Tag: perpetual war

Putin ‘sends top general to Venezuela along with troops tasked with training up President Maduro’s forces’ as US considers attacking South American country

Vladimir Putin has sent one of his top generals to Venezuela, along with troops tasked with training Nicolás Maduro’s forces, according to a Ukrainian intelligence official. 

The revelation comes as the US continues to amass a huge military presence in the region, with Donald Trump considering an attack on the South American country. 

Ukraine’s Lt General Kyrlo Budanov has said that Colonel General Oleg Makarevich is leading Russia‘s ‘Equator Task Force’, a group of more than 120 personnel who are coaching the Venezuelan army on everything from infantry tactics to drone use. 

Budanov claims that the Russian mission was already in place before the United States dramatically increased its number of equipment and personnel close to Venezuela. 

The Ukrainian spy chief spoke as Trump‘s administration maintains a large number of US warships, aircraft and troops close to Venezuelan waters. 

Washington says the deployment is aimed at drug traffickers, but it is also part of a campaign to pressure Maduro to resign. Trump’s senior advisers, including defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, are said to be presenting him with options for military operations. 

Budanov argued that Makarevich and his men would not leave if the United States launched an attack. 

He told The War Zone: ‘I think they will be behind the scenes and officially, Russia will try to speak to the US because their units are in Venezuela. It’s just a game.’  

He described the Russian contingent as ‘military advisors and also teachers,’ and said they were providing training for infantry units, UAV operators and special forces. He added that the task force was also helping Venezuela gather signals intelligence.

Keep reading

Uncle Sam as Religious Crusader?

here may be nothing more dangerous for America than President Donald Trump learning about another nation. The president who once campaigned for the Nobel Peace Prize might take America into another foolish war there.

Such as in Nigeria. The West African nation possesses the continent’s largest population and economy. The country is a major oil producer and has survived civil war and military dictatorship. However, it has long been troubled with corruption, instability, and violence. Almost equally divided between Christians and Muslims, Nigeria is home to virulent Islamist terrorist movements and suffers from a brutal rural/tribal conflict with sectarian overtones. Some Muslim-majority states impose shariah law.

The specter of religious conflict looms. In June, some 200 people were murdered in an attack on a largely Christian village. Yunusa Nmadu, head of Christian Solidarity Worldwide-Nigeria, warned that “The rising levels [of] violence and instability being endured by Nigerian civilians constitute a national emergency.” The violence could spread well beyond Nigeria itself. “We are at the precipice,” Nmadu worried. “If Nigeria goes into civil war, all of West Africa is gone.”

Trump recently noticed Nigeria’s plight, declaring on Truth Social: 

If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities. I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action. If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians! WARNING: THE NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT BETTER MOVE FAST!

When questioned whether he might put boots on the ground, he responded, “Could be.”

Keep reading

Venezuela rejects Trump’s ‘ridiculous’ terror designation of ‘non-existent’ drug cartel

The Venezuelan government rejected on 24 November US President Donald Trump’s “ridiculous” plan to designate the “non-existent” Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns) as a terrorist organization.

“Venezuela categorically, firmly, and absolutely rejects the new and ridiculous fabrication by the Secretary of the US Department of State, Marco Rubio, which designates the non-existent Cartel of the Suns as a terrorist organization,” Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil stated on his Telegram channel.

Secretary of State Rubio made the designation official later on Monday. President Trump has claimed without evidence that Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro leads the alleged criminal organization and that it is importing drugs into the US.

The move comes as the US military continues preparations for a possible military operation to carry out regime change in the oil-rich South American nation.

The measure revives “an infamous and vile lie to justify an illegitimate and illegal intervention against Venezuela, under the classic US regime change format. This new maneuver will meet the same fate as previous and recurring aggressions against our country: failure,” the Venezuelan foreign minister added.

Trump held multiple meetings with senior advisors last week to discuss options for a possible military assault on Venezuela, Reuters reported.

In one meeting, Trump was presented with several options for an attack. The meeting was attended by top administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine.

In a separate meeting, Trump said that he may have decided to launch a military assault on Venezuela.

“I can’t tell you what it would be, but I sort of made up my mind” on Venezuela, he stated while speaking with reporters on Air Force One.

The same day, Secretary of War Hegseth announced the launch of Operation Southern Spear, claiming to target “narco-terrorists” in Latin America.

The Venezuelan president has compared a possible attack on his country to the US war on Iraq that was initiated based on lies about weapons of mass destruction, leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

“Since they cannot say that we have hidden biological or chemical weapons, they invent a bizarre narrative,” Maduro said.

The US has deployed F-35 aircraft, warships, and a nuclear submarine to the region, including the USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier strike group with 75 military planes and over 5,000 troops.

Keep reading

US Designates Non-Existent Cartel as a ‘Foreign Terrorist Organization’ To Justify Attacks on Venezuela

The US State Department on Monday formally designated the Cartel de los Soles, or Cartel of the Suns, a group that doesn’t actually exist, as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization,” providing a pretext for a potential attack on Venezuela.

The term “Cartel of the Suns” was first used in the 1990s to describe two Venezuelan military generals with sun insignias on their uniforms who were involved in cocaine trafficking. According to a 60 Minutes report that aired in 1993, one of the generals was working with the CIA at the time.

Today, the term is used to describe a loose network of Venezuelan military and government officials allegedly involved in drug trafficking, but the Cartel of the Suns doesn’t actually exist as a structured organization.

According to InSight Crime, a think tank that receives grants from the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, recent US sanctions mischaracterized the Cartel of the Suns, which InSight described as “a system of corruption wherein military and political officials profit by working with drug traffickers.”

Despite the reality, the US is now calling the Cartel of the Suns a terrorist organization and claims that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is its leader, a push being led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has long sought regime change in Caracas.

President Trump has claimed that the terror designation would allow him to target Maduro or his assets, but any US attack on Venezuela would be illegal without congressional authorization. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said in an interview last week that the designation gives the Pentagon “new options” to go after the “cartel,” meaning the Venezuelan government.

The real allegation against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, according to InSight Crime, is that he allows lower-level officials to profit from the drug trade to keep them content. InSight said that the Venezuelan officials aren’t necessarily directing drug shipments but rather use their “positions to protect traffickers from arrest and ensure that shipments pass through a territory.”

Keep reading

Mind-altering ‘brain weapons’ no longer only science fiction, say researchers

Sophisticated and deadly “brain weapons” that can attack or alter human consciousness, perception, memory or behaviour are no longer the stuff of science fiction, two British academics argue.

Michael Crowley and Malcolm Dando, of Bradford University, are about to publish a book that they believe should be a wake-up call to the world.

They are this weekend travelling to The Hague for a key meeting of states, arguing that the human mind is a new frontier in warfare and there needs to be urgent global action to prevent the weaponisation of neuroscience.

“It does sound like science fiction,” said Crowley. “The danger is that it becomes science fact.”

The book, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry, explores how advances in neuroscience, pharmacology and artificial intelligence are coming together to create a new threat.

“We are entering an era where the brain itself could become a battlefield,” said Crowley. “The tools to manipulate the central nervous system – to sedate, confuse or even coerce – are becoming more precise, more accessible and more attractive to states.”

The book traces the fascinating, if appalling, history of state-sponsored research into central nervous system (CNS)-acting chemicals.

During the cold war and after, the US, Soviet Union and China all “actively sought” to develop CNS-acting weapons, said Crowley. Their purpose was to cause prolonged incapacitation to people, including “loss of consciousness or sedation or hallucination or incoherence or paralysis and disorientation”.

The only time a CNS-acting weapon was used at scale was by the Russian Federation in 2002 to end the Moscow theatre siege. Security forces used fentanyl derivatives to end the siege, in which armed Chechen militants had taken 900 theatregoers hostage.

Most of the hostages were freed, but more than 120 died from the effects of the chemical agents and an undetermined number suffered long-term damage or died prematurely.

Since then, research has made significant advances. The academics argue that the ability exists to create much more “sophisticated and targeted” weapons that would once have been unimaginable.

Dando said: “The same knowledge that helps us treat neurological disorders could be used to disrupt cognition, induce compliance, or even in the future turn people into unwitting agents.”

The threat is “real and growing” but there are gaps in international arms control treaties preventing it from being tackled effectively, they say.

Keep reading

US Peace Plan Bears Striking Resemblance to German AfD Proposal — and Nobody in the Media Wants to Talk About It

US President Donald Trump has once again blown up the scripted narratives of Western foreign-policy elites by unveiling a sweeping 28-point peace plan for Ukraine.

His proposal doesn’t call for endless spending, escalation or for NATO brinkmanship—but for neutrality, security guarantees, territorial arrangements and economic rebuilding.

And here’s the part the media really doesn’t want discussed: Trump’s plan looks strikingly similar to a peace initiative introduced back in 2023 by the AfD in the German Bundestag under foreign policy spokesman Petr Bystron. In other words, the populists had the diplomatic roadmap long before the “serious” people running Europe.

Shared Strategic Premise: Endless War Is a Choice

Trump and the AfD start from the same inconvenient truth—Ukraine will not be “won” on the battlefield. Both proposals reject NATO expansion, call for permanent neutrality, and ban foreign troop deployments inside Ukraine. Both demand international security guarantees, a negotiated ceasefire and a phased military disengagement.

And both reject Washington and Brussels’ childish fantasy that shoveling weapons and cash into a corrupt war zone will magically produce peace.

Converging Approaches to Contested Territories

Even on the most explosive issue—territorial control—both plans take a sober, realistic approach. Trump outlines concrete territorial arrangements.

The AfD plan suggests internationally supervised transitional mandates followed by bilateral negotiations. Different mechanics, same logic: de-escalation, monitoring, and rebuilding instead of mass graves and propaganda slogans. The foreign-policy blob hates it because it acknowledges reality.

Key Differences Highlight Europe’s Failure

The AfD document, written in Europe rather than Washington, is actually the more diplomatic of the two. It doesn’t demand instant recognition of Russian-held territories.

It doesn’t dictate the size of Ukraine’s military or attempt to micromanage internal politics—features in Trump’s draft. Instead, it focuses on negotiations, UN or OSCE mandates and long-term stabilization. But the outcome is the same: stop the dying, stop the spending, stop the geopolitical LARPing.

Keep reading

Disregarding Ceasefire, Israel Hits Beirut

The Israeli military struck Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, Sunday for the first time since June, killing a Hezbollah leader. The attack killed at least five people and injured 28 others, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry. Israeli strikes in Lebanon have continued despite a ceasefire struck last year.

In a statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the strike targeted and killed Hezbollah’s chief of staff, Haytham Tabtabai. Hezbollah confirmed the official’s death.

Netanyahu described Tabtabai as a “mass murderer” and said he was responsible for the deaths of Israelis and Americans.

“The policy I am leading is absolutely clear: Under my leadership, the State of Israel will not allow Hezbollah to rebuild its power, and we will not allow it to pose a threat to Israel again,” he said. “I expect the Government of Lebanon to fulfill its commitment to disarm Hezbollah.”

The U.S. designated Tabatabai as a terrorist in 2016 and offered up to $5 million for information about the military leader.

Keep reading

US Bombs Somalia for 100th Time This Year

US Africa Command announced on Sunday that its forces have launched two more airstrikes in Somalia, bringing the total number of US bombings in the country this year to at least 100, an unprecedented number.

AFRICOM said that the airstrikes were launched on November 21 and November 22 about 37 miles southeast of the Gulf of Aden port city of Bosaso, where US-backed forces have been fighting against an ISIS affiliate in the Caal-Miskaad Mountains.

The command offered no other details about the strikes as it stopped sharing casualty estimates and assessments on civilian harm earlier this year. “Specific details about units and assets will not be released to ensure continued operations security,” AFRICOM said.

The Puntland Counter-Terrorism Operations claimed on Saturday that a US airstrike killed “five fleeing ISIS terrorists” and also said its forces detained a Moroccan national, who it said was the “head of GPS navigation systems” for the ISIS affiliate. The US supports local Puntland forces in the region because the US-backed Federal Government, based in Mogadishu, doesn’t control the region.

Garowe Online, a media outlet based in Puntland, reported that Puntland officials said their forces took control of one of the last known ISIS positions in the Balade Valley, the area of the Caal-Miskaad mountains where recent fighting has been focused.

The Puntland government has come under criticism recently over reports that the UAE has been shipping weapons to Sudan to arm the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which has been accused of committing genocide and recently committed massacres against civilians after it took the city of El Fasher in Sudan’s western Darfur region. According to a report from Middle East Eye, the US has also been using the airbase in Bosaso to support its military operations in Somalia.

The Trump administration has continued to provide support for the Federal Government’s fight against al-Shabaab in southern Somalia and provided heavy air support for an offensive in Somalia’s southern Jubaland region earlier this month. According to local media reports, a suspected US airstrike on the town of Jamame in Jubaland over the weekend killed 12 civilians, including eight children.

AFRICOM told Antiwar.com on Friday that its forces launched a total of 98 airstrikes in Somalia so far in 2025, making the two latest airstrikes the 99th and 100th of the year.

Keep reading

2 U.S. citizens and 2 Chinese nationals accused of illegally exporting highly advanced Nvidia AI chips to China

Two Americans and two Chinese nationals have been arrested and charged after being accused of exporting Nvidia AI chips to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), violating sensitive export controls and threatening national security.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that the two American citizens include 34-year-old Tampa, Florida resident Hon Ning “Mathew” Ho, who is now a U.S. citizen despite being born in Hong Kong, China, as well as 46-year-old Huntsville, Alabama resident Brian Curtis Raymond.

The two Chinese nationals arrested include Cham “Tony” Li, a resident of San Leandro, California, and Jing “Harry” Chen, who was living in Tampa, Florida, on an F-1 student visa.

“On Wednesday, November 19th, 2025, Ho and Chen were arrested and appeared in court in the Middle District of Florida, while Raymond was arrested and appeared in the North District of Alabama. Li was also arrested yesterday and is scheduled to appear today in the Northern District of California,” the DOJ wrote in a Thursday press release.

The highly advanced Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), which accommodate advanced artificial intelligence (AI) applications, have faced strict export controls as the PRC “seeks to become the world leader in AI by 2030 and seeks to use AI for its military modernization efforts and in connection with the design and testing of weapons of mass destruction and deployment of advanced AI surveillance tools,” according to the DOJ release.

According to the indictment, Ho, Raymond, Li, and Chen conspired to violate the export controls from September 2023 to November 2025 “by illegally exporting advanced GPUS to the PRC through Malaysia and Thailand.”

The conspirators allegedly attempted to conceal their actions through Janford Realter, LLC, a front company based in Tampa, Florida, which was “never involved in any real estate transactions” — despite its name.

“Raymond, through his Alabama-based electronics company, supplied NVIDIA GPUs to Ho and others for illegal export to the PRC as part of the conspiracy,” the release detailed.

The conspiracy involved four separate export attempts. The first two exports resulted in 400 NVIDIA A100 GPUs being exported to the PRC between October 2024 and January this year.

“The third and fourth exports to the PRC were disrupted by law enforcement and therefore not completed. These attempted exports related to ten Hewlett Packard Enterprises supercomputers containing NVIDIA H100 GPUs and 50 separate NVIDIA H200 GPUs.”

The release goes on to note that despite knowing licenses were required to export the GPUs to the PRC, “none of the conspirators ever sought or obtained a license for any of these exports. Instead, they lied about the intended destination of the GPUs to evade U.S. export controls.”

Keep reading

US To Launch “New Phase” Of Venezuela Operations, Options Include Overthrowing Maduro: Report

One day after the FAA issued a Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM), or an alert notifying pilots of potential serious hazards in certain airspace, for the Maiquetía Flight Information Region above Venezula, Reuters reported that the US is poised to launch a new phase of Venezuela-related operations in the coming days, citing four U.S. officials.

Amid a sharp escalation of pressure by the Trump administration on President Nicolas Maduro’s government, including proliferating reports of looming action as the US military deployed forces to the Caribbean amid worsening relations with Venezuela, two of the sources said covert operations would likely be the first part of the new action against Maduro, while two US officials told Reuters the options under consideration included attempting to overthrow Maduro.

A senior administration official on Saturday told Reuters that nothing had been ruled out regarding Venezuela.

“President Trump is prepared to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into our country and to bring those responsible to justice,” said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Before the Reuters report, six airlines had already cancelled flights to Venezuela on Saturday after the US aviation regulator warned major airlines of dangers from “heightened military activity” amid a major buildup of American forces in the region, as well as a “potentially hazardous situation” when flying over Venezuela and urged them to exercise caution.

Spain’s Iberia, Portugal’s TAP, Chile’s LATAM, Colombia’s Avianca, Brazil’s GOL and Trinidad and Tobago’s Caribbean have suspended their flights to the country, said Marisela de Loaiza, president of the Venezuelan Airlines Association (ALAV). Panama’s Copa Airlines, Spain’s Air Europa and PlusUltra, Turkish Airlines, and Venezuela’s LASER are continuing to operate flights for now.

The Trump administration has been weighing Venezuela-related options to combat what it has portrayed as Maduro’s role in supplying illegal drugs that have killed Americans. He has denied having any links to the illegal drug trade. 

Maduro, under whose rule Venezuela has experienced crushing hyperinflation and a collapse in its oil production sector amid staggering corruption, has contended that Trump seeks to oust him and that Venezuelan citizens and the military will resist any such attempt. He also has characterized U.S. actions as an effort to take control of Venezuela’s oil.

A military buildup in the Caribbean has been underway for months, and Trump has authorized covert CIA operations in Venezuela.

Keep reading