Tag: perpetual war

Trump Says US ‘Must Respond’ After US Apache Helicopter Shot Down Near Iran

President Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday that the US “must respond” after the US military told him that a US Army Apache helicopter was shot down by Iranian forces in the Strait of Hormuz.

His post came after US Central Command said that its forces rescued two crew members from the helicopter, and media reports said that the US was probing whether Iran was responsible for the incident, which came a day after a US F/A-18 fighter jet bombed an oil tanker that was trying to reach Oman. So far, Iran hasn’t taken credit for shooting down the helicopter, but it has made clear it will respond to US attacks on ships.

“I have just been informed by our Great Military that last night the Iranians shot down one of our highly sophisticated Apache Helicopters while patrolling over the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“There were two pilots involved, both are safe and uninjured. Nevertheless, the United States must, of necessity, respond to this attack. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” the president added.

According to The Associated Press, the two crew members of the Apache spent about two hours in the water before being rescued by a 24-foot unmanned boat.

Tuesday’s incident comes after Iran struck Israel in response to Israeli strikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut. Israel then launched strikes on Iran, and President Trump called on the two sides to “stop shooting,” but shortly after his statement, CENTCOM announced the strike on an oil tanker.

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Pentagon Names Alibaba, Baidu, And BYD In Updated Chinese Military Companies List As DoD Contracting Bans Loom

The Department of Defense has filed a major update to its official list of “Chinese military companies” operating in the United States, formally naming or reaffirming high-profile firms including Alibaba, Baidu, BYD, BGI Group, and Autel as companies linked to Beijing’s military-civil fusion strategy.

The notice, filed on Monday and scheduled for Federal Register publication on June 10, comes just weeks before new restrictions on Department of Defense contracting with listed entities take effect on June 30. The companies are alleged to have ownership or ties to SASAC (State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission), affiliations with MIIT (Ministry of Industry and Information Technology), PLA connections, support from China’s “Little Giant” industrial program, or a presence in military-civil fusion zones.

Section 1260H requires the Pentagon to identify Chinese companies that conduct commercial business while also supporting or being affiliated with the People’s Liberation Army or China’s defense-industrial base. The list has existed for years, but the consequences are now becoming more significant. Effective June 30, the DoD will be barred from entering into, renewing, or extending contracts directly with listed companies or entities they control. A broader indirect ban – covering goods or services that incorporate products from these firms – follows in June 2027. Additional rules restrict DoD contractors from working with entities that lobby on behalf of listed companies.

In short, the Pentagon is putting major Chinese companies on notice that it views them as potential extensions of China’s military and defense ecosystem, even if those companies are better known globally for consumer products, cloud services, electric vehicles, drones, or biotech.

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Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov Says the Fate of War in Ukraine Will Be Decided by Soldiers, Not Peace Talks

Moscow will rely on its ‘missile diplomacy’.

We reported here on TGP about how Kiev regime leader Volodymyr Zelensky sent a public letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, ostensibly to ask for direct peace talks.

But upon closer examination, the letter was a puerile provocation, offending and trying to ridicule Putin, and was destined to try to claim the higher moral ground in terms of peace efforts.

Putin chose to respond not to Zelensky, but to the Russian soldiers: ‘rabotayte, brat’ya!’ (Work, brothers!)

Today (8), Russia’s Foreign Minister also criticized Zelensky’s PR move, labeling it rude.

Lavrov rejected the possibility of direct talks with Kiev, saying ‘guns will do the talking’.

Euronews reported:

“Sergey Lavrov specifically pointed out on Monday that Moscow is unhappy that the letter was ‘circulated around the world’, claiming that ‘polite people do not behave this way’.

Lavrov also claimed that for the Kremlin it ‘indicates that Ukraine has no interest in negotiation’.

[…] Russia’s foreign minister echoed Putin’s earlier statement that ‘it is not negotiations but the actions of those involved’ on the front lines of Russia’s war ‘that are crucial to the outcome’ of [the war].”

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Germany Says It’s Ready To Take the Lead in Russia-Ukraine Peace Negotiations

This readiness does not mean much, since Russia won’t accept the Europeans as mediators.

Yesterday (7), once again the E3 group of Euro-Globalists (UK’s Keir Starmer, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Friedrich Merz) met with Kiev regime leader Volodymyr Zelensky to discuss the war and the peace process in the Russia-Ukraine war.

These meetings have happened countless times, and never yield anything practical, only tired speeches from four deeply unpopular leaders.

This time around, the E3 leaders published a list of 5 demands to achieve peace in Ukraine – a list that will surely be ignored by both the Russians and the US.

Today, a spokesman for German Chancellor Friedrich Merz stated that the European leaders are ‘ready to assume the leading role in negotiations’ to end the war.

Politico reported:

“’What is new, I believe, is that this process is now gaining new momentum in Europe’, Stefan Kornelius, Merz’s spokesperson, said following a meeting between the leaders of Ukraine, France, Germany and the U.K in London late Sunday. ‘Another new development is that we are taking up and continuing the negotiation process that the U.S. has largely led. We are doing this in close coordination with the U.S’.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, have led efforts to broker negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, since early 2025 with few tangible results. The European initiative to assume a leading role in peace talks comes as Washington focuses increasingly on ending the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.”

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Higher Education Must Not Become a Research Arm of Militarized Power

hat happens to higher education when institutions dedicated to critical thought increasingly align themselves with the logics of war, surveillance, and national security? Unless we mount an organized resistance, we may viscerally experience the answer to this question all too soon.

We are already watching this transformation play out in both the U.S. and Canada as universities face growing pressure to align their missions, research agendas, and pedagogical practices with the values, priorities, and imperatives of a society increasingly organized around the logic of war.

Militarized policies, values, identities, and modes of governance no longer merely creep into U.S. society. Under the Trump administration, they increasingly define it. Militarization now extends far beyond the battlefield, reshaping everyday life, public institutions, and the very meaning of citizenship. War is celebrated as a moral imperative, often wrapped in the language of religious righteousness and white Christian nationalism. Due process gives way to abductions and arbitrary detention, dissent is met with threats and repression, soldiers occupy U.S. cities, and political violence is normalized through a steady stream of incendiary rhetoric and state-sponsored spectacles that glorify force, exclusion, and domination. Democratic ideals are displaced by a culture of fear, manufactured insecurity, and the belief that the nation is besieged by enemies both within and beyond its borders — largely immigrants and people of color.

In this militarized landscape, critical thought is derided, informed judgment is replaced by ideological conformity, and institutions charged with nurturing democratic agency increasingly come under attack. This fusion of militarism, toxic masculinity, religious fundamentalism, and white nationalist politics functions as a powerful form of public pedagogy, producing the authoritarian values, identities, and modes of agency that have historically provided the cultural foundations for fascist politics.

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Angry Pentagon Sources Leak Report Of Israel’s ‘Unhinged’ Spying On US Officials

It’s no secret that Israeli spying and surveillance is pervasive, and it is often even directed at its most powerful ally and backer, the United States. But the phenomenon has escalated of late, outraging Washington intelligence officials.

Behind the scenes of this alliance which mainstream media and pundits typically project as essentially untouchable, deep-seated friction is boiling over. In an unprecedented move, the Pentagon has officially elevated Israel’s counterintelligence threat level to its highest possible category, driven by surging internal alarm that this primary Mideast regional ally is aggressively ramping up espionage operations targeting senior US officials – even Trump’s own top Iran negotiator.

The intelligence warning, freshly reported this weekend by NBC News and The New York Times, highlights a profound rift within the national security apparatus as tensions mount between the Trump administration and Israel over the ongoing joint war on Iran.

The revelation’s timing is interesting, given it comes after Axios reported at the start of this month that on a phone call President Trump ‘steamrolled’ Prime Minister Netanyahu. Trump is said to have been “pissed” and at one point yelled and berated Netanyahu, saying “What the fuck are you doing?”

And now, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) is broadcasting an internal alert raising Israel’s specific threat designation to “critical”. According to details revealed in a Sunday NBC report:

The designation stems from concerns within the Pentagon that Israel is making a particular effort to surveil top U.S. officials to get information on the Trump administration’s internal deliberations and decision-making on the conflicts in the Middle East, the officials said.

The DIA assessment includes a seven-page document and features a chart, according to one of the current U.S. officials. The document says the assessment of Israel is that its ability to conduct human espionage and technical collection is at a “critical level,” according to the official.

And parallel to this, a report by the NY Times lists out names that are very high level within the Trump administration. Israel has allegedly focused its electronic and human efforts to eavesdrop on the following officials (likely among others):

  • Steve Witkoff, Trump’s premier regional negotiator.
  • Elbridge A. Colby, the Pentagon’s top policy official.
  • Michael P. DiMino IV, one of Colby’s primary deputies.

The Israeli embassy in Washingtons has slammed the reports as ‘completely false’: “This entire story is false and sourced to someone who doesn’t have any knowledge of what’s going on,” it said in a statement.

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All Roads Lead Back to Reagan: The Reagan Era Policies Still Haunting America Decades Later

Ronald Reagan, the 40th President of the United States, passed away 22 years ago on June 5th, 2004, at 93 years of age. When it comes to Reagan’s legacy in the political establishment, he is lauded as perhaps one of the best presidents in American history. Upon his death much of the nation was brought to a veritable standstill, as his funeral acted as an unofficial national day of mourning.

As Reagan’s casket was brought out of the Capitol rotunda, cannons fired in his honor, the reading of his funeral rites broadcast in New York’s Times Square as well as on televisions around the world. Over 100,000 people attended his funeral to pay their respects, including multiple former presidents, government officials, and diplomats from around the world. In a CBS News broadcast the day of his death, Reagan’s personal biographer Edmund Morris described him as “looking and acting presidential, a man with dignity”.

Morris describes Reagan’s “largest mission in life” as “the moral leadership of the United States”. In Morris’s words Reagan saw himself as a savior sent to tame the government and get it off the backs of the American people. But beyond the aggrandizement and grandstanding, when one takes a more critical look at the legacy left behind, what is revealed is a much darker history than American political revisionists like to admit. One fraught with systemic corruption and the exploitation of the American people.

In this article, we will take a look at Ronald Reagan’s true legacy, and while not exhaustive, highlight several policy decisions that still impact the lives of American citizens today.

Naturally, we shall start with foreign policy, as it is arguably the most impactful and extensive. In this area Reagan is typically hailed as a hero more than most in the annals of American exceptionalist revisionist history. He started off his presidency in January of 1981 being credited with bringing an end to the Iran hostage crisis, as Iran would agree to release 52 Americans after 444 days in captivity shortly after Reagan was sworn into office.

This immediately did wonders for Reagan’s image as a diplomatic tough guy that Americans could look up to. But the reality is much more sinister. Acclaimed investigative journalist and founder of Consortium News Robert Parry (1948 – 2018) spent decades amassing evidence ignored by the DC political beltway proving that, in truth, members of the Reagan campaign, particularly campaign manager and future CIA director William Casey, undertook efforts to sabotage attempts by the Carter administration to free the American hostages for political gain. Casey and others would covertly meet with Iranian officials in Madrid during the summer of 1980 and strike a secret deal insuring that Iran would agree to only release the hostages on the day of Reagan’s inauguration in exchange for arms shipments.

With this act of political subterfuge, Reagan’s presidency began with a borderline act of treason, treating American lives as bargaining chips.

Of course, this was only the beginning. As secret dealings with Iran would scandalize the entire Reagan presidency. The Iran Contra affair, beginning in 1985, would go on to leave a lasting and disastrous blight both inside and outside of the United States.

During the height of the Cold War, the staunchly anti-communist Reagan administration would go to any lengths no matter how deplorable to exert American imperialist dominance across the globe. When the leftist Sandinista government came to power in Nicaragua, the Reagan administration sought to oust them with a coup. When Congress denied funding for this operation, Reagan would once again turn to his pal William Casey, now director of the CIA, and their Iranian allies, as well as the cartel.

The CIA would begin making covert arms shipments to Iran via Israel, despite an embargo in place at the time, using the revenue to fund an insurgency by the Contras, a right wing militant terrorist group fighting to oust the Sandinista government. At the same time, the CIA would put itself in business with the Contras cartel allies in a plot to help bolster the Contras funding, a scandal later exposed by journalist Gary Webb whom revealed the CIA helped to facilitate cocaine trafficking into the United States, resulting in the disastrous crack epidemic of the 80s and 90s which unceremoniously claimed thousands of lives.

These undertakings initiated by Reagan have left lasting scars on American society and politics. In the decades since, Nicaragua has continued to be a prime target for imperialist regime change efforts, particularly following the 2006 election of Daniel Ortega which brought the Sandinistas back to power and lead to a series of coup attempts against his government by both the Bush jr and Obama administrations, as well as a deadly relaunching of Reagan-era destabilization efforts against Nicaragua as recently as 2023 under the Biden administration.

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Who is Funding Fulani Militants Killing Christians in Nigeria?

The Fulani militant campaign is the deadliest source of violence against Christians in the world. Of 36,056 civilian killings across Nigeria between 2019 and 2024, 47 percent were directly linked to Fulani militias, according to the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa. In states where attacks occur, Christians were murdered at a rate 5.2 times higher than Muslims relative to population size, with three Christians killed for every Muslim. Fulani militants were responsible for 55 percent of recorded Christian deaths between 2019 and 2023, nearly seven times the number killed by Boko Haram and ISWAP combined.

Kidnapping is also a primary funding mechanism. ORFA documented 29,180 civilians abducted between 2019 and 2024, with individual raids regularly exceeding 100 victims, including 287 students seized in a single attack in Kuriga, Kaduna State in March 2024 and more than 300 taken from St. Mary’s Catholic School in November 2025, the largest school kidnapping on record.

Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics found that Nigerians paid $1.42 billion in ransoms from May 2023 to April 2024 alone. Those payments helped finance the next round of attacks while forcing Christian families to liquidate farmland and other assets to secure the release of relatives. Victims and community leaders report that after attacks drove Christians from their villages, Fulani groups often occupied the abandoned land, reinforcing claims that territorial expansion is a key objective of the violence.

The kidnapping-for-ransom economy that now partly sustains Fulani militant operations is a later development, not the original funding source. Three streams capitalized the campaign before kidnapping became viable: wealthy Fulani cattle owners, northern political and military patronage, and cross-border jihadist networks.

Since the 1980s, wealthy Fulani cattle owners have supplied fellow tribesmen with AK-47 assault rifles. Cattle profits are converted directly into weapons, while Christian communities surviving at a subsistence level often cannot afford firearms. Even when they can afford them, assault rifles are prohibited under Nigerian law, which is rigorously enforced against sedentary Christian farming communities while being largely ignored in the case of nomadic Fulani herders.

A 2025 peer-reviewed study by Texas Southern University researchers states directly that Fulani militants’ access to sophisticated weapons “is not surprising because they are financially supported by cattle owners through Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN),” the organization the study identifies as financing the transformation of fighters who once carried knives and bows into units deploying assault rifles and AK-47s.

MACBAN’s institutional reach extends to the highest levels of northern Nigeria’s Islamic establishment. Founded in 1979 with the support of the Sultan of Sokoto, the Emir of Zazzau, the Emir of Katsina, and the late Emir of Kano, the organization counts former President Buhari, the son of a Fulani chieftain and a retired army major general, as its life patron.

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Israel Bombs Iranian Regime After Terrorist Strikes

Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy, has been perpetually firing on Israelis, and an Arab terrorist murdered Master Sergeant (Res.) Haim Kalomiti and injured multiple others in a jihad attack Sunday in Tzur Natan, one of over a thousand attempted terror attacks on Israelis just since March. Then Hezbollah’s Tehran paymasters began bombarding Israel. There has never been a ceasefire. Both Hezbollah and Iran’s regime never stopped shooting at civilians, not for a single day.

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) posted late on June 7, “The Israeli Air Force struck military targets belonging to the Iranian terror regime in western and central Iran a short while ago.”

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Another War for Israel We Should Never Have Gotten Into

In his highly-regarded podcast, Judging Freedom, on June 1, Judge Napolitano asked British diplomat Alastair Crooke if the Israelis really cared if the Strait of Hormuz remained closed and the U.S. economy, and by extension the world economy, suffered.

Crooke replied that the billionaires who support Israel so strongly have so much wealth that many would regard a recession or even a depression as an “opportunity” to buy farmland and other assets.

People of great wealth are not really affected by the higher gas and food prices and other inflation brought on by the U.S./Israeli war against Iran. But everyone else is, and this war, unpopular even at the start, is becoming less popular every day.

This is in sharp contrast with the Iraq war, which was very popular at the start but very unpopular three or four years later.

Even at the start, most polls showed 65 to 70% were against the war in Iran. And I believe that most who did not poll in opposition were really not in favor of the war, but just did not want to oppose the President on this.

Many leading conservatives, such as Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Steve Bannon, Rand Paul, and many others, have come out against this war. Conservatives under 50 have polled heavily against it.

Megan Kelly said on the Piers Morgan Show that this was “clearly Israel’s war,” that it  “needed to end ugly, or any other way,” and that she favored an end even if it looked like a “surrender on our part.” She added: “It was folly to begin with. It was folly throughout. It remains folly.”

Tucker Carlson said in an interview with the BBC: “The single biggest mistake Trump, or any other American president, has made in my lifetime is going to war with Iran. We are only doing this at the behest and then the demand of Israel.”

I pointed out in several columns that almost every member of Congress would have been rushing to condemn the killing, starving, and maiming of little children that went on in Gaza if it had been done by any other Country than Israel. And the exact same thing can be said about the war in Iran.

The great majority of the American people are sick and tired of foreign wars and know that we have a mind-boggling $ 39 trillion in national debt. They want our elected officials to start putting America First, and they know this war is putting Israel First.

We have bought and paid for Congress when it comes to anything Netanyahu and Israeli warmongers want. Because of campaign contributions for members of Congress, or fear of contributions against them, from supporters of Israel, members are like the three wise monkeys: see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil.

The late Charley Reese was once voted as the most popular columnist in a poll by many thousands of C-Span viewers. He wrote many times that the terrorism against the U. S. was the  “direct result of our one-sided support of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians.”

In 2005, Reese wrote: “The big pushers for war with Iraq are the usual suspects-Americans with a long record of pretending to speak about America’s interests when in fact they are pushing an Israeli agenda.” Now put the word “Iran” where he wrote “Iraq.”

Almost everyone, if asked, will say they favor peace for the Middle East. But the United States cannot be a neutral peace broker there as long as we are so far under the thumb of the international war criminal Netanyahu.

Even the longtime Jewish New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman, wrote in May last year that “This Israeli government is behaving in ways that threaten hard-core U.S. interests in the region. Netanyahu  is not our friend.”

Many years ago, David Halberstam wrote words about the Vietnam War that could and should be applied to the Middle East today: “I do not think we are winning in any true sense, nor do I see any signs we are about to win. That is why this is such a sad story to write.”

He added: “I do not think our Vietnamese can win their part of the war, nor do I think we can win it for them. I think we will finally end up lowering our sights, encouraging our Vietnamese to talk to their Vietnamese, hoping somehow they can settle what we cannot.”

No matter how many bombs we drop or how many billions we spend, there will never be peace in the Middle East unless and until we get out of the way and force the people there to talk to each other and work things out themselves. We cannot do it for them.

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