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Congress quietly moves to integrate US and Israeli militaries

By Ben Freeman | Responsible Statecraft | May 29, 2026

At a time when the American public is expressing unprecedented levels of distrust in the Israeli government, Congress just proposed tying the U.S. to the Israeli military more than ever before.

Buried in the House’s version of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) released on Tuesday, is section 224, entitled “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative.” The provision would arguably do more to intertwine the U.S. military with the Israeli military than the more than $200 billion (inflation adjusted) in military assistance Israel has received from the U.S. since its founding in 1948.

Section 224 lays the groundwork for bilateral research and development, co-production of weapons, joint ventures, licensing agreements, and seemingly every manner of U.S.-Israeli military-industrial complex cooperation. The U.S. and Israel already work together heavily on missile defense, but this provision would greatly expand coordination to seemingly every area of defense tech, including AI, quantum, autonomous systems, directed energy, cyber, biotech, and many more. It also proposes “network integration” and “data fusion.” In other words, the U.S. military’s data could soon be the Israeli military’s data.

If fully enacted, this proposal would provide a higher level of military-industrial integration than the U.S. has with any other country in the world. To be sure, the U.S. has worked closely with its NATO partners on co-production and shared supply chains, most notably via the Defence Production Action Plan. And, as the number one arms dealer in the world, the U.S. provides weapons to militaries across the globe. But that is mostly a one-way street, with the U.S. providing weapons to foreign buyers who only occasionally make parts for those weapons themselves, as in the case of the F-35’s global supply chain.

Section 224 would be a different beast entirely. It would fuse the U.S. and Israeli defense sectors in multiple areas vital to the battlefields of the future, like autonomous systems and cyber. It would also bring extraordinary Israeli influence to the U.S. beyond what it already has through the Israel lobby and its robust network of social media influencers. It would give the Israeli government the opportunity to greatly expand one of the most powerful levers of influence in U.S. politics: jobs in the U.S. By expanding or starting new co-production facilities like it already has in Mississippi and Arkansas, the Israeli government could boast of providing jobs on U.S. soil, thereby securing allies among members of Congress who represent the districts where those jobs lie.

The result could well be a U.S. political system even more susceptible to the whims of an Israeli government that seemingly has no qualms about drawing the U.S. into military conflicts in the Middle East.

This unprecedented level of U.S.-Israeli military integration stands in stark contrast to the traditional aid model of defense cooperation, in which Israel already stood out as the top recipient of U.S. military assistance. As laid out in a recent Quincy Institute brief, authored by Steven Simon, this shift from an aid model to a military integration model has troubling implications, namely:

The shift will strip away the political and diplomatic oversight mechanisms that make the relationship publicly accountable, moving it from a visible annual aid vote into the opaque machinery of defense acquisition, where oversight is limited and political accountability is minimal. The result would be a defense relationship that is simultaneously deeper and less transparent.

This all comes at a time when the Israeli military has repeatedly used U.S. weapons in strikes that have violated international humanitarian laws in Gaza, and as Israel has repeatedly violated ceasefires (as has the U.S. itself) in the Trump administration’s unnecessary war with Iran.

The enormous gulf between what most Americans want and what the president is doing when it comes to Israel and what Congress is proposing here should not be ignored. Just 30% of respondents to a New York Times/Sienna poll from mid-May believe Trump made “the right decision” to go to war with Iran, with 64% saying it was wrong. An Institute for Global Affairs poll released earlier this week dove even deeper into the American psyche when it comes to arming Israel, finding that “Just 16 percent say the United States should keep supplying Israel with weapons without new restrictions. Thirty-eight percent want to stop supplying weapons entirely, and another 24 percent want weapons conditioned on how they’re used.”

Yet, mainstream leadership in both parties remains largely pro-Israel and continues to shape the base legislative text before amendments and broader congressional debate open it to the full body, as is the case with this NDAA provision.

Though slowly, tides within both parties are shifting as more and more members speak out against the growing divide between Israel’s actions and America’s interests. For example, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) wrote in The New York Times on Tuesday that, “The Democratic Party has provided reflexive and unconditional support to Israeli governments, even as their actions have increasingly undermined American interests and values.” On the Republican side of the aisle, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-Ga.) have openly decried the Israel lobby’s corrosive influence — a stance that may have, at least partially, cost both of them their seats in Congress.

What can other members of Congress who are concerned about Israel’s destabilizing actions do right now? Stop the Israeli-U.S. military-industrial merger in its tracks. Lawmakers should reject Section 224 from the NDAA to avoid deep integration with Israel’s military at a time when a growing number of Americans oppose Israel’s actions in the region.

Ben Freeman is Director of the Democratizing Foreign Policy program at the Quincy Institute and the author of “The Trillion Dollar War Machine: How Runaway Military Spending Drives America into Foreign Wars and Bankrupts Us at Home” (2025).

May 29, 2026 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | , , | Comments Off on Congress quietly moves to integrate US and Israeli militaries

Israel Relaunches, Rebrands Online Propaganda Campaign

By Harrison Berger | The American Conservative | May 21, 2026

Israel has relaunched and rebranded Act.IL, an online campaign originally designed by Israeli intelligence officials at the Ministry of Strategic Affairs to harass and intimidate American critics of Israel. Such operations are generally referred to as “troll farming,” though the forces behind Act.IL use softer, more highfalutin language.

Rebranded as RiseApp, the program is operated by Israel’s Reichman University (IDC Herzliya) and, according to the project’s website, aims to mobilize Act.IL’s existing database of more than 40,000 pro-Israel online operatives to counter what it describes as “antisemitism” and “misinformation.”

The Reichman University website describes RiseApp as delivering “fact-checked, expert-led responses” for users to deploy in “social media debates and public forums,” in order to engage in “proactive advocacy” on behalf of Israel. A “dual purpose,” of the app, Reichman says, is that it allows users to flag and “identify emerging adversarial narratives” while “alerting partner organizations” to “develop tailored responses.”

A presentation for the forthcoming app’s interface, posted to the Reichman website, pitches the platform as “empowering and uniting the Jewish community” and includes tabs for “The Useful Idiots” and “Genocide Claims.” The latter would seem to provide users with arguments to combat the consensus of human rights organizations that Israel committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

RiseApp’s predecessor Act.IL was launched in 2017 as a joint project of Reichman Institute and the Israeli-American Council (IAC)—the U.S.-based Israel lobby group founded by casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson and run by Adam Milstein (Tuvia Milsztein), who was convicted in 2008 for his involvement in the Spinka tax fraud ring involving Orthodox Jewish charity fronts—and was operated by Yarden Ben-Yosef alongside other current and former Israeli intelligence officials.

“We work with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, consult with them and manage joint projects.” Act.IL director Ben-Yosef said in a 2018 interview with Forbes Israel. In an interview with The Forward a year earlier, he said of Act.IL’s relationship with Israeli spy agencies: “We talk with each other. We work together.”

As The Forward described the app in 2017, Act.IL would gather “high school students and adult mentors” who complete “social media ‘missions’ assigned out of a headquarters in Herzliya, Israel,” including pressuring social media platforms to censor content supportive of the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and critical of Israel, with users getting “points” for each mission they complete.

That propaganda and troll campaign was part of a broader Israeli government operation orchestrated by Gilad Erdan’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs called Concert, whose purpose was to create third party-operated surveillance, censorship, and propaganda firms that could hide all Israeli government links to their operations, which at the time were directed against the BDS movement in North America.

“Ambiguity is part of our guidelines,” the Israeli intelligence officer and director-general of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs Sima Vaknin-Gil explained in a leaked 2016 video recording featured in the suppressed Al Jazeera documentary The Lobby, telling a private audience of Adelson’s IAC activists that Israel has established “a civil intelligence unit that collects, analyzes, and acts upon” Israel’s enemies, using data from “campuses… and labor unions, and churches,” calling the program “Israel Cyber Shield.”

Israel Cyber Shield was eventually expanded into a much larger Israeli propaganda program which cycled through the names Kela Shlomo (Solomon’s Sling), Concert, and finally Voices of Israel. It is now housed under Amichai Chikli’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs.

The rebranding of controversial hasbara operations is a documented pattern of the Israeli government and its intelligence services. Before Act.IL launched, Israeli company Psy-Group , also staffed by former Israeli spies and affiliates of Reichman University, ran “Project Butterfly” to infiltrate and destabilize BDS chapters on college campuses using fake identities, later pitching their social media manipulation services to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Psy-Group founder Joel Zamel met Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower in August 2016, along with the businessman Erik Prince and a man named George Nader who presented himself as an emissary of the UAE and Saudi Arabia, while a senior campaign aide, Rick Gates, had separately solicited proposals from the Israeli spy-staffed firm for a covert influence campaign targeting Republican convention delegates and Hillary Clinton. When special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russiagate investigators closed in on those meetings, Psy-Group simply shut down and relaunched as Percepto International, while the Israel Lobby insinuated that Mueller was antisemitic for looking into Psy-Group’s Israeli interference efforts.

The relaunch of Act.IL as RiseApp follows the Israeli Knesset’s approval of the country’s largest ever budget for foreign propaganda operations, or hasbara, quintupling funding from 2025 to a total of $730 million. That scaled-up expenditure comes amid surveys showing declining support for Israel across party lines in the United States, a trend Israel correctly perceives as an existential threat to the unconditional funding and diplomatic protection their country depends on.

Harrison Berger is a correspondent at The American Conservative. He has contributed to Drop Site News, The Nation, and Responsible Statecraft. Previously, he was a researcher and producer for System Update with Glenn Greenwald. His work focuses on civil liberties and U.S. foreign policy. He studied Political Science and Russian Studies at Union College (NY).

May 29, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Comments Off on Israel Relaunches, Rebrands Online Propaganda Campaign

German politician blasts ‘totalitarian madness’ of sanctions on pro-Palestinian journalist

RT | May 29, 2026

Germany’s implementation of EU sanctions against a pro-Palestinian journalist whom Brussels has accused of fueling discord on Russia’s behalf has descended into “totalitarian madness,” German opposition politician Sahra Wagenknecht has said.

Wagenknecht has called for financial restrictions imposed on Huseyin Dogru and his Berlin-based family to be lifted. On Tuesday, Dogru said Comdirect bank had frozen the assets of his elderly mother, citing what it described as a “control relationship over the funds by [her] son.” His wife’s bank account was targeted in March, while his father is reportedly under investigation by the authorities.

“This is how dictatorships treat opposition figures,” the left-wing BSW party founder told Berliner Zeitung on Thursday.

“The EU’s scandalous overreach against a German journalist and the German government’s complicity in breaking the law and collective punishment must finally stop,” she added. “If the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution were doing its job, this totalitarian government extremism would actually be a case for them.”

EU portrays pro-Palestinian advocacy as serving Russia

Dogru is a Turkish-German journalist who previously worked with the media outlet Redfish, which received funding from Ruptly, a video agency Western governments have labeled as being part of Russia’s “propaganda” infrastructure.

The EU imposed personal sanctions on Dogru in May 2025, accusing him of “systematically spreading false information about politically controversial topics, with the intention of sowing ethnic, political and religious discord” in Germany and claiming that his work aligned with Russian objectives.

Dogru says Brussels and Berlin are targeting him over his pro-Palestinian activism. Even Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner Michael O’Flaherty criticized Germany over the issue, warning in April that “freedom of expression has been restricted disproportionately, regarding debates on Palestinian rights or legitimate criticism of the Israeli government.”

‘Civil death’ without charges

The German financial restrictions severely limit what Dogru, a father of three young children, can legally do to support his family. He is barred from carrying out donation-funded journalism or accepting solidarity aid, as the government considers such payments an attempt to circumvent sanctions. His assets have been frozen, with only around €500 ($590) per month permitted for expenses. His travel has also been restricted.

Dogru’s supporters say he has effectively been subjected to a “civil death” despite no formal charges being filed against him. A campaign urging the EU to lift the sanctions was launched last week on the anniversary of their introduction.

Wagenknecht is among the signatories of the petition, which argues that Dogru is facing state censorship in violation of the German constitution and EU laws.

After Western governments made combating what they call “Russian disinformation” a major policy priority, Moscow argued that the campaign reflected an attempt to preserve narrative control amid the rise of alternative online media.

May 29, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , , | Comments Off on German politician blasts ‘totalitarian madness’ of sanctions on pro-Palestinian journalist

Avoiding Catastrophic Failure in Cuba

SONAR21 | May 28, 2026

ALERT MEMORANDUM FOR: The President

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: Avoiding Catastrophic Failure in Cuba

Dear President Trump:

We are deeply concerned that the current U.S. approach to Cuba makes an ugly humanitarian disaster – for which the U.S. will be responsible – increasingly likely. We also believe that any military option will draw us into a losing war.

Cuba is not Venezuela. U.S. relations with Cuba have never been good, even before Fidel Castro’s rise in 1959. Washington has never grasped Cubans’ deep national pride and yearning for sovereignty, nor their culture of respect for institutions. Whether we like it or not, the government has residual legitimacy, and even Cubans wanting significant change will rally behind the flag if there is an attack from outside.

The Cuban people are indeed suffering, but reports alleging broad popular support for U.S. sanctions and even military intervention are heavily colored by people who are in the pay of the USG. Given the false choice between living under the current government with U.S. “maximum pressure” sanctions and living under a new system, some Cubans would indeed opt for change. But their protests aren’t about blaming the government, and even those who want major change in Cuba do not trust the U.S. The 65-year embargo and the ongoing oil blockade are sources of deep, if latent, suspicions toward us.

The language in Executive Orders dated 29 January and 1 May, alleging that “the policies, practices, and actions of the Government of Cuba constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security, suggests confusion between reality and politically motivated allegations. These narratives are mostly fake.

  • Cuba does seek ways to evade U.S. sanctions – as any country would to survive – and several countries help it, albeit at steadily declining levels. Such efforts can hardly be called a “threat” to the United States. While ideally the Cuban military business conglomerate, GAESA, would operate more transparently, it’s cynical of us not to see their need for its secrecy in the face of aggressive U.S. intelligence operations and sanctions.
  • Since at least 1992, the USG has had no evidence of Cuba providing any operational, logistical, or training support to any terrorist organization. Stretching the definition of “terrorist” to include a couple of fugitives from U.S. law appears disingenuous.
  • A careful review of the intelligence surrounding the tragic, unnecessary shootdown of the two Cuban-American aircraft as they departed Cuban airspace on 24 February 1996 shows clearly that the indictment of former President Raúl Castro last week is not fact-based.
  • Neither does the USG have evidence that China and Russia are operating signals intelligence “spy bases” in Cuba directed against the U.S. As the Intelligence Community knows well, Russia abandoned its main facilities after the collapse of the USSR, and there has never been any indication of a Chinese facility pointed at the U.S.
  • While debate over the alleged “sonic attacks” or “microwave attacks” against U.S. personnel continues to rage in some quarters, no evidence has been uncovered in the past nine-plus years to support the accusation of a Cuban role in such attacks on the island and in China, Europe, and the U.S.
  • The covert operations under U.S. “democracy promotion” or regime-change programs generate information that supports the views of the U.S. constituency that controls them, so the resulting picture is deceptive. We recommend that you review these covert activities closely. If you decide to approve them, sign onto them in a Presidential Finding and official Congressional Notification. The record shows that covert action planners misled President Kennedy about the prospects for the Bay of Pigs operation, and CIA analysts were kept in the dark.

Administration statements, aggressive airborne intelligence collection, and ship movements around Cuba suggest preparations for military action. The Cuban military is weak and lacks even basic supplies, and Cuba’s doctrine of “War of All the People” may seem naïve to us. Cuba will react with what conventional hardware it has and can attain, perhaps even drones, in defense of its leadership and sensitive facilities.

But U.S.-driven “regime collapse” and occupation or imposition of a government of our choosing will fail badly. The same people who keep ’57 Chevrolets on the road with a coat hanger will wreak havoc against a foreign-imposed regime. Administration declarations show a wise tendency to keep U.S. boots off the ground, but it’s also important to know that swarms of Cuban nationalists will silently undermine any system that we impose. The implications of any of these scenarios for migration pressures would be catastrophic.

Press reports indicate that the U.S. is in some kind of “negotiation” with a grandson of former president Raul Castro, who holds no official position in Cuba. In any case, our experience with conflicts worldwide leads us to point out that talks with a gun at one’s temple are not a true negotiation. U.S. coercion against Cuba hasn’t worked for more than six decades. A negotiation without blockades, guns pointed at leaders’ heads, and political indictments can work much better.

FOR THE STEERING GROUP, VETERAN INTELLIGENCE PROFESSIONALS FOR SANITY (VIPS)

  • Fulton Armstrong, former National Intelligence Officer for Latin America (ret.)
  • Marshall Carter-Tripp, Foreign Service Officer (ret.); Division Director, State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research
  • Philip Giraldi, former C.I.A., Operations Officer (ret.)
  • Matthew Hoh, former Capt., USMC, Iraq & Foreign Service Officer, Afghanistan (associate VIPS)
  • Larry Johnson, former C.I.A. Intelligence Officer & State Department Counter-Terrorism Official (ret.)
  • John Kiriakou, former C.I.A. Counterterrorism Officer and former senior investigator, Senate Foreign Relations Committee
  • Karen Kwiatkowski, former Lt. Col., U.S. AF (ret.); at Office of Sec. of Defense watching the manufacture of lies on Iraq, 2001-03
  • Ray McGovern, former U.S. Army infantry/intelligence officer & C.I.A. analyst; C.I.A. Presidential briefer (ret.)
  • Elizabeth Murray, former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Near East, National Intelligence Council; C.I.A. political analyst (ret.)
  • Scott Ritter, former MAJ., USMC, former chief UN Weapon Inspector, Iraq
  • Coleen Rowley, F.B.I. Special Agent and former Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel (ret.)
  • Lawrence Wilkerson, Colonel (USA, ret.), Distinguished Visiting Professor, College of William and Mary (associate VIPS)
  • Sarah G. Wilton, CDR, USNR, (ret.)/D.I.A., (ret.)
  • Robert Wing, former Foreign Service Officer (associate VIPS)
  • Ann Wright, Col., U.S. Army (ret.); Foreign Service Officer (resigned in opposition to the war on Iraq)

May 29, 2026 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Comments Off on Avoiding Catastrophic Failure in Cuba

Trump Administration’s DOJ Filing in Supreme Court ‘Sharp Betrayal’ of Religious Freedom

By Jefferey Jaxen | May 27, 2026

In a stunning reversal the Department of Justice under President Trump has filed a brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to deny review in John Doe et al. v. Kathy Hochul, No. 24-1015. The case involves former New York healthcare workers fired for refusing COVID-19 vaccination on religious grounds under the state’s now-repealed Section 2.61 mandate, which allowed medical exemptions but barred religious ones.

The move is in stark contrast to the COVID-era legal momentum across the board seeing courts rule in favor of employees fired for religious vaccine refusals.

The Second Circuit upheld the employers’ refusal to accommodate, citing “undue hardship.”

The DOJ’s Call for the Views of the Solicitor General (CVSG) brief argues the petition is a poor vehicle for review—no circuit split, a repealed law, and petitioners who sought only a full exemption rather than alternatives like reassignment—while defending the policy’s consistency with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

This position, however, draws sharp criticism for weakening core protections against religious discrimination. Aaron Siri, a leading litigator who has represented numerous affected healthcare workers, called out the filing in an X post stating:

The brief’s analysis hinges on semantics and procedural technicalities. It acknowledges that petitioners claimed New York’s mandate conflicted with Title VII by foreclosing reasonable religious accommodations. Yet it frames their requests as demands for an “exemption” prohibited by state law, rather than the “accommodation” federal law requires.

Siri dismantled this in a follow-up post:

“Instead of defending these wrongfully terminated workers, the DOJ nonsensically and shamefully plays word games to characterize their requests as seeking an ‘exemption’ (which New York law prohibited) instead of an ‘accommodation’ (an option federal law requires). It then relies on this semantic nonsense to argue that the Supreme Court should not review the Second Circuit’s holding that a policy providing for medical but not religious exemptions is legal.”

Siri, who is perhaps the most experienced lawyer defending Americans who experienced COVID-era oversteps of basic liberties and freedoms, described the practical outcome bluntly: the mandate “permitted only a medical exemption and did not include a religious exemption.”

Healthcare workers with sincere religious objections were fired en masse. He continued,

“Having dealt with scores of religious employees in New York that lost their jobs under this policy, the Trump administration’s position is a sharp betrayal. The DOJ should have simply argued the obvious – that Section 2.61 foreclosed any religious exemption and hence should not stand under federal law. Period. That would have taken one or two pages. Instead, it spends over 20 pages creating a word salad of nonsense to justify New York’s and the DOJ’s unjustifiable position.”

This approach is dangerous because it normalizes differential treatment: medical exemptions are permissible, but religious ones trigger “undue hardship” claims tied to state penalties. Under Title VII, as clarified in Groff v. DeJoy (2023), employers must accommodate religious practice unless it imposes substantial increased costs. Yet the DOJ’s brief effectively blesses a regime where religious belief is disfavored, allowing employers to hide behind preempted state rules.

If a law bars religious accommodations outright, Title VII should preempt it—yet here the filing accepts a policy that functionally did exactly that while claiming otherwise.

The stakes extend far beyond healthcare. A Supreme Court denial, influenced by this brief, could embolden employers nationwide to impose vaccine or other medical mandates while dismissing religious objections as unreasonable.

It undermines the free exercise principles reinforced in cases like Fulton v. City of Philadelphia and signals that post-COVID religious liberty battles remain unwinnable in court. Workers facing future mandates—for flu shots, boosters, or novel therapies—would find their faith subordinated to bureaucratic convenience.

Siri’s critique highlights a missed opportunity for the administration that campaigned on restoring freedoms eroded during the pandemic. By playing procedural games instead of forcefully defending Title VII’s mandate to accommodate sincere religious practice, the DOJ risks setting precedent that treats faith as second-class. As Siri warned, this is no minor technical brief; it is a “sharp betrayal” that could erode religious freedom for millions. The Supreme Court must recognize the broader threat and take the case to reaffirm that no employer or state can lawfully force a choice between livelihood and conscience.

May 28, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Comments Off on Trump Administration’s DOJ Filing in Supreme Court ‘Sharp Betrayal’ of Religious Freedom

Prof John Mearsheimer: IRAN CEASEFIRE HANGS by a THREAD

Daniel Davis / Deep Dive – May 28, 2026

May 28, 2026 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Comments Off on Prof John Mearsheimer: IRAN CEASEFIRE HANGS by a THREAD

Russia warns US against sending more troops to its borders

RT | May 28, 2026

Russia has warned that deploying additional US troops near its borders would be “unacceptable,” after Washington pledged to send more soldiers to Poland.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a press briefing on Thursday that reducing the number of US personnel stationed in Europe would be a “rational, justified, and long-overdue” step toward stabilizing what she described as an “imbalanced” security situation created by NATO policies.

Deploying more American troops in the region, on the other hand, would place them within striking distance, Zakharova added.

She said such a move would only increase tensions in Europe and compel Russia to respond with “military-technical measures.” Zakharova accused NATO of pushing the continent toward a “suicidal” conflict.

Around 10,000 American service members are currently stationed in Poland, most of them on a rotational basis, while roughly 80,000 are deployed across Europe overall. Poland shares a border with Russia’s Kaliningrad Region, an exclave on the Baltic Sea.

Last week, US President Donald Trump unveiled plans to send 5,000 additional troops to Poland, one of the most vocal supporters of Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. The announcement came after the Pentagon said it would delay the rotation of 4,000 troops, which Vice President J.D. Vance later downplayed as a “standard delay.”

Trump has frequently accused NATO members of failing to spend enough on defense and recently announced the withdrawal of 5,000 troops from Germany amid a dispute with Berlin over the war with Iran.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Moscow has no intention of attacking NATO members unless Russia itself is attacked first. Russian officials have accused the West of “reckless militarization” and cited NATO’s eastward expansion as one of the causes of the Ukraine conflict.

On Thursday, Sergey Naryshkin, head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, said NATO was “de facto preparing for a large-scale military conflict in the east.”

May 28, 2026 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Comments Off on Russia warns US against sending more troops to its borders

Dead Silence: UN, OSCE Ignore Russian Appeals Over Ukraine’s Slaughter at Starobelsk

Sputnik – 28.05.2026

MOSCOW – There has been no response from the UN, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), or other international organizations to Russia’s appeals regarding the Ukrainian strike on Starobelsk, Russian Human Rights Commissioner Yana Lantratova told Sputnik.

Lantratova previously reported that she had sent letters to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the OSCE Secretary General, the President of the UN Human Rights Council, and other international organizations regarding the Ukrainian strike on a college and dormitory in the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR).

“We sent letters immediately after the tragedy occurred. We have not yet received any response. We are awaiting it, and hope for an objective assessment of these events by the international public… We hope for a response, and moreover, we will send [letters] to all our counterparts in various countries around the world so that people know the truth,” Lantratova said.

On May 22, Ukrainian forces attacked an academic building and a dormitory of the Starobelsk Professional College of Lugansk State Pedagogical University. Twenty-one people were killed and 44 others wounded.

May 28, 2026 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , , , | Comments Off on Dead Silence: UN, OSCE Ignore Russian Appeals Over Ukraine’s Slaughter at Starobelsk

The US Military Keeps Blowing Up Small Boats in the Caribbean and Pacific

By Adam Dick | Peace and Prosperity Blog | May 28, 2026

Suppose a Latin American nation’s military kept blowing up private American small boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, killing nearly all the United States citizens on them in the process. The Donald Trump administration and a horde of US Congress members would be shouting about terrorism and supporting major responsive military actions. However, the actual perpetrator of the blowing up of small boats in the Caribbean and Pacific since early September has been the US government and the victims have been mainly residents of Latin American nations, so the destruction and killing just keeps going on with little pushback from politicians in Washington, DC.

At The Intercept, Nick Turse is keeping a tally of the ongoing slaughter at sea. He counts, relying on information derived from US government sources, 60 strikes killing 197 people. The number of survivors of the strikes is just six.

This is a killing spree, not an ordinary drug interdiction effort.

The blowing up of small boats started in conjunction with the movement toward a regime change war against Venezuela. The small boats were claimed by the Trump administration, though never with convincing argument, to be part of a supposed grand threat of “narco-terrorism” from the South American country. Even if that argument had some credibility, discerning observers asked: Why were the small boats being summarily destroyed and everyone on board killed instead of more typical actions being taken, such as stopping and searching boats and detaining and arresting people on board?

Come January 3, the US military invaded Venezuela and carried off its president to America. The Trump administration has since been imposing demands on the nation’s government. The war justifying rationale for the US government blowing up small boats had thus come to an end. But, the slaughter at sea has continued nonetheless. The latest strike included in Turse’s tally was on Wednesday. It was the fifth such strike this month in the Pacific and Caribbean. The continuation of attacks on boats and the people on them seems to be either a macabre demonstration of the tendency of a government program to continue even after the reason for its creation is gone or part of the preparation for further intervention abroad.

May 28, 2026 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Comments Off on The US Military Keeps Blowing Up Small Boats in the Caribbean and Pacific

A Nation of Suspects

By Andrew P. Napolitano | Ron Paul Institute | May 28, 2026

Some of the recent legal challenges to the use of surveillance by the Department of Homeland Security upon Americans have resulted in the revelation of truly terrifying behavior by the government, in direct defiance of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. We now know that the federal government spies on innocent Americans without suspicion and without warrants.

The spying seems to fall into several categories. The National Security Agency, which is in the Department of Defense, employs about 60,000 domestic spies. These are the folks who want us to believe that they go through the trouble of making applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for warrants to spy on foreigners.

Actually, from time to time they do go to this court, but their travels there — where judges are frisked upon entering and leaving the courthouse by the NSA agents who appear before them — serve as fig leaves for their massive warrantless spying on Americans. The FISA Court is unconstitutional because it issues warrants based on probable cause of communicating with a foreign person, rather than on probable cause of crime as the Fourth Amendment requires.

The courts have ruled consistently since the 1960s that spying — surveillance, as the feds call it — is a search, and the capture of data from a surveillance is a seizure.

The Fourth Amendment protects all persons in America — not just Americans — from warrantless searches and seizures of their “persons, houses, papers, and effects.” There are some well-recognized exceptions to this constitutional baseline, such as evidence that will quickly vanish or be seriously degraded, but those exceptions do not apply here as the NSA captures in real time all keystrokes on all digital devices and all fiber optic data transmitted into, out of and within the United States.

The judges of the FISA Court surely know that the Department of Justice lawyers and NSA agents who appear before them are going through a charade, and the court has been made a part of it. The charade is the pretense that all spying is done pursuant to the warrants that FISA Court judges issue. Former NSA agents have revealed publicly that this is hardly the case.

Nevertheless, the lowered standard from probable cause of crime to probable cause of communicating to a foreign person was crafted by Congress — in another of its many moments heedless of the Constitution. After a few years of this, the FISA Court began to issue warrants for spying on the Americans who communicate with foreigners, out to the sixth degree. A sixth grader can do the math, as this leads to hundreds of millions of Americans whose communications are captured.

A second category of spying is employed by the DHS. The DHS — now a 250,000-person strong federal police department nowhere countenanced by the Constitution — has sophisticated software that can read fingerprints at 15 feet and irises at 15 inches. So, if you wave goodbye or good riddance to an ICE agent, and he holds up his mobile phone, and you are in the federal system for any benign reason, he has captured your bank, health, legal and commercial records on the spot. If he talks to you in your car and is within 15 inches of your face, he can capture the same data.

As if all this were not enough, the feds and local police use a device called a Stingray, which mimics the signal sent to all mobile devices as if the device were being used to communicate. But the communication is just one way, as the Stingray will tell the government where the person possessing the mobile device is at any given moment. This, too, is a seizure of private personal information — the contents of the computer chip in your mobile device — which the Fourth Amendment characterizes as an “effect.”

And then there is the FBI, which now uses zero-click software. This permits agents without warrants or even approval of their superiors to engage in computer hacking without having to trick the hacked victim into clicking on a link. Computer hacking is a felony.

All of this surveillance is unconstitutional, dangerous and commonplace. It consists in the use of surveillance and law enforcement tools without articulable suspicion.

For 600 years, articulable suspicion — the lowest evidentiary standard we have — has been the baseline for all government behavior that targets an individual. Articulable suspicion is the fact-based ability to state why a person — not a group — should be targeted and for what crime. This is the same standard that must be met when police stop someone in public.

Anything less than articulable suspicion is a fishing expedition; stated differently, a general warrant. General warrants — which were used by British agents on American colonists — permitted the agents to stop anyone, to search anywhere and to seize anything without articulable suspicion. The Fourth Amendment outlawed them.

How did we get from a Constitution that assumes that the individual is sovereign, our rights are natural and inalienable, and the government may only legally do what the governed have affirmatively authorized it to do to where we are today? The answer is fear. Fear is the great tool for authoritarians — fear of foreigners, fear of war, fear of crime, fear of drugs, fear of terror. When people are afraid, they will allow the government to take liberty in return for a promise of safety.

Of course, liberty once surrendered is never returned. But liberty is individual, not collective. You can surrender your liberty and your neighbors can surrender theirs, but none of you can surrender mine. These values are what animated Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration and James Madison in the Bill of Rights. Those animations seem like ancient history today. On the eve of America’s 250th anniversary, the Founders would not recognize this country of no values where everyone is a suspect.

To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.
COPYRIGHT 2026 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

May 28, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Comments Off on A Nation of Suspects

The Popular Scapegoats: How Israel Is Pushing Its New ‘Bad Apples’ Hasbara Strategy

By Robert Inlakesh | Palestine Chronicle | May 28, 2026

A revived attempt to scapegoat a handful of Israeli officials for the crimes of its entire regime structure has again taken off, especially in light of the recent diplomatic fallout over Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s public humiliation of Gaza aid flotilla activists. The idea behind this Hasbara campaign is to normalize Israel’s actions.

When Itamar Ben-Gvir posted the video of him mocking the brutal treatment that foreign activists were being subjected to – after being kidnapped in international waters – entitling it “welcome to Israel”, it understandably triggered a diplomatic firestorm. However, the Western leaders who summoned their envoys in response haven’t dared to address the treatment of the activists, including their own citizens, since.

All of this begs the question as to how much authenticity came along with these stances. One point of note is that even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu joined in with the chorus of condemnation, as did his Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and others. Since that time, at least 15 activists who were part of the latest Global Sumud Flotilla have accused the Israeli military of committing different forms of sexual assault against them, including rape.

The widespread weaponization of sexual violence by the Israeli military and security forces is no new phenomenon, yet it has occurred at a markedly higher frequency over the past few years, and it is something that has solely occurred to international peace activists. Instead, the Israelis have been proven to have implemented a systematic campaign of sexual violence against Palestinians, in particular those who are held hostage in military detention centers and civilians who have been detained in Gaza.

UN and human rights reports, eye witness testimonies, victim accounts, even video and photographic evidence, have all been presented to support the conclusion that sexual violence, including rape, has been used in unprecedented ways against the Palestinian civilian population. Despite all of this, the only mainstream corporate media outlet in the West that dared report on the issue was the New York Times, in a piece that addressed the issue years too late.

These same Western governments have not followed up the summoning of their envoys with any solid action, nor have they made a deal about the testimonies of sexual assault against activists who were kidnapped in international waters. Now, a coordinated media push, within which the Israeli President, Isaac Herzog, has recently participated, seeks to play the “bad apples” public relations strategy.

Smotrich and Ben-Gvir have become popular scapegoats, used to hide a society behind them that supports almost everything they do, even if they seek to be more well hidden. The overwhelming majority of the Israeli public supported their military committing genocide.

In fact, things are so bad that the 10 Israeli soldiers who were accused of gang raping a Palestinian hostage have now become celebrities in their society. Israeli comedians make jokes about the rape of Palestinians with dogs, Israeli politicians openly defend such despicable behavior, and there were even the infamous “right to rape” protests when soldiers were temporarily detained for the acts they committed.

The gang rape incident was not just alleged; it was caught on film and leaked. In the end, all of the Israeli soldiers who committed the violent rape got off scot free. The Israeli military’s top lawyer, who had leaked the video of the incident, something that forced the arrest of the perpetrators, ended up getting arrested herself, resigning from her job, and then made at least two suicide attempts following a string of death threats.

Itamar Ben-Gvir did not sexually assault those 15 activists; it wasn’t Bezalel Smotrich who convinced Israeli society to turn gang rapists into heroes and place them on public television shows. Israel has a citizen army and is a society built around a military culture.

When others try to scapegoat Benjamin Netanyahu, something that you will hear from Western liberals and mainstream Democrats, this, too, is disingenuous. According to polling data, a plurality of Israelis dislike the current Premier, which means it isn’t him that is to blame for the vast majority of Israeli citizens supporting the genocide in Gaza, or even worse, advocating publicly for even harsher means of dealing with Palestinian civilians.

It’s also not only Netanyahu that has openly supported the notion of achieving the “Greater Israel” project, his so-called “moderate” opponent, Yair Lapid, has himself publicly advocated the exact same policy– the only difference is that the opposition leader seeks to be more strategic about stealing territory all the way up to and including Iraq.

The reality is, these Western leaders are fully complicit with the Israelis. They only withdrew their summoned diplomatic envoys because Ben-Gvir’s video embarrassed them, robbing them of the ability to lie and cover up Israel’s blatant crimes against the international activists. It took no courage and it would have been more genuine of them to have endorsed the Israeli Security Minister’s actions.

Why? Because many of these nations that summoned their envoys are openly part of the so-called “Civil Military Coordination Center” (CMCC) that was set up to enforce the Gaza ceasefire and prevent violations of it. Instead, these nations have joined a center that watches Israeli war crimes – including the mass murder of over 900 Palestinians during the ceasefire – in real time, refusing to even leave the center in protest, let alone take any action. They are all directly complicit in the genocide.

What this whole ordeal has proven is just how low Western governments and their stenographers in the media will go in order to cover up the crimes of the Israeli regime. No matter what, they refuse to take a stand. If they had grown a backbone, it could have deterred many of the horrors we see playing out today.

– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine.

May 28, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , | Comments Off on The Popular Scapegoats: How Israel Is Pushing Its New ‘Bad Apples’ Hasbara Strategy

IRGC targets US military base in response to attack on Bandar Abbas

 Al Mayadeen | May 28, 2026

Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) issued a stern warning on Thursday following a US military violation and aggression near the Bandar Abbas Airport, stressing that any further aggression “will not go unanswered.”

In a statement released by its public relations office, the IRGC said the US military launched aerial projectiles at a location on the outskirts of Bandar Abbas before dawn. It added that Iran responded by targeting the US air base from which the attack originated at approximately 4:50 am.

The operation comes as a “serious warning,” the IRGC said, adding that the response was intended to demonstrate that any aggression against Iran would be met with retaliation, warning that any repeat attack would provoke “a more decisive response.”

“The responsibility for the consequences lies with the aggressor,” the statement added.

At the same time, the Kuwaiti military confirmed that “air defense systems are confronting missile and drone attacks.”

During the war, Iran repeatedly warned that any US military base used to launch attacks against its territory would be considered a legitimate target, stressing that while it maintains friendly relations with neighboring countries, it would not hesitate to strike the source of any aggression.

US attacks Bandar Abbas 

This comes after the US military targeted the “scorched earth” areas surrounding the city of Bandar Abbas, as explosions were heard across the area without any reported casualties or material damage, according to an Iranian military source cited by Tasnim News Agency.

Shortly after, Iranian media outlets reported hearing three explosions east of Bandar Abbas, with air defense systems activated.

Meanwhile, Reuters quoted a US official as saying that the US military had carried out fresh strikes on an Iranian military site near the Strait of Hormuz and allegedly intercepted several Iranian drones that were deemed “a threat to US forces.”

Similarly, on Monday, the US launched an aggression on alleged missile sites in southern Iran and targeted boats allegedly attempting to lay naval mines in the area, according to the US Central Command.

US tanker forced to retreat from Hormuz following Iranian intervention

In a related escalation, a US oil tanker attempted to cross the Strait of Hormuz overnight after disabling its radar system, but was forced to retreat after the Iranian navy responded swiftly and opened fire on the vessel, Tasnim reported, citing an Iranian military source.

Washington’s continued violations have raised fresh concerns over the stability of the current ceasefire and prospects for a broader regional agreement, with the US yet again bombing Iran in the middle of talks.

Just yesterday, Tasnim reported that progress has been made in talks, particularly on the release of Iran’s frozen assets in Qatar. However, reaching a final formulation of the memorandum of understanding between Washington and Tehran requires resolving outstanding differences, as per the same sources.

They emphasized that the mechanism for announcing the memorandum must be joint, warning that any unilateral announcement by the United States could be “not entirely accurate.”

The initial framework of the proposed understanding includes ending the aggression on all fronts, releasing Iran’s frozen assets, lifting the maritime blockade, and reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

The sources further indicated that, following the implementation of this initial phase, a 60-day negotiation period, extendable, would be allocated to address Iran’s nuclear file.

May 28, 2026 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , | Comments Off on IRGC targets US military base in response to attack on Bandar Abbas

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