Tag: perpetual war

US To Establish Military Base In Syria’s Damascus

The US is planning to establish a military base in Damascus, Syria, Reuters has reported, as the Trump administration continues to strongly back the new Syrian government that’s led by former al-Qaeda leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.

The report said that the US will establish a military presence at an airbase on the outskirts of the Syrian capital for the purpose of enabling a security pact that Washington is attempting to broker between Israel and Syria.

The idea would be for the US military to monitor a potential deal that would include the demilitarization of areas to the south of Damascus. Officials compared it to the US monitoring of the ceasefire deal in Lebanon, which Israel has constantly violated, and the ceasefire deal in Gaza, which Israel has also been in breach of.

A Syrian Foreign Ministry official later told Syria’s state news agency SANA that the Reuters report was “untrue” but did not specifically deny that the US would establish a military presence in Damascus.

“The current stage marks a transformation in the US position towards direct engagement with the Syrian central government in Damascus, and towards supporting the country’s unity while rejecting any calls for partition,” the official said.

A Syrian defense official told Reuters that the US had flown to the base in military C-130 transport aircraft to ensure the runway was usable, and a security guard at one of the base’s entrances said that American aircraft were landing there as part of “tests”.

Previous reports have said that the Trump administration may sign an agreement with the new Syrian government to formalize its military presence in Syria.

The US has been closing bases in northeast Syria but is expected to maintain its presence at the al-Tanf Garrison in the south, which is situated where the borders of Syria, Iraq, and Jordan converge.

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Onward Christian Soldiers

Somewhere between New York’s Studio 54 disco and the White House, Donald Trump became infused by militant Christianity. At the same time, he also seems to have been imbued by the most extreme, far-right Zionism.

Politics do odd things. Trump may espouse a lot of oddball causes, but he’s no fool. He lives and breathes politics.

This week’s political rabbit out of the hat is, of all places, Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nations, with 232 million rambunctious people. As with many of today’s world problems, Nigeria was a creation of British imperialism. The British took a very large swathe of West Africa comprising all sorts of peoples, religions and tribes, drew a line around its borders, and called it Nigeria.

Northern Nigeria, which abuts the Sahara, was predominantly Muslim. Southern Nigeria, where vast stores of oil were eventually discovered, became largely Christian thanks to intense British missionary activity. The two huge communities occasionally squabble or fight, most often over land disputes, cattle rusting and kidnapping of women.

This behavior is common all over West and Southern Africa. Its victims number less than black people killed each year in Chicago’s endemic urban violence.

It’s nonsense to say Nigeria is racked by anti-Christian violence. The tribal conflict that it suffers is small-time violence whose numbers and severity have long been played up by fundamentalist Christians in the United States who preach holy war against Muslims everywhere. Most of these militant Christian fundamentalists look at Trump as a second savior. He has carefully cultivated this image.

The Christian far right is a key component of Trump’s supporters. The late far-right Christian advocate, Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated was a key spokesman for Trump’s Christian moment. The Christian Right has long been focused on Africa, raising funds for anti-Islamic causes. The most notable were efforts to break the regions of Darfur from Sudan in 2018, and the current conflict in the same region as Sudan is being pulled apart.

Most impressive was US support in 2011 for secessionist, primarily Christian South Sudan – another oil rich area. South Sudan broke away with US help from Sudan, then proceeded to fall into tribal chaos and banditry. Christian groups in America had urged on this dismemberment of Sudan and even, in some cases, supplied arms to the south Sudanese rebels.

Many fundamentalist Christian voters get much of their world news from the propaganda mill at Fox News or church-issued news bulletins. Many approve Trump’s proposal that US troops be sent to Nigeria to succor Christians without being able to locate Nigeria on a map. All this fits in with efforts by the Trump administration to vilify Muslims in general or ban them from the US.

Let’s hope the 82nd Airborne Division is not about to be dropped onto Abuja Nigeria on some sort of later-day Crusader mission to please the folks in Biloxi, Mississippi. Trump vowed no more Third World wars (China excepted) and now he’s stepping right into one of totally unpredictable outcome and no sense whatsoever. Some in the White House are urging Trump to conquer all the world’s oil producers. He wants to be King of Oil on top of king of most everything else.

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Biden responsible for Ukraine conflict – Orban

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has accused former US President Joe Biden’s administration of driving the Ukraine conflict by pushing EU member states to adopt a more confrontational line against Russia. 

Unlike most other countries in the bloc, Hungary has consistently opposed Brussels’ anti-Russian policies and has called for a more diplomatic approach to put an end to the hostilities. It has also refused to provide weapons to Kiev and opposed EU sanctions against Moscow.

“Without the pressure coming from the US government – I’m speaking about 2022 – the Europeans would not take that hard line that they have today on the war,” Orban told reporters after a meeting with US President Donald Trump at the White House on Friday.

He emphasized that some major EU economies “rejected to be involved more than just sending some, you know, humanitarian issues.”

“That’s the fact of history,” the prime minister concluded.

Orban’s remarks were echoed by Trump, who responded that the conflict stemmed from mistakes made by his predecessor. The president argued that “Biden actually pushed for that war to happen,” adding that he – Trump – “inherited that mess.”

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History Will Not Be Kind to Dick Cheney

Dick Cheney died this week. He leaves behind a wretched legacy.

Cheney reached the pinnacle of his influence as George W. Bush’s vice president, a position from which he orchestrated the Iraq War and helped bring about one of the most intrusive pieces of legislation ever to have been leveled against the American people.

Democrats reflexively abhorred Cheney as veep, but as GOP voters became more averse to foreign intervention, he became a symbol of everything that is wrong with U.S. foreign policy. As Jack Kenny said in 2011, “[Cheney’s] impact on and, to a large extent, direction of foreign policy during the Bush presidency suggests that if he was and is a conservative, his is the kind of conservatism George Will described as believing that ‘government can’t run Amtrak, but it can run the Middle East.’”

Iraq Intervention: Why?

As vice president, Cheney was the loudest voice to advocate the invasion of Iraq. He broadcast the false narrative that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction with great zeal. But that wasn’t his first foray into Iraq, or the first time he led an invasion under a Bush. Cheney oversaw Operation Desert Storm in 1991 as secretary of defense under President George H.W. Bush. And in between Bush presidencies, when he wasn’t busy planning invasions into Iraq, Cheney worked as the CEO of Halliburton, one of the world’s largest oil companies.

It just so happens that Iraq is considered one of the top five oil-rich countries. And if it were up to Cheney, American soldiers would’ve been sent into other oil-rich Middle Eastern nations. According to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Cheney had grand plans to deploy American soldiers all over the Middle East. Kenny writes:

In his new book, A Journey: My Political Life, Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair recalls that Cheney wanted the United States to go to war not only with Afghanistan and Iraq, but with a number of other countries in the Middle East, as he believed the world must be “made anew.” “He would have worked through the whole lot, Iraq, Syria, Iran, dealing with all their surrogates in the course of it — Hezbollah, Hamas, etc.,” Blair wrote. “In other words, [Cheney] thought the world had to be made anew, and that after 11 September, it had to be done by force and with urgency. So he was for hard, hard power. No ifs, no buts, no maybes.”

Journalist and author Robert Parry also suspected these wider ambitions, which had been kept out of earshot of the American public. He wrote:

There have been indications of this larger neoconservative strategy to attack America’s — and Israel’s — “enemies” starting with Iraq and then moving on to Syria and Iran, but rarely has this more expansive plan for regional war been shared explicitly with the American public.

“Agency of the President”

Cheney once said, “Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole? It’s a nice way to operate, actually.” This is related to the common perception that he was more powerful than the president. “At the minimum, Cheney was a co-equal to Bush and is widely understood to be perhaps the most effective vice president in history,” renowned left-wing journalist Seymour Hersh recently wrote. Kenny pointed out that one of the nicknames Cheney acquired as veep was “’Management,’ as in ‘Better check with management first.’” He wrote:

Former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas) described the free hand Cheney appeared to have in his dealings with Congress. “Dick could make a deal,” Gramm told [Barton Gellman], author of Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency. “He didn’t have to check with the president, not as far as I could tell. I’m sure at the end of the day, he would fill the president in on what happened. But Dick had the agency of the president.”

CFR Ties

While Cheney is rightly recognized, even by mainstream standards, as a negative influence on American policies, one important element that’s been widely overlooked in his ties to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a subversive foreign-policy think tank that we like to refer to as the “Deep State nervous system.” Cheney was a CFR life member. He served on its board of directors from 1987 to 1989 and again from 1993 to 1995, and was also its director at one point. Interestingly, he mentioned none of this in his 500-plus-page memoir, In My Time. In 2011, the former Wyoming lawmaker admitted during a visit to CFR headquarters that he had intentionally kept his ties to the organization a secret:

It’s good to be back at the Council on Foreign Relations. I’ve been a member for a long time, and was actually a director for some period of time. I never mentioned that when I was campaigning for reelection back home in Wyoming, but it stood me in good stead.

After his death, the CFR posted a warm tribute to him:

A steadfast steward of the Council, Cheney brought to our community the same seriousness of purpose, strategic insight, and commitment to public service that defined his distinguished career in government and the private sector. Cheney’s decades of leadership — as vice president of the United States, secretary of defense, member of Congress, and senior White House official — reflected a lifetime devoted to strengthening the United States’ national security and its role in the world. The Council is grateful to have counted Cheney as a member, director, and friend. We extend our deepest condolences to his family and loved ones.

Many would disagree with the CFR’s characterization. It’s difficult to see how sacrificing thousands of American lives and racking up debt to pay for overseas wars and fueling legislation that allows the government to spy on Americans have made the country stronger. Cheney was a key architect of the post-9/11 response. And as such, he helped finagle congressional approval for the PATRIOT Act, a wholly un-American piece of legislation that has greatly expanded the government’s ability to surveil Americans. He coordinated amendments with administration officials and reconciled the House and Senate versions. His chief of staff,  Scooter Libby, was also involved in high-level meetings about the act.

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Outrage over video leak of Israeli soldiers’ gang rape of Palestinian exposes rot in Israeli society

Israelis are having a meltdown over the leak of a video of Israeli soldiers gang raping a Palestinian prisoner at the  notorious Sde Teiman torture camp. 

The uproar isn’t about the dozen or so Israeli soldiers who inserted a sharp object into a Palestinian prisoner’s anus and ripped his rectum apart. No, it’s over the fact that it was made public at all — and leaked by Israel’s Chief Military Advocate, no less.

On Sunday night, Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, the top lawyer supposedly in charge of making sure the Israeli army follows the law, was arrested after having revealed last Friday that she was the one who had leaked the infamous rape video to the media over a year ago. 

The court case against the suspected rapists — who are not even charged with rape, but “aggravated abuse” and “causing aggravated injury” — is still ongoing. Meanwhile, Tomer-Yerushalmi is now being leveled with charges such as “breach of loyalty,” “breach of trust,” “dereliction of duty,” and “disrupting investigative operations,” Israel’s Channel 12  reported in Hebrew.

In her resignation letter, the ex-Military Advocate said she approved the video leak “in an attempt to rebuff the deceitful propaganda against the law-enforcing elements in the army.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netantahu did not miss the opportunity to dramatize the matter, portraying the whole case as an attack on the nation: “This is perhaps the most severe public relations attack that the state of Israel has experienced since its establishment,” he railed.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz called the case a “blood libel,” promising that “all required sanctions” would be taken against Tomer-Yerushalmi, including stripping her of her rank.

“Anyone who falsely spreads blood libels against IDF soldiers and prefers the welfare of the Nukhba terrorists over theirs is not worthy of wearing the IDF uniform and belongs in prison,” the Defense Minister said. Although, as the Times of Israel and other news sources clarified, the Palestinian detainee who was raped by the reservists in Sde Teiman was a civilian and not a Hamas fighter.

Even still, the leak is playing to the rapists’ favor, since the nature of the leak might end up compromising the position of the prosecution. 

What’s notable about all this is the popular outrage in Israel, with widespread sympathy toward the “wronged” soldiers turning the affair into a national story — in support of their right to rape Palestinians with impunity. 

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Russia Can ‘Mirror’ in Venezuela What West Is Doing in Ukraine

When regional relations Iran and Syria called on Russia to help defend them against attacks by America, Israel, and a swarm of former ISIS militants, they received no answer. Analysts at the time said, and the President of Ukraine in fact celebrated, that it was because of Russia’s war in eastern Ukraine that assistance could not be rendered to protect Moscow’s interests abroad.

In contrast, Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro has called for help, and Moscow has answered, with Russian outlet Gazeta confirming that additional Russian-made air defense systems have arrived in the South American country.

“Information about the volumes and exact names of what is brought from Russia is classified, so surprises may await the Americans,” said Alexei Zhuravlev, the first deputy chairman of the State Duma Defense Committee. “According to the latest information, the Russian Pantsir-S1 and Buk-M2E systems were delivered to Caracas by transport Il-76 just the other day”.

Flightradar24 recorded an Il-76 cargo aircraft flown by Aviacon Zitotrans – a sanctioned Russian airliner known to carry defense and military articles – arriving in Caracas in late October. Regarding the “surprises,” Zhuravlev said he didn’t see any “obstacles to supplying a friendly country” with the Oreshnik or Kalibr cruise missile systems, from existing international obligations.

Another high-ranking Duma official, Sergey Mironov, leader of the opposition (and socialist) party released a statement in which he suggested his country could and probably should “provide the necessary assistance to the country to guarantee its sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

“We can give the United States an opportunity to see what its policy in Ukraine towards Russia looks like…” Mironov said, who like Zhuravlev, singled out the Kalibr cruise missile by name. “In other words, Russia can ‘mirror’ in Venezuela the scenario that the West is implementing in Ukraine by supplying weapons to the Kyiv regime. The only significant difference is that Venezuela does not threaten anyone, and we have no plans to use this country as an anti-American springboard”.

Even short of the cruise missiles, which would give the Trump Administration a substantially different paradigm to work in regarding its plans for Venezuela, the arrival of air defense weaponry cuts right at the heart of the longest-standing foreign policy consensus in Washington: the Monroe Doctrine. Named after the 5th President of the US, James Monroe, the 19th century policy’s 21st century reinterpretation calls for US hegemony of the entire Western Hemisphere, and was invoked in response to Soviet Russia’s actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and during the first Trump Administration’s attempt to overthrow Maduro.

Some unverified reports claim that Wagner Group personnel, which have worked in the country before, are in Venezuela training domestic military on at least the Pantsir-S1 system, as it requires specialized knowledge of radar operation and targeting software that it’s not clear the domestic military would possess. If Wagner was in situ preparing the Venezuelans to shoot down American drones, missiles, or pilots, it wouldn’t be any different than what CIA assets have been doing in Ukraine for three years now, but will undoubtedly mark a new, dangerous escalation between US and Russian relations.

One can only imagine how far those relations may fall in a situation whereby Russia begins funneling weapons into a successful defense of Caracas by the Maduro regime against the US.

A ‘Red’ herring

Venezuela’s arsenal is a mixture of old and modern Russian weaponry. The most significant threat the country wields is twenty-one Sukhoi SU-30 fighter aircraft which it acquired between 2006 and 2008. These fourth-generation fighter aircraft carry beyond-visible-sight, supersonic, air-to-air missiles, which could pose a substantial challenge to US F-35s or MQ-9 Reaper drones if the Venezuelan air force can actually scramble and avoid destruction on the tarmac as happened in both Iran and in Syria.

In terms of the ground-to-air weapons, Venezuelan forces man the Russian-made S-125 Pechora-2M and S-300 long-range anti-air missile systems for targeting both aircraft and ballistic missiles, around 12 of the Buk-2M mid-range missile defense platforms, and several hundred anti-air 23mm autocannons.

Some of these systems are old, and most date to Soviet manufacture, but one deceased Ukrainian MiG-29 pilot named Andrii Pilshchykov who spoke with TWZ said that the Buk-M2 was the most concerning threat he faced during operations in defense of his country.

Perhaps more impactful than any of these headline items is the Igla-S24, a shoulder-fired anti-air rocket and the only system in Venezuela’s air defense network that is up to date. Its maximum range is 5,000 feet farther than the US-made Stinger missile, and the military was said in 2017 to have an arsenal of over 5,000 of these according to a report from Reuters.

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Hegseth Says US Strikes Another Drug-Smuggling Boat, Killing 3 Onboard

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said the U.S. military carried out another lethal kinetic strike on a vessel in the Caribbean that was transporting illegal drugs to the United States on Nov. 6.

Hegseth stated on social media that the strike targeted a vessel run by a “designated terrorist organization,” killing three people on board whom he described as “narco-terrorists.”

“The vessel was trafficking narcotics in the Caribbean and was struck in international waters,” he stated on X, noting that the strike was conducted under President Donald Trump’s direction.

No U.S. armed forces were harmed in the operation, according to the Pentagon chief.

This was the 17th reported U.S. military strike on drug-smuggling vessels in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific since September, as the Trump administration intensifies efforts to combat drug trafficking. More than 60 suspected drug traffickers have been killed in these strikes.

Hegseth warned that U.S. military operations against drug smuggling vessels will not stop until the illegal drug flow into the United States ends.

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Three Chinese National Scholars at University of Michigan Charged in Plot to Smuggle Biological Materials into the U.S.

Three Chinese national research scholars from the University of Michigan have been charged in a federal case involving the illegal smuggling of biological materials into the United States.

According to the Department of Justice, Xu Bai (28), Fengfan Zhang (27), and Zhiyong Zhang (30), all Chinese nationals working in the University of Michigan’s “Shawn Xu Laboratory,” were arrested and formally charged for their roles in the conspiracy.

Federal prosecutors allege that Bai and Fengfan Zhang conspired to smuggle restricted biological materials into the U.S., while Zhiyong Zhang faces charges of making false statements to federal agents during the investigation.

All three were research scholars holding J-1 visas, temporary research visas often used by foreign nationals conducting work at U.S. universities.

The laboratory where the trio worked, led by Dr. Xianzhong “Shawn” Xu, has been engaged in advanced biomedical and neurobiological research.

Federal authorities have not yet disclosed the exact nature of the biological materials involved, but officials emphasized the grave national security implications of the case.

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Liberal Actress Angelina Jolie Makes Unannounced Visit to Ukraine, and Watches Her Bodyguard Get Instantly Mobilized for the Front

Did she bail out the bodyguard or was he sent to the front?

When Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie decided to make a unannounced visit to war-torn Ukraine, she didn’t imagine that she would witness first-hand a grave problem in its society: the prospect of immediate – and forceful – mobilization for combat.

Rumors have swirled online that Jolie had been paid $20 million by USAID for her first visit – but no corroboration was ever found.

During her first visit in 2022 to Lvov in western Ukraine, the air raid sirens sounded, making for an interesting photo op for the star.

Her second visit, this time to frontline areas in Kherson, was also no without some drama, as her surprise appearance was nearly spoiled by military recruiters, who grabbed her bodyguard (or driver, or ‘guide’) and questioned him why he had not enlisted for the army.

The Telegraph reported:

“The Hollywood actress ventured to the southern cities of Mykolaiv and Kherson on her latest humanitarian mission to the war-torn country, meeting volunteers and medics forced to live underground to escape attacks from Russian troops.

But the unannounced visit nearly descended into chaos after a member of her entourage, believed to be a driver, drew the attention of military recruiters at a checkpoint a few hours north of their first stop in Mykolaiv.”

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Israel Massively Escalates Strikes on Lebanon as Hezbollah Threatens Retaliation

Israel’s long-threatened escalation of their attacks on Lebanon seems to have begun in earnest on Thursday, with massive numbers of strikes reported against several towns and villages in the country’s south.

The IDF issued evacuation warnings for at least five sites in southern Lebanon, and is claiming, as they so often do, that everything they are attacking is Hezbollah infrastructure. Early indications are that a substantial number of civilian casualties have occurred. The most recent toll has one confirmed killed and nine wounded, though those tolls are expected to rise.

This comes amid an Israeli security cabinet meeting, at which the Northern Command will reportedly present various options for the direction and scale of a military escalation in Lebanon, in spite of a ceasefire nominally having been in place for the past year.

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