded. Keep in mind, the Ukrainian Army was, in fact, shelling civilian areas along the Line of Contact that were occupied by other Ukrainians.

We want to emphasize that the officials from the OSCE were operating in their professional capacity gathering first-hand evidence of shelling in the area. What their data shows is that Ukrainian Forces were bombing and killing their own people. This has all been documented and has not been challenged.

So, the question we must all ask ourselves is this: Is the bombardment and slaughter of one’s own people an ‘act of war’?

We think it is. And if we are right, then we must logically assume that the war began before the Russian invasion (which was launched a full week later) We must also assume that Russia’s alleged “unprovoked aggression” was not unprovoked at all but was the appropriate humanitarian response to the deliberate killing of civilians. In order to argue that the Russian invasion was ‘not provoked’, we would have to say that firing over 4,000 artillery shells into towns and neighborhoods where women and children live, is not a provocation? Who will defend that point of view?

No one, because it’s absurd. The killing of civilians in the Donbas was a clear provocation, a provocation that was aimed at goading Russia into a war. And –as we said earlier– the OSCE had monitors on the ground who provided full documentation of the shelling as it took place, which is as close to ironclad, eyewitness testimony as you’re going to get.

This, of course, is a major break with the “official narrative” which identifies Russia as the perpetrator of hostilities. But, as we’ve shown, that simply isn’t the case. The official narrative is wrong. Even so, it might not surprise you to know that most of the mainstream media completely omitted any coverage of the OSCE’s fact-finding activities in east Ukraine. The one exception to was Reuters that published a deliberately opaque account published on February 18 titled “Russia voices alarm over sharp increase of Donbass shelling”. Here’s an excerpt:

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov voiced alarm on Friday over a sharp increase in shelling in eastern Ukraine and accused the OSCE special monitoring mission of glossing over what he said were Ukrainian violations of the peace process….

Washington and its allies have raised fears that the upsurge in violence in the Donbass could form part of a Russian pretext to invade Ukraine. Tensions are already high over a Russian military buildup to the north, east and south of Ukraine.

“We are very concerned by the reports of recent days – yesterday and the day before there was a sharp increase in shelling using weapons that are prohibited under the Minsk agreements,” Lavrov said, referring to peace accords aimed at ending the conflict. “So far we are seeing the special monitoring mission is doing its best to smooth over all questions that point to the blame of Ukraine’s armed forces,” he told a news conference.

Ukraine’s military on Friday denied violating the Minsk peace process and accused Moscow of waging an information war to say that Kyiv was shelling civilians, allegations it said were lies and designed to provoke it.” (Russia voices alarm over sharp increase of Donbass shelling, Reuters)

Notice the clever way that Reuters frames its coverage so that the claims of the Ukrainian military are given as much credibility as the claims of the Russian Foreign Minister. What Reuters fails to point out is that the OSCE’s report verifies Lavrov’s version of events while disproving the claims of the Ukrainians. It is the job of a journalist to make the distinction between fact and fiction but, once again, we see how agenda-driven news is not meant to inform but to mislead.

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Censorship Operations: Covid, War, and More

Wednesday, Congress held a hearing on Twitter’s censorship of The New York Post and its coverage of Hunter Biden’s laptop. While House Republicans focused on issues like shadowbanning and government collusion with Big Tech, Rep. Jamie Raskin and other Democrats advocated for increased censorship from Silicon Valley companies.

Raskin argued that the committee would be better served focusing on “the real threats of massive Russian disinformation and white nationalist violent incitement on social media.”

Like the Biden Administration’s usurpation of the First Amendment, Raskin’s cohort’s goal is censorship and the accompanying augmentation of state power, not challenging the veracity of opponents’ arguments or claims.

In “Shouting Covid in a Crowded Theater,” I discuss how officials in the Biden Administration use wartime rhetorical strategies to slander dissidents. In doing so, they conflate dissent with threats to public safety to censor critics.

When discussing public health, the regime consistently uses labels of “misinformation” and “disinformation.” But the more we learn about government operations, the more it appears that these labels are references to inconvenience, not falsity.

This strategy extends beyond the country’s Covid response.

Wednesday morning, Seymour Hersh published “How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline.”

The Nord Stream 1 and 2 Pipelines exploded in September 2022. The Nord Stream 1 has delivered natural gas from Russia to Europe for over a decade, and Russia was developing the Nord Stream 2 at the time. Outlets like The New York Times called the explosions “a mystery.”

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First Balloons, Now Space Lasers: Chinese Satellite Blasts Green Lights Over Hawaii

Chinese spy balloons aren’t the only strange thing flying over U.S. airspace as of late.

Numerous green laser lights were spotted over Hawaii on Jan. 28, initially believed to be from a NASA satellite that monitors the thickness of ice sheets on earth. However, the claim was retracted on Feb. 6, and responsibility was instead attributed to a Chinese atmospheric monitoring satellite.

The National Astronomical Observatory of Japan published a photo of the lasers on Jan. 28 saying they were “thought to be from a remote-sensing altimeter satellite ICESAT-2/43613,” the NASA satellite. Then, on Feb. 6, NAOJ released an updated report and said it was unlikely to have come from the NASA satellite due to the trajectory of the lasers.

NASA scientist Dr. Alvaro Ivanoff determined via a simulation that the culprit was likely China’s Daqi-1/AEMS satellite, according to Science Alert.

Daqi-1 monitors the earth’s atmospheric environment and can project lasers from its Aerosol and Carbon Dioxide Detection Lidar (ACDL), according to The Science Times.

NASA’s IceSAT-2 functions similarly and fired 10,000 lasers per second to measure changes on the earth’s surface, according to The Science Times.

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US Pentagon is developing a new ‘weapon of mass destruction’: Thousands of drones will work together to destroy enemy defenses – but experts fear humans will lose control of the ‘swarms’

The US Pentagon is planning a new ‘weapon of mass destruction’ that involves thousands of drones that strike by air, land and water to destroy enemy defenses – but experts fear humans could lose control of the ‘swarms.’

The top-secret project, dubbed AMASS (Autonomous Multi-Domain Adaptive Swarms-of-Swarms), would represent automated warfare on an unprecedented scale.

AMASS is still in the planning stages, but DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Project Agency) has been collecting bids from suppliers for the $78 million contract.

Small drones would be equipped with weapons and tools for navigation and communication, along with abilities ranging from radar jamming to launching lethal attacks.

While the technology would change how the US goes to war, experts in the industry raise concerns.

Zachary Kallenborn, a policy fellow at George Mason University in Virginia, said: ‘As the swarm grows in size, it’ll become virtually impossible for humans to manage the decisions.’

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