Tag: perpetual war

Japan’s Growing Militarism: The Drums of War in Support of the American Empire

It seems that Japan is making strategic decisions to join their US and NATO allies in preparation for a global war against their long-time adversaries, China, North Korea, and Russia. The latest deal Tokyo made with Washington for the purchase of 400 Tomahawk cruise missiles with the promise to increase its national defense spending is alarming, “Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s government has pledged to double its annual defense spending to about 10 trillion yen (U.S. $68 billion) by 2027.”  

The Defense Minister of Japan, Minoru Kihara plans for the military’s rapid deployment of the newly acquired American-made missiles along with its own Type 12 surface-to-ship missiles due to its security concerns with China and North Korea.  The U.S. reportedly sold $2.35 billion worth of Tomahawk missiles last November when Kihara signed an agreement with the US ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emanuel, who was the former Chief of Staff under Barack Obama and a former Mayor of Chicago. Kihara said that “Japan and the United States agreed to expedite the deployment “in response to the increasingly severe security environment.” 

Japan’s militarism is growing significantly, “Japan is accelerating its deployment of long-range cruise missiles capable of hitting targets in China or North Korea, while Japanese troops increasingly work side by side with the U.S. and other friendly nations and take on more offensive roles.”  Emanuel said that“under a new defense strategy adopted in December 2022, Japan has joined the United States, Australia, South Korea and many other regional partners “in an aligned vision of how to promote peace and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific and meet the challenges head on” and that “the U.S. approach to its partnership with Japan is “one of ensuring deterrence” and making sure there is no change in the region by military force.” 

Keep reading

Russia Says Ukraine Shot Down Plane Carrying Ukrainian POWs

Russia said on Wednesday that Ukrainian forces shot down a Russian military transport plane over Russia’s Belgorod Oblast, killing all 74 people onboard, including 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war.

The Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement that its forces registered two anti-aircraft missiles fired from Ukraine’s Kharkiv Oblast, which borders Belgorod, that hit the IL-76 aircraft. The ministry claimed the POWs were being transported as part of a planned prisoner swap with Ukraine.

Ukraine has not officially confirmed or denied responsibility for the downing of the plane, but sources told Ukrainska Pravda that Ukrainian forces were responsible. The Ukrainian military also hinted it was behind the incident.

In response to the news, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a statement that it would “continue to destroy means of delivery and control the airspace to eliminate the terrorist threat, including on the Belgorod-Kharkiv front.”

Ukraine’s military intelligence acknowledged in a statement that a prisoner swap was scheduled to take place on Wednesday but said it had no information about who was onboard the downed Russian plane.

Keep reading

U.S. Asks China to Ask Iran to Ask Houthis to Stop Attacking Red Sea Shipping

The Financial Times reported on Wednesday that the Biden administration has asked top Chinese officials to pressure Iran to make its Houthi proxy terrorists in Yemen halt their attacks on Red Sea shipping.

According to the Times’s sources, these pleas from top Biden officials — all the way up to White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken — have fallen on deaf ears in Beijing.

The Biden team has reportedly been asking China for help for “the past three months” but saw “little evidence China had put any pressure on Iran to restrain the Houthis.”

The best Beijing could do was a bland statement asking all parties to guarantee the safety of Red Sea shipping. The Houthis responded by assuring China and Russia that ships flying their flags would not be attacked. Terrorist attacks on the vessels of other nations continued unabated.

Keep reading

No direct threat from Russia – NATO

NATO sees no threat from Russia toward any of its members, the US-led bloc’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters on Tuesday during a press conference in Brussels. His comments come as several countries, including Germany and the Baltic states, have raised concerns of a potential future Russian attack.

Answering questions from journalists following the signing of major new investments in artillery ammunition productions, Stoltenberg stated that, “We don’t see any direct or imminent threat against any NATO ally.”

At the same time, he stressed that the bloc nevertheless “closely monitors what Russia does” and has increased its “vigilance and presence in the eastern part of the alliance,” in order to prevent any attacks on allied nations.

Meanwhile, German news outlets have reported in recent weeks that Berlin was preparing for a scenario in which Russia launches an “open attack” on NATO as early as the summer of 2025 after securing a major victory in Ukraine.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius also warned on Monday that his country should be ready to respond to a possible Russian attack even though there is no real threat as of now.

Keep reading

US Supreme Court Defends Free Speech on Palestine

Free-speech defenders welcomed the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to take up a lawsuit that outlandishly claimed a civil society group provided “material support” for terrorism by advocating for Palestinian human rights.

The Supreme Court’s punting of Jewish National Fund v. U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR)— which comes over three months into Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip — marks the third consecutive time a federal court has dismissed the case, which USCPR said casts “collective activism and expression of solidarity as unlawful.”

In the case’s first dismissal in March 2021, a federal judge said that the plaintiffs’ argument was “to say the least, not persuasive.”  

USCPR Executive Director Ahmad Abuznaid hailed Monday’s move by the nation’s highest court, reiterating the group stands for “justice for all and an end to funding genocide.”

“There’s no lawsuit in the world that can stop us from pushing our demands for human rights,” he said. “We will remain focused on opposing Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people and pursuing justice and freedom for the Palestinian people.”

According to USCPR: 

“At issue were USCPR’s fiscal sponsorship of the Boycott National Committee and expressions of support for the rights and demands of Palestinians participating in the Great Return March [2108-19], when Palestinians protested to demand respect for their right to return to the villages from which Israeli settlers expelled them in 1948.”

Keep reading

Biden’s ‘Sustained Campaign’ in Yemen Is Illegal and Pointless

The U.S. and Britain continue to wage war on Yemen while pretending that they aren’t at war:

The U.S. and U.K. launched strikes against eight Houthi targets Monday, the two countries said, in a continuing bid to stop the Yemeni rebel group’s attacks on ships transiting the Red Sea.

The strikes marked the second major assault by a joint force of the two countries and the eighth time overall that the U.S. has targeted the group, which is armed, funded and supported by Iran.

The latest round of attacks is part of the Biden administration’s plan for a “sustained campaign” that Congress has never debated or authorized. The U.S. has dubbed the campaign Operation Poseidon Archer, and the administration has no idea when it will be concluded. According to the Post, U.S. officials say that they “don’t expect that the operation will stretch on for years like previous U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria,” but that is not much of a consolation when the administration can’t even admit that it is fighting a war.

Knowing how our government tends to prolong and alter its military missions once they start, it isn’t hard to imagine the current campaign morphing into something else over time. The troops that are now in Syria were sent there to fight ISIS, but now they stay there to oppose Iranian influence and serve as targets for local militias. U.S. forces have been fighting in Somalia for more than a decade and a half, and there is no sign that they are leaving anytime soon. Once U.S. forces are involved in hostilities in a country, there is considerable resistance to extricating them. Even if the new war in Yemen turns out to be the limited one that the administration claims that it is, that won’t change the fact that it is illegal and unauthorized. If support for the Saudi coalition war on Yemen merited a war powers challenge (and it absolutely did), direct military action in Yemen definitely requires that Congress step up and put a stop to the president’s illegal war.

Keep reading

Is A Huge War Coming? US & Israel Bomb Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Gaza & Lebanon While Threatening War With Iran

The brutal war that Israel is waging on Gaza is increasingly becoming a regional conflict.

Since October, the United States and Israel have bombed not only Gaza, but also Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.

Now, the U.S. government is even threatening Iran with war. President Joe Biden sent the Iranian government a private message while the U.S. military was bombing Yemen on January 13. He said threateningly, “We’re confident, we’re well prepared”.

While this is happening, South Africa has introduced a case in the International Court of Justice, the top United Nations judicial authority, which accuses Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinian people.

South Africa’s case has garnered support from dozens of countries across the Global South.

This case has frightened Israel and its sponsors in Washington. They are apparently seeking to expand the conflict into a regional war, to try to win more sympathy and to turn attention away from what South Africa and many countries have referred to as a genocide in Gaza.

In fact, top UN experts have been warning precisely this for months: that the Palestinian people face “the risk of genocide in Gaza”, and that there has been a “failure of the international system to mobilise to prevent genocide”.

The Financial Times reported in December that, in just two months of Israeli bombing, Gaza had become one of the most heavily bombed areas in human history.

Keep reading

Senior NATO Official Says There Will Be A Hot War With Russia

A high ranking NATO official has stated that people in Europe should prepare for a full on war with Russia sometime in the next two decades.

Admiral Rob Bauer, chairman of Nato’s Military Committee, told reporters following a meeting of Nato defence chiefs in Brussels that governments need to start putting preparations in place, and that civilians will need to be mobilised on a large scale.

“We have to realise it’s not a given that we are in peace. And that’s why we [Nato forces] are preparing for a conflict with Russia,”Baur declared.

He continued, “But the discussion is much wider. It is also the industrial base and also the people that have to understand they play a role.”

“It starts there,” Bauer continued, adding “The realisation that not everything is planable and not everything is going to be hunky dory in the next 20 years.”

The Telegraph reports that Baur also heaped praise on Sweden for telling its people to brace for war.

Keep reading

Conscription may be on its way back after Nato warns of all-out war with Russia

Atop military officer has warned people could be conscripted into the armed forces after Nato admitted it is preparing for an all-out war with Russia.

Admiral Rob Bauer, chairman of Nato’s military committee, delivered a chilling message that civilians must brace themselves for the prospect of being called up for military service.

In a stark warning, he said we must all be ready for a full-scale conflict with Russia in the next 20 years that would completely change lives.

The 61-year-old also said large numbers of civilians would need to be mobilised in case World War Three breaks out and that governments would need systems in place to manage the process.

‘We have to realise it’s not a given that we are in peace,’ he told reporters after a meeting between Nato defence chiefs in Brussels.   Continue reading

‘And that’s why we have the plans, that’s why we are preparing for a conflict with Russia.

‘But the discussion is much wider. It is also the industrial base and also the people that have to understand they play a role.’

Keep reading

NATO: Next 20 Years Not ‘Hunky Dory’ and Public Needs to Prepare Itself to Survive ‘The First 36 Hours’ of War

NATO militaries are better prepared for war now than they were a year ago but broader society hasn’t yet realised it needs to as well, and if the public starts panic-buying radios, torches, and bottled water to “survive the first 36 hours” then “that’s great”, the alliance’s military chief said.

The most senior military officer in the North Atlantic Treat Organisation (NATO) has said while the Ukraine war has stalled for both sides, the Russian ability to regenerate force is becoming a concern and a potential conflict between Russia and the alliance itself — rather than a proxy like Ukraine — will be “a whole of society event” the West is not yet ready for. Speaking to the press at NATO headquarters in Belgium, Dutch Admiral and Chair of the alliance’s Military Committee Rob Bauer painted a bleak picture of an unpredictable future which the wider public should now be preparing for, rather than compartmentalizing war as something that happens a long way away, and impacts professional soldiers only.

Challenged on the preparedness of the West for Russian aggression, Admiral Bauer said NATO militaries had come on considerably recently, and as a defensive organisation NATO existed to be prepared for Russian aggression. But times were changing and the public needs to be ready too. He said: “the big difference with a year ago is a lot of things have happened in the armed forces and defence organisations. What hasn’t happened is in our societies, the understanding that it is more than the military that has to be able to operate in a conflict or in a war. It is the whole of a society that will get involved whether we like it or not.”

A visibly agitated Baurer responded to one journalist accusing military leaders of attempting to frighten the public with their announcements, the press writer citing a Swedish general telling the public that war is coming and they should be ready for it had led to “panic buying” of self-preparedness items. Bauer said if the public are “surprised” to suddenly discover they are to be part of a whole-of-society effort to repel Russian aggression then “that’s great”.

The admiral responded to the question that this shock could spur individuals to become more prepared. He said in remarks likely meant for the public: “the people, they have to understand they play a role. Society is part of the solution… you need to have water, you need to have a radio on batteries, you need to have a flashlight with batteries to make sure you can survive the first 36 hours. Things like that, that’s simple things but it starts there.”

Keep reading