Tag: perpetual war

Western Banks Warn Against EU Plans To Give Russian Funds To Ukraine

Some Western banks are lobbying against an EU plan to use profits made by Russian central bank funds that are frozen in Europe to arm Ukraine, Reuters reported.

The European Commission has proposed sending up to 3 billion euros to Ukraine per year using the revenue. About 90% would go to a fund called the “European Peace Facility” that can be used to buy weapons for Ukraine, and the remaining funds would go to the EU’s central budget for other types of aid.

Russia has slammed the plan and has vowed to respond. “This is outright banditry and theft. These actions are a gross and unprecedented violation of basic international norms. We said that we would respond, and so we shall,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday.

Sources told Reuters that banks fear they could be held liable by Russia in the future for being involved in the transaction. The report said once sanctions on Russia are eased or lifted, they could face decades of legal action.

The banks also worry the move would erode trust in the Western banking system. One source said it would set a bad precedent and that stealing the funds would amount to the “weaponization of foreign-held reserves and assets.”

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Israel’s Trojan Horse

Piers allow things to come in. They allow things to go out. And Israel, which has no intention of halting its murderous siege of Gaza, including its policy of enforced starvation, appears to have found a solution to its problem of where to expel the 2.3 million Palestinians. 

If the Arab world will not take them, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken proposed during his first round of visits after Oct. 7, the Palestinians will be cast adrift on ships.

It worked in Beirut in 1982 when some eight and a half thousand Palestine Liberation Organization members were sent by sea to Tunisia and another two and a half thousand ended up in other Arab states. Israel expects that the same forced deportation by sea will work in Gaza.

Israel, for this reason, supports the “temporary pier” the Biden administration is building, to ostensibly deliver food and aid to Gaza – food and aid whose “distribution” will be overseen by the Israeli military.  

“You need drivers that don’t exist, trucks that don’t exist feeding into a distribution system that doesn’t exist,” Jeremy Konyndyk, a former senior aid official in the Biden administration, and now president of the Refugees International aid advocacy group told The Guardian. 

This “maritime corridor” is Israel’s Trojan Horse, a subterfuge to expel Palestinians. The small shipments of seaborne aid, like the food packets that have been air dropped, will not alleviate the looming famine. They are not meant to. 

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Moscow Detains 11 Terror Suspects, False Flag Theories Abound, Death Toll Rises To 115 And Will Likely Climb

Russian authorities point finger at Ukraine, as fugitives in car try to cross Ukrainian border.

“The terrorists involved in the attack on the concert building tried to escape to the Russia-Ukraine border,” the Central Investigation Department of the Russian Federal Security Service now reports. “The terrorists planned to cross the border and had contacts on the Ukrainian side. The terrorist attack was carefully planned.”

The death toll from yesterday’s terror attack in Moscow has risen to 93 and will likely climb.

Intelligence agencies have detained 11 people, including four terrorists, who were directly involved in an attack on the Crocus City Hall, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said in a statement.

“The activities of intelligence and law enforcement agencies have resulted in the detention of 11 people, including four terrorists, who directly participated in the terrorist attack on the Crocus City Hall,” the statement reads, reported Russian state media agency TASS.

“There are also reactions [to what happened at Crocus City Hall] that raise more questions. This certainly concerns comments from Washington, which said it saw no signs that Ukrainians might be involved in the terrorist attack,” Zakharova said on the Rossiya-24 television channel.

“If there is no such evidence, then neither the White House nor anyone else is in a position to postulate anyone’s innocence,” Maria Zakharova said

“What grounds Washington officials are using to draw any conclusions in the midst of the tragedy about someone’s noninvolvement is a big question,” Zakharova added. “If the US or any other countries had reliable information on that it should have been provided to the Russian side immediately. If there is no such information neither the White House nor anyone else has the right to indulge anyone,” she noted.

“To be honest, the reaction of the UN Secretary-General’s secretariat raises not simply questions, but big questions, as he stated, I mean the secretariat of his representative, that they are saddened by reports of shooting,” the spokeswoman said, adding that all adequate people, even considering various emotional level, had similar reaction: terror, shock, bewilderment, unconditional condemnation and compassion.

“What does sadness about shooting mean? Maybe no one else, but the United Nations and the secretariat of the UN in particular, and Secretary-General of this structure, and [UN] member-states should see what the rest of the world sees now, a bloody terrorist attack, and unconditionally condemn it,” she stressed.

Questions also have flooded the internet about a possible ‘false flag’ created by the Putin administration itself.

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Saber Rattling Toward Tragedy: The High Stakes of US-China Tensions

The confirmation of US Army Special Forces’ deployment to strategic locations in Taiwan is a harbinger of the United States inching closer to a precipice, one that overlooks a potential conflict with China—a scenario fraught with peril not just for the involved states but for global peace.

This development, while emblematic of the US’s commitment to Taiwan’s defense, inadvertently amplifies the saber rattling that has come to define US-China relations. The stakes of this brinkmanship are alarmingly high, risking a catastrophic conflict that serves no nation’s true interest, save for the military-industrial complex that stands to profit at the cost of countless innocent lives.

A Dangerous Game

The decision to station US Green Berets in Kinmen and Penghu, areas perilously close to mainland China, is not merely a strategic military maneuver but a bold political statement. It represents a significant escalation in the US’s show of support for Taiwan, a move that, while intended to deter Chinese aggression, equally serves to provoke it. This saber rattling—a display of military might under the guise of deterrence—edges us closer to a conflict that, once ignited, could spiral out of control, drawing in multiple global powers into a confrontation nobody wants.

The True Beneficiaries of Conflict

Amid these tensions, it’s crucial to ask: Who truly benefits from such brinkmanship? The sad answer lies in the military-industrial complex, a conglomerate of defense contractors and associated industries whose fortunes swell with the drums of war. For them, the escalation of tensions is not a harbinger of tragedy but an opportunity for profit, achieved at the expense of human lives and global stability. This stark reality underscores the need to scrutinize the motives behind our foreign policy decisions and question the narrative that military escalation equates to deterrence.

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Democrats Cementing Status as America’s Premier War Party

It used to be Republicans that were America’s premier war party. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John McCain, Lindsay Graham were their standard bearers in provoking, starting, prolonging devastating US warfare worldwide.

No more.

The Biden administration provoked Russia into a calamitous border war in Ukraine that threatens nuclear war on top of Ukraine’s descent into a failed state.

The Biden administration, at first, simply continued America’s bipartisan 76 yearlong Israeli Apartheid policy degrading life for Palestinians under their control. But when Israel’s Likud government, under Benjamin Netanyahu, morphed it into genocidal ethnic cleansing of all 2,300,000 Palestinians in Gaza, the Biden administration joined in. Tens of thousands of US bombs and bullets, public support and vetoing repeated calls for ceasefire in the UN Security Council, insures the ethnic cleansing continues unabated. Six months in, over 20,000 Palestinian women and children are dead in a pitiful 139 square miles of rubble leveled largely by US bombs.

Maybe this would have occurred under a second Trump administration. Maybe not. But when Biden proposed another $95 billion on weapons support for both these grotesque wars last fall, Democrats were mostly all in; Republicans mostly all out. Biden got his Democratic majority to quickly pass it in the Senate. But GOP House Speakers McCarthy and his successor Johnson, taking their cue from GOP leader Trump, bottled it up in the House.

Biden’s Democrats no like. To obtain passage, Democrats are resorting to parliamentary trickery to squander more of America’s dwindling treasure.

Rep. Jim McGovern, top Democrat on the House Rules Committee, seeks to use a rarely used rule to force a vote on a massive military spending bill that includes $61 billion for Ukraine and $14 billion for Israel. This in spite of a sizable citizen majority opposing billions more to further destroy Ukraine and Gaza. McGovern is collecting signatures to force a vote on the supplemental defense spending bill. McGovern will need a majority of representatives, at least 218, to sign his petition to bring the bill to a vote even if Speaker Mike Johnson opposes it. (Editor’s note: as of the morning of March 21, McGovern’s motion had 185 of the 218 needed.)

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If SpaceX’s Secret Constellation Is What We Think It Is, It’s Game Changing

The U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is reportedly acquiring a constellation of hundreds of intelligence-gathering satellites from SpaceX, with a specific focus on tracking targets down below in support of ground operations. Though details about this project are still very limited, there are clear parallels to what the U.S. Space Force has previously said about a highly classified space-based radar surveillance program, which it first publicly disclosed around the same time SpaceX is said to have gotten its NRO contract. If this program is the one we think it is, it could bring about a revolution in both tactical and strategic space-based sensing.

Starshield, SpaceX’s government-sales-focused business unit, has been working on the new low Earth orbit (LEO) spy satellites under a $1.8 billion contract it received in 2021 from NRO, according to a report from Reuters this past weekend, citing five anonymous sources familiar with the deal. The Wall Street Journal had previously published a story about the existence of the contract in February, but did not name NRO as being involved or provide specific details about the deal’s scope of work.

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CIA Further Discredits ‘Uyghur Genocide’ by Admitting Covert Influence Campaign

On March 14, Reuters released a bombshell report: in 2019 the Donald Trump White House began a clandestine CIA influence campaign to smear China’s international reputation.

According to three former U.S. officials with direct knowledge, “the CIA created a small team of operatives who used bogus internet identities to spread negative narratives about Xi Jinping’s government while leaking disparaging intelligence to overseas news outlets.” The information releases “targeted public opinion” both internationally and in China itself. Along with influencing public opinion, the campaign sought to “foment paranoia among top leaders [in China]” as they tried to trace the leaked information.

The report specifically stated that CIA operatives “promoted [corruption] allegations” against Chinese government officials and “slammed as corrupt and wasteful China’s Belt and Road Initiative.” Although these specific efforts were identified, the former U.S. officials declined to name additional narratives that were advanced.

Reuters did not confirm that the campaign has continued into the Joe Biden presidency however two “unnamed intelligence historians” told Reuters that such “presidential findings” often remain in place across administrations.

The existence of this CIA influence campaign is probable given the broader historical context.

The Trump Administration marked the extreme acceleration of the United States’ new cold war against China. This began when the Pentagon issued its 2018 National Defense Strategy, which declared a refocus from Middle East “counter-terrorism” to “Great Power Competition” with Russia and China.

Subsequently, 2019 was a banner year for Western escalation against Beijing. In October 2019, the Department of Defense created a new office focused solely on confronting China, called the “deputy assistant secretary of defense for China.” In December 2019, NATO named China as an emerging “challenge.” In 2019 and 2020, the Trump administration doubled U.S. naval transits of the Taiwan Strait over previous years and conducted approximately 1,000 reconnaissance flights over the South China Sea. Of course, when the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in 2020, it was immediately blamed on China.

The above efforts notwithstanding, the main thrust of America’s new cold war against China was informational. America sought to isolate China on the world stage by shredding its international reputation, justifying sanctions, and inhibiting trade. This was clear even before the CIA’s new revelation.

Aside from blaming that nation for COVID-19, the “Uyghur Genocide” narrative was the most prominant vehicle for achieving that goal. But just what focus, if any, does the CIA’s revelation provide to the facts of that narrative as we already know them?

Well, the CIA was there every step of the way.

2019 is the same year that an NGO called the “China Tribunal” began petitioning the UN Human Rights Council, accusing the Chinese Communist Party of conducting an industrial organ harvesting operation that preyed upon Chinese dissidents and Uyghur muslims.

In January 2021, the Trump administration weaponized this claim when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, fresh off his post as CIA director, formally accused China of committing genocide against Uyghur muslims in its Westernmost provice, Xinjiang. To back this claim, Pompeo referred to the findings of a 2020 report written by a German sociologist named Adrian Zenz. The report was titled “Setilizations, IUDs, and Mandatory Birth Control: The CCP’s Campaign to Suppress Uyghur Birthrates in Xinjiang.” In March 2021, Zenz published an additional report, “The Uyghur Genocide: An Examination of China’s Breaches of the 1948 Convention.”

News outlets the world over declared that these reports were being made by “independent third parties.” Nothing could have been further from the truth.

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Weaponizing Reality: The Dawn of Neurowarfare

Billionaire Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface (BCI) company Neuralink made headlines earlier this year for inserting its first brain implant into a human being. Musk says such implants, which are described as “fully implantable, cosmetically invisible, and designed to let you control a computer or mobile device anywhere you go,” are slated to eventually offer “full-bandwidth data streaming” to the brain. 

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are quite the human achievement: as described by the University of Calgary, “A brain computer interface (BCI) is a system that determines functional intent – the desire to change, move, control, or interact with something in your environment – directly from your brain activity. In other words, BCIs allow you to control an application or a device using only your mind.” 

Developers and advocates of BCIs and adjacent technologies emphasize that they can help people regain abilities lost due to aging, ailments, accidents or injuries, thus improving quality of life. A brain implant created by Swiss-based École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne (EPFL), for example, has allowed a paralyzed man to walk again just by thinking. Others go further: Neuralink’s goal is to help people “surpass able-bodied human performance.”

Yet, great ethical concerns arise with such advancements, and the tech is already being used for questionable purposes. To better plan logistics and boost productivity, for example, some Chinese employers have started using “emotional surveillance technology” to monitor workers’ brainwaves which, “combined with artificial intelligence algorithms, [can] spot incidents of workplace rage, anxiety, or sadness.” The example showcases how personal the technology can become as it is normalized in daily life. 

But the ethical ramifications of BCIs and other emerging neurotechnologies don’t stop at the consumer market or the workplace. Governments and militaries are already discussing — and experimenting on — the roles they could play in wartime. Indeed, many are describing the human body and brain as war’s next domain, with a 2020 NATO-backed paper on “cognitive warfare” describing the phenomenon’s objective as “mak[ing] everyone a weapon…The brain will be the battlefield of the 21st century.” 

On this new “battlefield,” an era of neuroweapons, which can broadly be defined as technologies and systems that could either enhance or damage a warfighter or target’s cognitive and/or physical abilities, or otherwise attack people or critical societal infrastructure, has begun.

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US scraps airborne directed-energy weapon program – media

The US Air Force has suspended its attempts to put a 60kw-class laser weapon on the AC-130J, its close air support aircraft, The War Zone said on Tuesday.

The military news outlet has received confirmation that the Airborne High Energy Laser (AHEL) program has been scrapped directly by the Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC). It linked the decision to the retooling of the Pentagon’s arsenals for potential conflicts with peer competitors, such as China.

The Lockheed AC-130 is a version of the C-130 Hercules transport, which the US has been using for over five decades in ground attack operations. The current AC-130J Ghostrider version was introduced in 2015. AHEL was supposed to add a directed energy weapon to the toolkit available for the aircraft.

The War Zone argued that AHEL was axed after years of delays because the Pentagon is preparing for “high-end” warfare, as opposed to counter-insurgency operations. The laser system was touted as an efficient way to deal with militants in an environment where US air superiority is not challenged.

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Inside the anti-Syria lobby’s Capitol Hill push for more starvation sanctions

A week from the 13th anniversary of the US-backed Syrian dirty war, the American Coalition for Syria held its annual day of advocacy in Washington DC. I went undercover into meetings with Senate policy advisors and witnessed the lobby’s cynical campaign to starve Syria into submission.

On the morning of March 7, as the US Capitol teemed with lobbyists securing earmarks ahead of appropriations week and activists decrying the Gaza genocide, one special interest group on the Hill stood out. In the corridors of the Rayburn building, a group of roughly 50 people prepared for a busy day of advocating for sanctions to be levied against their homeland.

They were the Anti-Syria lobby — and had I infiltrated their influence campaign.

Throughout the day, I watched as this group pushed US officials to accept their policy of starvation sanctions while cynically ignoring famished Palestinians in Gaza.

Among the lobbyists was Raed Saleh, the head of the Syrian White Helmets, who were  to propagandize for regime change from behind humanitarian cover.

I attended a total of seven meetings with policy teams representing Senators Sherrod Brown, Maggie Hassan, Ben Cardin, Mark Kelly, Chris Van Hollen, John Fetterman, and Rick Scott. Throughout these sessions, I witnessed the anti-Syria Lobby attempt to bully and manipulate US officials into accepting their policy of starvation while cynically throwing starving Palestinians in Gaza under the bus.

At one moment, Raed Saleh, head of the Syrian White Helmets, which was founded by British intelligence, and funded by NATO states, painted Israeli air strikes against Syria in a positive light.

During a separate meeting, Wa’el Alzayat of the pro-Zionist Muslim outreach Emgage even demanded Senator Chris Van Hollen’s office support the approval of aid for Al Qaeda-linked militias in Syria. 

“Stop freaking out about the stuff going to terrorists,” he insisted, adding that “the Brits are doing it, the Turks are doing it, [and] the Qataris are doing it.”

Purporting to be a voice for all Syrians, the anti-Syria lobby is spearheaded by the American Coalition for Syria (ACS), an umbrella organization representing opposition groups such as the Syrian American Council (SAC), the Syrian Forum, and a handful of others located in the US and Turkey. 

Emgage, meanwhile, has been credited with getting the diaspora vote out for then-candidate Joe Biden in November 2020. The group has since fallen under criticism for acting as a de facto extension of the Biden White House and Democratic Party within the Muslim community. Emgage board member Farooq Mitha formally went to work for the Biden Pentagon in March 2021. On March 7, Alzayat aimed to weaponize Emgage’s influence against Democratic Senators who seemed uncomfortable with an escalating sanctions policy.

“I need a good story for my voters,” he explained to Senator Van Hollen’s team. 

Throughout their sanctions campaign on the Hill, Alzayat and his cohorts operated like a miniature version of their Israel lobby allies, supplying roughly 50 volunteers with folders outlining talking points and the biographies of congressional representatives. The bios included a comprehensive list of the Senator or Representative’s recorded stance on Syria, such as their votes on the extension of the AUMF, the US military withdrawal from Syria, and previous sanctions packages targeting the country. 

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