Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Democrats and Republicans Pretend They Have Massive, Unbridgeable Differences So They Can Unite Seamlessly on War

Bernie and Lindsey share a moment of collegiality. Photo by Matt Stone via Getty Images
By Michael Tracey | August 24, 2022

After endless rounds of Hamlet-style legislative tedium, Congressional Democrats finally muscled through a $430 billion spending bill this month which deals with a smattering of their domestic policy priorities. Because Republicans opposed the bill en masse, and Democrats supported it en masse, one might look at this development and conclude that standard-fare partisanship is just as indelible a feature of US politics as it’s ever been. After all, the partisan affiliation of Senators and House members was perfectly predictive of their voting behavior vis-a-vis the “Inflation Reduction Act.” When the rubber hits the road, it turns out Republicans and Democrats really do have competing, irreconcilable interests — right?

Thanks to these occasional instances of classically polarized partisan sausage-making, elected officials and media operatives can claim at least some basis for their frantic insistence that some titanic gulf separates the two parties. The ever-presence of bi-directional Culture War agitation can heighten this impression — upon which it always becomes existentially crucial that one or the other party gets put into power at the next election. Make sure to vote in the upcoming Midterms, because these Midterms just happen to be the most consequential Midterms of all time, at least since the 2018 Midterms. The fate of humanity hinges on whether Chuck Schumer or Mitch McConnell controls the Senate, didn’t you know?

On the other hand, if you’re one of the vanishingly few Americans who’d like to think that your vote this year could meaningfully alter the course of US foreign policy, you’re bound for disappointment. Because even as both parties tried to make it seem like the “Inflation Reduction Act” vividly demonstrated the intractable differences between them, they were simultaneously demonstrating the exact opposite: that at least in regards to another set of issues which genuinely are “existential,” in that they impinge on such matters as whether you’re likely to get incinerated in a large radiation blast anytime soon, there is almost no meaningful distance at all between Democrats and the GOP. Over time, if anything, whatever distance might have previously existed has meaningfully shrunk. Because with limited and marginalized exceptions, both Democrats and Republicans are increasingly functioning as a unified bloc on the questions which most centrally bear on America’s posture as a global military and economic hegemon. As that posture becomes more fraught and antagonistic across multiple theaters, the two parties have become more and more ardent in constricting the range of acceptable debate. Democrats may spend the bulk of their time on social media or in front of TV cameras piously shrieking that the empowerment of Republicans would guarantee the implosion of “democracy,” and Republicans may make funhouse-mirror versions of the same argument. But this phony baloney two-way theater obscures just how much their worldviews have converged.

Earlier this month, the Senate approved the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO by a vote of 95-1 — formalizing the process by which those two countries have opted to repudiate their historic doctrines of military neutrality. (Finland is abandoning the precedent it adhered to throughout the entirety of the Cold War, while Sweden is abandoning the precedent it has adhered to since the reign of Napoleon.) Speaking from the Senate floor ahead of the vote, Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) joyously declared how “glad” he was that NATO enlargement is something “we can all pretty much agree on.” In a touching moment, Carper noted that he had both the “same initials” and the “same views” on the subject as his colleague Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) — perhaps the most ideologically zealous interventionist in the Senate. Cotton also happens to be one of the few remaining US political figures of any notoriety who’s still refused to budge in his conviction that it was a really great idea for George W. Bush to invade Iraq. And unless he just happens to have an unusually specific fondness for Iowa and New Hampshire, Cotton is clearly preparing to run for president — so it should bring Democrats great pleasure that someone they’re in such fundamental agreement with is gearing up to throw his hat in the ring.

“Probably one of the easiest votes I’ll ever make in the United States Senate,” announced Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID), who seemed particularly appreciative that he barely had to give the Finland/Sweden issue more than a moment’s thought. “John McCain, I wish you were alive today to celebrate,” chimed in Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). And indeed, there’s little doubt that McCain would have reason to celebrate from beyond the grave: the US political class, whatever their surface-level partisan or factional disagreements, is barreling toward unshakable “unity” on the expansion of US hegemonic power, now arrayed with growing fervor against the reviled tandem of Russia and China. One of McCain’s favorite themes was always “unity,” but a peculiar kind of “unity” whose purpose was mainly to facilitate wars.

Even the lone senator who did vote against the accession of Finland and Sweden this month, Josh Hawley (R-MO), did so on grounds that made abundantly clear he had no objection on principle to the expansion of NATO — much less to the accelerated deployment of coercive US power around the world. What he objected to was simply that expanding NATO at this juncture reflected ineffectual resource allocation, as Hawley preferred that whatever the US may now be obliged to expend in Scandinavia should instead be expended in East Asia, to prepare for an allegedly looming war with China. Hawley stressed that he opposed bringing Finland and Sweden into NATO only insofar as it would be a hindrance to the US implementing “a coherent strategy for stopping China’s dominance in the Pacific, beginning with the possible invasion of Taiwan.”

Hawley explained, “Our military forces in Asia are not postured as they should be,” whether because “we don’t have enough advanced munitions” or because the current fleet of US attack submarines is “sinking.” Fundamentally, Hawley argued, the US is “simply not sized to handle two simultaneous conflicts.” And his objection to NATO expansion boils down to a preference for “handling” a conflict in the Pacific over one in Europe — not, it should be noted, a preference for mitigating conflict in the first place. But even going by his own stated rationale, it’s unclear what the operating principle is for Hawley: in 2019, he voted for the accession of well-known military powerhouse North Macedonia to NATO. All that’s seemingly changed in the interim is that Hawley has taken to framing his views more in terms of opposing what he calls a “globalist foreign policy” — which somehow coincides with his advocacy for dramatically ramping up US militarization on the other side of the globe in East Asia.

Even Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), among the dwindling group of national politicians one might expect to raise at least a perfunctory objection to NATO expansion, conceded during the Senate debate this month: “In this new world I am less adamant about preventing NATO’s expansion.”

It wasn’t always this way. In 1998, 19 senators voted against the accession to NATO of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic — not enough to prevent the proposal from obtaining the required two-thirds majority, but enough to at least prompt a reasonably robust debate, one which far exceeded the pittance that accompanied this month’s vote. Figures as high-profile as Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY), Hillary Clinton’s predecessor, argued against NATO expansion on the floor of the Senate in extremely stark terms: Moynihan declared his opposition stemmed from a keen wariness about “the dangers of nuclear war in the years ahead,” and said NATO expansion needlessly “put ourselves at risk of getting into a nuclear engagement, a nuclear war, with Russia — wholly unanticipated, for which we are not prepared, about which we are not thinking.”

Moynihan’s primary sparring partner during that 1998 debate was none other than Joe Biden, then the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who appointed himself point-person for the entire process of shepherding NATO expansion through the necessary procedural formalities. In fact, Biden’s conviction in the eternal virtue of NATO expansion seems to be one of the few positions he’s held consistently over the course of his comically long, decades-spanning career. That first round of expansion in 1998, Biden declared at the time, would mark “the beginning of another 50 years of peace” — a prophecy that today some might quibble with.

Though he didn’t succeed, Moynihan’s opposition showed it wasn’t an automatic career-ender to be associated with skepticism of this particular strand of US military expansionism — nor was raising concerns about the specter of nuclear war considered contemptibly “cringe.” Moynihan remained a highly revered figure among his colleagues; a new expansion of Penn Station in NYC was even just named after him last year. With a hot war raging today in Ukraine, in which the US is effectively the leading co-combatant against Russia, the risk of nuclear war is much more acute than when Moynihan warned about it 24 years ago. But almost no political figure of any prominence even appears to be “thinking” about the matter anymore. Indulge in such “thinking,” and you’re liable to be denounced as a Putin agent for your trouble, and/or field a barrage of angry accusations that you’re somehow in league with right-wing “insurrectionists.”

A few who voted against NATO expansion in 1998 are still in the Senate, like Pat Leahy (D-VT), Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Jim Inhofe (R-OK) — all of whom just supported Finland/Sweden accession this month, apparently without a second thought. (Leahy, at age 82, was technically absent for the vote due to hip problems.) Even Harry Reid (D-NV), who’d later become the Senate Majority Leader and therefore presumably could not be dismissed as some fringe agitator, voted against NATO expansion in 1998. There were weeks of formal debate back then — Senators actually engaged one another directly with arguments and counter-arguments, an extreme rarity in an otherwise stultified environment. And while Biden’s side prevailed, there was at least some notional sense that another “side” existed. Today, there is functionally just one “side,” with politicians flocking in unison to install another 830 miles of NATO “security umbrella” (by way of Finland) right smack dab on the border with Russia. This would’ve been almost unthinkable in 1998, even for the most ardent NATO expansion advocates — but today the move was swiftly ratified with hardly a critical word uttered.

Bernie Sanders (I-VT) was in the House at the time, not the Senate, and therefore did not specifically vote on the provision to amend the NATO treaty. But in 1997 he made a point to put some observations on the record concerning a concurrent measure that set the groundwork for Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to join NATO (which ultimately happened in 2004, thanks to the friendly bipartisan cooperation of Biden and George W. Bush). Sanders asked on the floor of the House: “First of all, Russia clearly perceives that the expansion of NATO into the Baltics would be an aggressive, wholly unjustifiable move by the United States… since the Cold War is over, why are we militarily provoking Russia?”

Today, Bernie is essentially mute on the subject — except when he votes unfalteringly in favor of the latest NATO-related initiative, such as the Finland/Sweden measure this month, or the $40 billion Ukraine war funding bill in May. And for the most part, he can’t even be bothered to explain his reasoning — which in a way is understandable, since it’s not like there’s some steady drumbeat of “progressive” activists/media holding his feet to the fire on these issues. Could figures who opposed NATO expansion in 1998 theoretically argue that conditions in 2022 have changed so radically that they’ve in turn changed their position? Yes, they could theoretically argue that. But they’re barely even asked to justify their positions, as the near-total eradication of any dissension on the matter has given way to an impenetrable consensus, such that no justification need be given.

The Washington Post was candid in 1998 about the reasons “approval was virtually assured” for NATO expansion, notwithstanding the minority of opposition led by Moynihan. “Pressure from ethnic constituencies and the prospect of new markets for the American defense industry at a time of shrinking US demand,” the newspaper reported, had already sealed the deal. Try mentioning either of those factors in polite company today with regard to the current posture of US foreign policy in Eastern Europe. You’ll probably find you’d prefer to stick with more standard-fare squabbling about things like the “Inflation Reduction Act.”

August 24, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

US Carries Out Airstrikes Targeting “Iranian-Backed” Groups in Syria

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | August 23, 2022

US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced it carried out airstrikes in Syria on Tuesday. The Department of Defense claims the bombs hit facilities used by groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and were in retaliation for an attack on US personnel in Syria.

The CENTCOM press release asserts that Iranian-supported groups attacked US forces in Syria on August 15, and Tuesday’s bombing was necessary to protect American troops. “Today’s strikes were necessary to protect and defend US personnel. The United States took proportionate, deliberate action intended to limit the risk of escalation and minimize the risk of casualties,” the Pentagon said.

Pentagon statement on August 15 said a US base in al-Tanf, Syria, was attacked by a series of drones causing no damage or injuries. There was no claim of responsibility for the attack. The White House has not provided evidence that an Iranian-backed group carried out the attack.

The US occupies about a third of Syrian territory with 900 troops. Washington claims its forces remain in Syria to ensure the enduring defeat of the Islamic State. However, Iranian-backed groups support the government of Bashar al-Assad, an avowed enemy of ISIS. In recent months, ISIS has carried out several attacks against Assad’s forces, killing scores of soldiers.

President Joe Biden asserted he had Constitutional authority to carry out the strikes. “The President gave the direction for these strikes pursuant to his Article II authority to protect and defend US personnel by disrupting or deterring attacks by Iran-backed groups,” the press release said.

While Article II may give Biden the power to defend US troops, Congress has never passed a declaration of war or authorization of military force for Syria. Without Congressional authorization, three successive American presidents bombed Syria.

The strikes also come as Washington and Tehran have made significant progress towards reviving the Iran nuclear agreement. The US and Iran have been engaged in indirect talks for over a year. Reuters reported Monday that Tehran had dropped two key demands, paving the way for a deal that would see the US and Iran return to compliance with the nuclear deal.

August 24, 2022 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Biden celebrates Ukraine’s independence day with biggest arms package yet

Samizdat | August 24, 2022

US President Joe Biden announced on Wednesday that the US will send an additional $2.98 billion worth of weapons to Ukraine. In an announcement coinciding with Ukraine’s Independence Day, Biden said that the US envisions Kiev fighting for some time to come.

According to a White House statement, Ukraine will receive “air defense systems, artillery systems and munitions, counter-unmanned aerial systems, and radars to ensure it can continue to defend itself over the long term.”

On Tuesday, US officials told the Associated Press, Reuters and CBS that the package would include at least three different drone systems, such as the hand-launched Puma drone, the longer-range ScanEagle surveillance vehicle, as well as the UK-made Vampire drone, which has not previously been provided to Kiev.

Referencing Ukraine’s independence day, which celebrates its split from the Soviet Union in 1991, Biden said that “today is not only a celebration of the past, but a resounding affirmation that Ukraine proudly remains – and will remain – a sovereign and independent nation.” Given his vow to support the Ukrainian military “over the long term,” and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s declaration on Tuesday that the alliance would back Kiev “for as long as it takes,” Biden evidently plans for the conflict to be a long one.

However, several US media outlets reported on Tuesday that the contents of Wednesday’s arms package may not reach the battlefield for months or even years. Unnamed US officials told the Associated Press that Washington expects Ukrainian forces “to fight for years to come.”

Bankrolling the Ukrainian military has been a costly endeavor for the US. With the American economy wracked by inflation and rising energy costs, the Biden administration has thus far committed more than $54 billion in military and economic aid to Kiev since February.

Meanwhile in Ukraine, Russia continues to advance on Ukrainian positions in the south of the country and on the borders of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, where Kiev has spent the last eight years building a network of bunkers and fortifications. While Ukraine does not publish casualty figures, President Vladimir Zelensky said earlier this summer that 60 to 100 Ukrainian soldiers were being killed in Donbass on a daily basis, with another 500 injured.

August 24, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Israel must ‘eliminate’ nuclear arsenal: Official

The Cradle | August 23, 2022

On 23 August, Iran’s top UN Envoy Majid Takht Ravanchi decried the lack of progress over efforts to denuclearize West Asia, and called on Israel – the region’s only nuclear armed state – to eliminate its stockpile of weapons.

Tehran’s ambassador made these remarks during the Tenth Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) held at the UN’s headquarters in New York.

Takht-Ravanchi charged the US with exercising double standards, and demanded that Israel’s accession to the NPT “without precondition and further delay” and the placement of all of its nuclear activities and facilities under the comprehensive International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards are essential in “realizing the goal the of establishing of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East.”

The Iranian envoy said delays in 2012, 2013 and 2014 in convening the Conference – which is meant to advance the goal of eliminating weapons of mass destruction from the region – had caused serious setbacks for participating states.

“We are firmly convinced that the Conference was postponed indefinitely because of the US opposition, and this has been the persistent policy of the US to turn a blind eye to the nuclear arsenals of the Israeli regime while not supporting the convening of the Conference,” he declared.

Israel reportedly possesses 200 to 400 nuclear warheads, making it the sole possessor of non-conventional arms in West Asia, yet Tel Aviv as yet to sign the NPT and refuses to allow inspections of its nuclear facilities.

Signatories from 191 countries have signed the NPT, including the US, UK, France, China, and Russia, making it the most highly ratified armaments agreement in history.

Experts suggest that the US and EU support for Israel has emboldened the country to increase its nuclear activities, despite essential oversight by the IAEA.

Over the years, Israelis are believed to have assassinated at least seven Iranian nuclear scientists and conducted a series of sabotage operations against Iran’s IAEA-monitored nuclear facilities.

Last week, Israeli officials called on western nations to “walk away” from the negotiating table with Iran, fearful that the US is on the cusp of returning to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that would freeze Tehran’s enrichment program.

During a phone call with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on 18 August, Israel’s interim Prime Minister Yair Lapid demanded that Europe send a “clear and unequivocal message that there will be no more concessions to Iran,” according to Israeli media.

Lapid also met with the US ambassador to Israel and the chairman of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee’s ‘Middle East’ Subcommittee, telling them: “In the current situation, the time has come to walk away from the table. Anything else sends a message of weakness to Iran.”

This comes after several Israeli assassination and sabotage operations inside Iran, in efforts to set back Iran’s advancements and scuttle JCPOA revival talks.

August 23, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

US Space Force wants to disrupt Russia-China space cooperation

Both Russia and China have been responding to the US militarization of space by enhancing their own capabilities, both separately and jointly.

By Drago Bosnic | August 22, 2022

Close strategic partnership between Russia and China has been the mainstay of their relationship for decades. The US has been trying to disrupt this successful partnership ever since, especially as Russia started regaining its strength, but the incessant belligerent actions of the imperialist thalassocracy have pushed the two (Eur)Asian superpowers even closer. This cooperation is manifold, but its space component is particularly concerning for the US, as it has serious security implications. The Pentagon is worried that the US “might not be able to match the united financing and know-how” of Moscow and Beijing.

“The two countries’ space cooperation, including in the military realm, has become inextricable since 2018 and works against U.S. interests,” said Kevin Pollpeter, senior research scientist at the CNA think tank’s China Studies Division. “I don’t think we can separate China and Russia. I just don’t think that’s possible,” Pollpeter said in response to a question from Air Force Magazine following a panel discussion on China-Russia space cooperation at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C.

“While the countries do not have completely overlapping security concerns, they do share a strong desire to counter U.S. leadership, including in outer space,” he said. “What we need to do is, we need to mitigate whatever problems that relationship may cause for us. The two countries’ military space cooperation includes the areas of ballistic missile defense, space debris monitoring, and satellite navigation. The resulting exchange has included technology transfer, weapons sales, combined exercises, and compensating measures,” Pollpeter added.

In 1989, the US imposed sanctions on China, targeting Beijing’s defense and space industry. China looked to Russia for the necessary technology transfers and by 1997, the two countries started regular cooperation in space. Russia had the know-how, but its space industry was faced with severe funding shortages.

“… a number of embargoes that took place made [China] increasingly more reliant on Russia as a potential source of technology, particularly for dual use and defense,” said Pollpeter. “… China started looking more to Russia, and Russia started looking more to China for help with supporting their own space program.”

China also began cooperating with Russia on ballistic missile defense after the US unilaterally withdrew from the INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) Treaty in 2019. In the immediate aftermath of the withdrawal, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that Russia would assist China in creating a ballistic missile early warning system. At the time, Putin said that China was perfectly capable of creating such a system itself, but that it would take longer, so Russia decided to aid Beijing in enhancing its strategic security in light of aggressive US moves in the Asia-Pacific region.

“There appears to be some sort of technology transfer going on,” Pollpeter added. “There’s been joint exercises – the Aerospace Security 2016 and 2017 involved joint air and missile defense planning and coordination.”

According to Pollpeter, another area of cooperation, space debris monitoring, “may sound innocuous,” but he claims “it has security implications.”

“If you have a space debris monitoring system, then you actually have a space domain awareness or space surveillance system,” he said. “This very much has a military role in helping China and Russia better monitor U.S. movements up in space.”

The US Space Force is particularly concerned about how “little is known about the satellite navigation cooperation between the two nations.” According to Pollpeter, other than the fact that there are compatibility and interoperability between the Russian and Chinese equivalents to GPS, the GLONASS and BeiDou navigation systems, nothing else is known about the security component of this cooperation. What is supposedly known is “the presence of augmentation stations in each other’s countries and performance monitoring,” Pollpeter claims.

“What they really want to do, then, is demonstrate that in a world where the U.S. and China could come into military conflict, they have an alternative,” he said. “They don’t have to rely on BeiDou exclusively. They also have the Russian system.”

As China doesn’t publicly discuss its space defense capabilities, Pollpeter claims it’s currently unknown which level of cooperation have Moscow and Beijing reached in this regard.

“A lot of it’s so opaque that when you get into something like counterspace, they’re not going to discuss that,” he said. “What China is developing is a capability that really is designed to threaten the United States space architecture from the ground all the way up to geosynchronous orbit.”

Existing agreements indicate close Chinese and Russian cooperation on launch vehicles, rocket engines, space planes, lunar and deep space exploration, remote sensing, electronics, space debris, satellite navigation and communication. Pollpeter thinks the US Space Force cannot halt the China-Russia cooperation, but it could do more to mitigate its effects.

“There’s really little we can do to separate the two countries, especially [on] the space side,” he said. “The distrust and, let’s say, to some extent, animosity of both countries towards the U.S. sort of precludes, at this point, that any of those efforts can be successful.”

As the US state-run space sector kept falling behind, private companies, the most prominent certainly being SpaceX, started closely cooperating with the US military. Both Russia and China have been responding to the US militarization of space by enhancing their own capabilities, both separately and jointly. While China started deploying pilotless spaceplanes, Russia is building land-based laser weapons to counter US space threats and is also launching its own spacecraft to track US space assets.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

August 22, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

The Jewish Hand in World War Three

Free Speech versus Catastrophe

BY THOMAS DALTON • UNZ REVIEW • MAY 18, 2022

Thanks to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, we indeed seem to be rushing headlong into a major war—possibly a World War Three, possibly the world’s first (and perhaps last) nuclear war. Ukraine leadership and their Western backers seem hell-bent on fighting to the last man, and Vladimir Putin, as an old-school Cold Warrior, seems equally determined to press ahead until achieving “victory.” The cause seems hopeless for Ukraine, who cannot reasonably expect to prevail in an extended conflict with one of the largest militaries on Earth. At best, they may bleed Russia over a period of months or years, but only at the cost of massive blood-letting themselves. It seems that Ukraine will be the loser in this struggle, no matter what comes.

In the Western media, we are presented with a remarkably simplified storyline: Putin is an evil warmonger who simply wants to extend Russian territory; to this end, he is exploiting events in Ukraine, deploying his military ostensibly to support the Russian-speaking districts of Luhansk and Donetsk in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine. But this is just cover, they say, for his mad quest to rebuild the Russian empire. In pursuit of his goal, he is willing to inflict any amount of material damage and kill any number of civilians. Fortunately, say our media, Putin has thus far been largely contained; the brave Ukrainian fighters are constantly “reclaiming” land, Russia’s advance has “stalled,” and indeed, Russia seems to be in danger of losing.

Consequently, the US and its allies must do all they can to “aid” and “support” the brave Ukrainians and their beleaguered but heroic leader, Volodymyr Zelensky. No amount of money, no assortment of deadly weaponry, no military intelligence, is too much. Like World War Two, this “war” is an unconditional struggle of Good versus Evil; therefore the West, as the moral paragon of the world, must step up, undergo sacrifice, and ensure that Good prevails.

And indeed, the financial support from just the United States is breathtaking: As of early May, Congress has approved $13.6 billion in aid, much of it for direct Ukrainian military support. And yet this would only cover costs through September. Thus, president Biden recently called for an additional package of $33 billion, which would include over $20 billion in military and security aid, and, surprisingly, $2.6 billion for “the deployment of American troops to the region,” in order to “safeguard NATO allies.” Incredibly, Congress responded by approving $40 billion, bringing the total aid thus far to $54 billion. For perspective, this represents over 80% of Russia’s annual defense budget of $66 billion. (By contrast, America allocates well over $1 trillion—that is, $1,000 billion—annually in direct and indirect military expenditures.)

Notably, such unconditional support and defense of Ukraine is a virtually unanimous view across the American political spectrum, and throughout Europe. Right and left, conservative and liberal, working class or wealthy elite, all sectors of society are apparently united in opposition to the evil Putin. In an era when virtually no issue garners unanimous support, the Ukrainian cause stands out as an extremely rare instance of bipartisan, multi-sector agreement. The rare dissenters—such as Fox News’ Tucker Carlson and a handful of alt-right renegades—are routinely attacked as “Russian assets” or “tools of Putin.” There is no room for disagreement, no space for debate, no opposing views allowed.

In fact, though, this is yet another case of what I might call the “unanimity curse”: when all parties in American society are united on a topic, any topic, then we really need to worry. Here, it seems that the reality is of a potent Jewish Lobby, exerting itself (again) in the direction of war, for reasons of profit and revenge against a hated enemy. There is, indeed, a Jewish hand at work here, one that may well drive us into another world war, and even a nuclear war—one which, in the worst case, could mean the literal end of much of life on this planet. The unanimity comes when all parties are subject, in various ways, to the demands of the Lobby, and when the public has been misled and even brainwashed by a coordinated Jewish media into believing the standard narrative.

The best cure for this catastrophic situation is unrestricted free speech. The Lobby knows this, however, and thus takes all possible measures to inhibit free speech. Normally, such a struggle ebbs and flows according to the issue and the times; but now, the situation is dire. Now more than ever, a lack of free speech could be fatal to civilized society.

Context and Run-Up

To fully understand the Jewish hand in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, we need to review some relevant history. Over the centuries, there have been constant battles over the lands of present-day Ukraine, with Poles, Austro-Hungarians, and Russians alternately dominating. Russia took control of most of Ukraine in the late 1700s and held it more or less continuously until the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991; this is why Putin claims that the country is “part of Russia.”

For their part, Jews have experienced a particularly tumultuous relationship with Russia, one that ranged from disgust and detestation to a burning hatred. As it happened, Jews migrated to Russia in the 19th century, eventually numbering around 5 million. They were a disruptive and agitating force within the nation and thus earned the dislike of Czars Nicholas I (reign 1825 to 1855), Alexander II (1855 to 1881, when he was assassinated by a partly-Jewish anarchist gang), and especially Nicholas II (1894 to 1917)—the latter of whom was famously murdered, along with his family, by a gang of Jewish Bolshevists in 1918. Already in 1871, Russian activist Mikhail Bakunin could refer to the Russian Jews as “a single exploiting sect, a sort of bloodsucker people, a collective parasite”.[1] The assassination of Alexander initiated a series of pogroms that lasted decades, and which set the stage for a lingering Jewish hatred of all things Russian.[2]

For present purposes, though, we can jump to the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election (I note that Ukraine also has a prime minister, but unlike most European countries, he typically has limited powers). In 2004, it came down to “the two Viktors”: the pro-Western V. Yushchenko and the pro-Russian V. Yanukovych. The first round was nearly tied, and thus they went to a second round in which Yanukovych prevailed by around three percentage points. But amid claims of vote-rigging, Western Ukrainians initiated an “Orange Revolution”—backed by the Ukrainian Supreme Court—that annulled those results and mandated a repeat runoff election. The second time, the tables were turned, and the pro-West Yushchenko won by eight points. The West was elated, and Putin naturally mad as hell.

The following years witnessed financial turmoil and, unsurprisingly, constant harassment from Russia. By 2010, Ukrainians were ready for a change, and this time Yanukovych won handily, over a Jewish female competitor, Yulia Timoshenko—notably, she had “co-led the Orange Revolution.” Russia, for once, was satisfied with the result.

But of course, in the West, Europe and the US were mightily displeased, and they soon began efforts to reverse things yet again. Among other strategies, they apparently decided to deploy the latest in high tech and social media. Thus in June 2011, two of Google’s top executives—Eric Schmidt and a 30-year-old Jewish upstart named Jared Cohen—went to visit Julian Assange in the UK, then living under house arrest. It is well-known, incidentally, that Google is a Jewish enterprise, with Jewish founders Sergei Brin and Larry Page running the ship.[3]

The nominal purpose of the trip was to conduct research for a book that Schmidt and Cohen were working on, regarding the intersection of political action and technology—in plain words, how to foment revolutions and steer events in a desired direction. As Assange relates in his 2014 book When Google Met Wikileaks, he was initially unaware of the deeper intentions and motives of his interviewers. Only later did he come to learn that Schmidt had close ties to the Obama administration, and that Cohen was actively working on political upheaval. As Assange wrote, “Jared Cohen could be wryly named Google’s ‘director of regime change’.” Their immediate targets were Yanukovych in Ukraine and Assad in Syria.

By early 2013, the American Embassy in Kiev was training right-wing Ukrainian nationalists on how to conduct a targeted revolt against Yanukovych. It would not be long until they had their chance.

In late 2013, Yanukovych decided to reject an EU-sponsored IMF loan, with all the usual nasty strings attached, in favor of a comparable no-strings loan from Russia. This apparent shift away from Europe and toward Russia was the nominal trigger for the start of protest actions. Thus began the “Maidan Uprising,” led in large part by two extreme nationalist groups: Svoboda and Right Sector.[4] Protests went on for nearly three months, gradually accelerating in intensity; in a notable riot near the end, some 100 protestors and 13 police were shot dead.

As the Uprising reached its peak, at least one American Jew was highly interested: Victoria Nuland. As Obama’s Assistant Secretary of State (first under Hillary Clinton, and then under the half-Jew John Kerry), Nuland had direct oversight of events in eastern Europe.[5] And for her, it was personal; her father, Sherwin Nuland (born Shepsel Nudelman), was a Ukrainian Jew. She was anxious to drive the pro-Russian Yanukovych out of power and replace him with a West-friendly, Jew-friendly substitute. And she had someone specific in mind: Arseniy Yatsenyuk. On 27 January 2014, as the riots were peaking, Nuland called American Ambassador to Ukraine, Jeff Pyatt, to urgently discuss the matter. Nuland pulled no punches: “Yats” was her man. We know this because the call was apparently tapped and the dialogue later posted on Youtube. Here is a short excerpt:

Nuland: I think Yats is the guy who’s got the economic experience, the governing experience. He’s the… what he needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside. He needs to be talking to them four times a week, you know. I just think Klitsch going in… he’s going to be at that level working for Yatseniuk, it’s just not going to work.

Pyatt: Yeah, no, I think that’s right. OK. Good. Do you want us to set up a call with him as the next step? […]

Nuland: OK, good. I’m happy. Why don’t you reach out to him and see if he wants to talk before or after.

Pyatt: OK, will do. Thanks.

It was clear to both of them, though, that the EU leadership had other ideas. The EU was much more anxious to be a neutral party and to avoid direct intervention in Ukrainian affairs so as to not unduly antagonize Russia. But in time-tested Jewish fashion, Nuland did not give a damn. A bit later in the same phone call, she uttered her now-famous phrase: “Fuck the EU.” So much for Jewish subtlety.[6]

But there was another angle that nearly all Western media avoided: “Yats” was also Jewish. In a rare mention, we read in a 2014 Guardian story that “Yatsenyuk has held several high-profile positions including head of the country’s central bank, the National Bank of Ukraine… He has played down his Jewish-Ukrainian origins, possibly because of the prevalence of antisemitism in his party’s western Ukraine heartland.” For some reason, such facts are never relevant to Western media.

As the Maidan Uprising gave way to the Maidan Revolution in February 2014, Yanukovych was forced out of office, fleeing to Russia. Pro-Western forces then succeeded in nominating “Yats” as prime minister, effective immediately, working in conjunction with president Oleksandr Turchynov. This provisional leadership was formalized in a snap election in May 2014 in which the pro-Western candidate Peter Poroshenko won. (The second-place finisher was none other than Yulia Timoshenko—the same Jewess who had lost to Yanukovych in 2010.)

It was under such circumstances that Putin invaded and annexed Crimea, in February 2014. It was also at this time that Russian separatists in Donbass launched their counter-revolution, initiating a virtual civil war in Ukraine; to date, eight years later, around 15,000 people have died in total, many civilians.

With this American-sponsored coup finished, Ukrainian Jews began to reach out to the West to increase their influence. Thus it happened that just a few months after Maidan, the wayward son of the American vice president got in touch with a leading Ukrainian Jew, Mykola Zlochevsky, who ran a large gas company called Burisma. In this way, Hunter Biden incredibly found himself on the board of a corporation of which he knew nothing, in an industry of which he knew nothing, and which nonetheless was able to “pay” him upwards of $500,000 per year—obviously, for access to father Joe and thus to President Obama. Hunter carried on in this prestigious role for around five years, resigning only in 2019, as his father began his fateful run for the presidency.[7]

Despite a rocky tenure, Yatsenyuk managed to hold his PM position for over two years, eventually resigning in April 2016. His replacement was yet another Jew, Volodymyr Groysman, who served until August 2019. The Jewish hand would not be stayed. All this set the stage for the rise of the ultimate Jewish player, Volodymyr Zelensky.

This situation is particularly remarkable given that Jews are a small minority in Ukraine. Estimates vary widely, but the Jewish population is claimed to range from a maximum of 400,000 to as low as just 50,000. With a total population of 41 million, Jews represent, at most, 1% of the nation, and could be as small as 0.12%. Under normal conditions, a tiny minority like this should be almost invisible; but here, they dominate. Such is the Jewish hand.

Enter the Jewish Oligarchs

In Ukraine, there is a “second government” that calls many of the shots. This shadow government is an oligarchy: a system of rule by the richest men. Of the five richest Ukrainian billionaires, four are Jews: Igor (or Ihor) Kolomoysky, Viktor Pinchuk, Rinat Akhmetov, and Gennadiy Bogolyubov. Right behind them, in the multi-millionaire class, are Jews like Oleksandr Feldman and Hennadiy Korban. Collectively, this group is often more effective at imposing their will than any legislator. And unsurprisingly, this group has been constantly enmeshed in corruption and legal scandals, implicated in such crimes as kidnapping, arson and murder.[8]

Of special interest is the first named above. Kolomoysky has long been active in banking, airlines and media—and in guiding minor celebrities to political stardom. In 2005 he became the leading shareholder of the 1+1 Media Group, which owns seven TV channels, including the highly popular 1+1 channel. (The 1+1 Group was founded in 1995 by another Ukrainian Jew, Alexander Rodnyansky.) Worth up to $6 billion in the past decade, Kolomoysky’s current net wealth is estimated to be around $1 billion.

Not long after acquiring 1+1, Kolomoysky latched on to an up-and-coming Jewish comedian by the name of Volodymyr Zelensky. Zelensky had been in media his entire adult life, and even co-founded a media group, Kvartal 95, in 2003, at the age of just 25. Starring in feature films, he switched to television by the early 2010s, eventually coming to star in the 1+1 hit show “Servant of the People,” where he played a teacher pretending to be president of Ukraine. Then there was the notable 2016 comedy skit in which Zelensky and friends play a piano with their penises—in other words, typical low-brow scatological Jewish humor, compliments of Zelensky and Kolomoysky.

By early 2018, the pair were ready to move into politics. Zelensky registered his new political party for the upcoming 2019 election, and declared himself a presidential candidate in December 2018, just four months prior to the election. In the end, of course, he won, with 30% of the vote in the first round, and then defeating incumbent Poroshenko in the 2nd round by a huge 50-point margin. Relentless favorable publicity by 1+1 was credited with making a real difference. Notably, the third-place finisher in that election was, yet again, the Jewess Yulia Timoshenko—like a bad penny, she just keeps coming back.[9]

Zelensky, incidentally, has dramatically profited from his “meteoric rise” to fame and power. His Kvartal 95 media company earned him some $7 million per year. He also owns a 25% share of Maltex Multicapital, a shell company based in the British Virgin Islands, as part of a “web of off-shore companies” he helped to establish back in 2012. A Ukrainian opposition politician, Ilya Kiva, suggested recently that Zelensky is currently tapping into “hundreds of millions” in funding that flows into the country, and that Zelensky himself is personally earning “about $100 million per month.” A Netherlands party, Forum for Democracy, recently cited estimates of Zelensky’s fortune at an astounding $850 million. Apparently the “Churchill of Ukraine” is doing quite well for himself, even as his country burns.

In any case, it is clear that Zelensky owes much to his mentor and sponsor, Kolomoysky. The latter even admitted as much back in late 2019, in an interview for the New York Times. “If I put on glasses and look back at myself,” he said, “I see myself as a monster, as a puppet master, as the master of Zelensky, someone making apocalyptic plans. I can start making this real” (Nov 13). Indeed—the Kolomoysky/Zelensky apocalypse is nearly upon us.

Between rule by Jewish oligarchs and manipulations by the global Jewish lobby, modern-day Ukraine is a mess of a nation—and it was so long before the current “war.” Corruption there is endemic; in 2015, the Guardian headlined a story on Ukraine, calling it “the most corrupt nation in Europe.” An international corruption-ranking agency had recently assessed that country at 142nd in world, worse than Nigeria and equal to Uganda. As a result, Ukraine’s economy has suffered horribly. Before the current conflict, their per-capita income level of $8700 put them 112th in the world, below Albania ($12,900), Jamaica ($9100), and Armenia ($9700); this is by far the poorest in Europe, and well below that of Russia ($25,700 per person). Impoverished, corrupt, manipulated by Jews, now in a hot war—pity the poor Ukrainians.

Hail the American Empire

Enough history and context; let’s cut to the chase. From a clear-eyed perspective, it is obvious why Zelensky and friends want to prolong a war that they have no hope of winning: they are profiting immensely from it. As an added benefit, the actor Zelensky gets to perform on the world stage, which he will surely convert into more dollars down the road. Every month that the conflict continues, billions of dollars are flowing into Ukraine, and Zelensky et al. are assuredly skimming their “fair share” off the top. Seriously—who, making anywhere near $100 million per month, wouldn’t do everything conceivable to keep the gravy train running? The fact that thousands of Ukrainian soldiers are dying has no bearing at all in Zelensky’s calculus; in typical Jewish fashion, he cares not one iota for the well-being of the White Europeans. If his soldiers die even as they kill a few hated Russians, so much the better. For Ukrainian Jews, it is a win-win proposition.

Why does no one question this matter? Why is Zelensky’s corruption never challenged? Why are these facts so hard to find? We know the answer: It is because Zelensky is a Jew, and Jews are virtually never questioned and never challenged by leading Americans or Europeans. Jews get a pass on everything (unless they are obviously guilty of something heinous—and sometimes even then!). Jews get a pass from fellow Jews because they cover for each other. Jews get a pass from media because the media is owned and operated by Jews. And Jews get a pass from prominent non-Jews who are in the pay of Jewish sponsors and financiers. Zelensky can be as corrupt as hell, funneling millions into off-shore accounts, but as long as he plays his proper role, no one will say anything.

So the “war” goes on, and Zelensky and friends get rich. What does Europe get from all this? Nothing. Or rather, worse than nothing: They get a hot war in their immediate neighborhood, and they get an indignant Putin threatening to put hypersonic missiles in their capital cities in less than 200 seconds. They get to deal with the not-so-remote threat of nuclear war. They get to see their currency decline—by 10% versus the yuan in a year and by 12% versus the dollar. They get a large chunk of their gas, oil, and electricity supplies diverted or shut off, driving up energy prices. And they get to see their Covid-fragile economies put on thin ice.

But perhaps they deserve all this. As is widely known, the European states are American vassals, which means they are Jewish vassals. European leaders are spineless and pathetic lackeys of the Jewish Lobby. Judenknecht like Macron, Merkel and now Scholz, are sorry examples of humanity; they have sold out their own people to placate their overlords. And the European public is too bamboozled and too timid to make a change; France just had a chance to elect Le Pen, but the people failed to muster the necessary will. Thus, Europe deserves its fate: hot war, nuclear threat, cultural and economic decline, sub-Saharan and Islamic immigrants—the whole package. If it gets bad enough, maybe enough Europeans will awaken to the Jewish danger and take action. Or so we can hope.

What about the US? We could scarcely be happier. Dead Russians, the hated Putin in a tizzy, and the chance to play “world savior” once again. American military suppliers are ecstatic; they don’t care that most of their weapons bound for Ukraine get lost, stolen or blown up, and that (according to some estimates) only 5% make it to the front. For them, every item shipped is another profitable sale, whether it is used or not. And American congressmen get to pontificate about another “good war” even as they approve billions in aid.

And perhaps best of all, we get to press for an expansion to that American Empire known as NATO. We need to be very clear here: NATO is simply another name for the American Empire. The two terms are interchangeable. In no sense is NATO an “alliance among equals.” Luxembourg, Slovakia, and Albania have absolutely nothing to offer to the US. Do we care if they will “come to our aid” in case of a conflict? That is a bad joke, at best. In reality, what such nations are is more land, more people, and more economic wealth under the American thumb. They are yet more places to station troops, build military outposts, and run “black sites.” NATO always was, and always will be, the American Empire.

The push for Ukraine to join NATO by the West-friendly Zelensky was yet another blatant attempt at a power grab by the US, this one on Russia’s doorstep. Putin, naturally, took action to circumvent that. But of course, now the push moves to Sweden and Finland, both of whom are unwisely pursuing NATO membership in the illusory quest for security, when in reality they will simply be selling what remains of their national souls to the ruthless Judeo-American masters. For their sake, I hope they are able to avoid such a future.

And all the while, American Jews and a Jewish-American media play up the “good war” theme, send more weapons, and press ever further into the danger zone. Ukrainian-American Jews like Chuck Schumer are right out front, calling for aid, for war, for death.[10] “Ukraine needs all the help it can get and, at the same time, we need all the assets we can put together to give Ukraine the aid it needs,” said Schumer recently, eager to approve the next $40 billion aid package. As Jews have realized for centuries, wars are wonderful occasions for killing enemies and making a fast buck. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the present proxy war against Jewish enemies in eastern Europe began not long after the 20-year war against Jewish enemies in Afghanistan ended. Life without war is just too damn boring, for some.

Public Outrage?

If more than a minuscule fraction of the public knew about such details, they would presumably be outraged. But as I mentioned, the Jewish-controlled Western media does an excellent job in restricting access to such information, and in diverting attention whenever such ugly facts pop up. The major exception is Tucker Carlson, who is able to reach some 3 million people each night; this is by far the widest reach for anything like the above analysis. But Carlson falls woefully short—pathetically short—in defining the Jewish culprit behind all these factors. Jews are never outed and never named by Carlson, let alone ever targeted for blame. This crucial aspect is thus left to a literal handful of alt-right and dissident-right websites that collectively reach a few thousand people, at best.

And even if, by some miracle, all 3 million Tucker viewers were enlightened to the Jewish danger here, this still leaves some 200 million American adults ignorant and unaware. The mass of people believes what they see on the evening news, or in their Facebook feeds, or Google news, or on CNN or MSNBC, or in the New York Times—all Jewish enterprises, incidentally. This is why, when polled, 70% of the American public say that current aid to Ukraine is either “about right” or even “too little.” This, despite the fact that around 50% claim to be “very concerned” about nuclear war; clearly they are unable to make the necessary connections. And for many, it is even worse than this: around 21% would support “direct American military intervention” against Russia, which means an explicit World War Three, with all the catastrophic outcomes that this entails. Our Jewish media have done another fine job in whipping up public incitement.

In sum, we can say that our media have cleverly constructed a “philo-Semitic trap”: any mention or criticism of the Jewish hand in the present conflict is, first, highly censored, and then, if necessary, is dismissed as irrational anti-Semitism. Sympathy toward the (truly) poor, suffering Ukrainians is played up to the hilt, and Putin and the Russians relentlessly demonized. Leading American Jews, like Tony Blinken and Chuck Schumer, are constantly playing the good guys, pleading for aid, promising to help the beleaguered and outmanned Ukrainian warriors. Who can resist this storyline? Thus, we have no opposition, no questioning, no deeper inquiries into root causes. Jews profit and flourish, Ukrainians and Russians suffer and die, and the world rolls along toward potential Armageddon.

The reality is vastly different. Global Jews are, indeed, “planetary master criminals,” as Martin Heidegger long ago realized.[11] They function today as they have for centuries: as advocates for abuse, exploitation, criminality, death and profits. This is self-evidently true: if the potent Jewish Lobby wanted true peace, or flourishing humanity, they would be actively pushing for such things and likely succeeding. Instead, we have endless mayhem, war, terrorism, social upheaval and death, even as Jewish pockets get ever-deeper. And the one possible remedy for all this—true freedom of speech—recedes from our grasp.

On the one hand, I fear greatly for our future. On the other, I feel that we get what we deserve. When we allow malicious Jews to dominate our nations, and then they lead us into war and global catastrophe, well, what can we say? Perhaps there is no other way than to await the inevitable conflagration, exact retribution in the ensuing chaos, and then rebuild society from scratch—older and wiser.

Thomas Dalton, PhD, is the author of The Jewish Hand in the World Wars (2019). He has authored or edited several additional books and articles on politics, history, and religion, with a special focus on National Socialism in Germany. His other works include a new translation series of Mein Kampf, and the books Eternal Strangers (2020) and Debating the Holocaust (4th ed, 2020). Most recently he has edited a new edition of Rosenberg’s classic work Myth of the 20th Century and a new book of political cartoons, Pan-Judah! All these are available at www.clemensandblair.com. See also his personal website www.thomasdaltonphd.com.

Notes

[1] Cited in Wheen, Karl Marx (1999), p. 340.

[2] Russia’s recent defense of Assad in Syria, against Israel, has obviously not made things better. Nor has the fact that Putin, once thought to be a tool of Jewish-Russian oligarchs, has been able to turn the tables and hold them in check.

[3] Google has been particularly tenacious in altering its search engine results to censor (‘de-rank’) critics of Jewish power and stifle alternative voices. And Google owns Youtube, another force for censorship, which is currently run by the Jewess Susan Wojcicki. For their efforts, Brin and Page have become among the wealthiest men in the world; each is currently worth in excess of $100 billion.

[4] Svoboda began its existence as the “Social-National Party of Ukraine”—a not-so-subtle allusion to National Socialism. This is, in part, why both Svoboda and their allies have been called ‘neo-Nazi.’

[5] Nuland is currently “Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs” in the Biden administration.

[6] Another Jew likely involved in this incident was the Hungarian-American investor George Soros. In late 2019, the lawyer Joseph diGenova appeared in the news, openly charging Soros with direct intervention in American policy: “Well, there’s no doubt that George Soros controls a very large part of the career Foreign Service at the United States State Department. … But the truth is George Soros had a daily opportunity to tell the State Department through Victoria Nuland what to do in the Ukraine. And he ran it, Soros ran it.”

[7] For what it’s worth, Hunter seems to have a “thing” for Jewesses. In 2016, while married, he took up with his dead brother’s Jewish widow, Hallie Olivere Biden. The marriage failed and the illicit affair died out after a year or so, but then the ever-industrious Hunter latched on to another Jewess, “filmmaker” Melissa Cohen, in 2018. They married in 2019.

[8] In a revealing quotation, Ukrainian nationalist Dmytro Yarosh once asked this question: “I wonder how it came to pass that most of the billionaires in Ukraine are Jews?” Criminal activity is surely a large part of the answer.

[9] Not long after winning the presidency, Zelensky named another Jew, Andriy Yermak, as “Head of Presidential Administration.” (The current prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, seems not to be Jewish.)

[10] Other Ukrainian-American Jews, like Steven Spielberg and Jon Stewart, and the heirs to the Sheldon Adelson fortune, are assuredly equally elated about the course of events.

[11] Cited in P. Trawney, Heidegger and the Myth of a Jewish World Conspiracy (2015), p. 33.

August 21, 2022 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Biden Steps Up Somalia Strikes After Redeploying Troops

By Will Porter | The Libertarian Institute | August 20, 2022

American airstrikes in Somalia are on the rise in recent months, with US Africa Command (AFRICOM) conducting a flurry of operations against al-Shabaab militants since President Joe Biden reversed a full troop withdrawal ordered by his predecessor.

AFRICOM has carried out at least five bombing raids in Somalia so far in 2022, stating that its most recent strike last weekend killed 13 Shabaab fighters near the town of Teedaan. Four other missions were conducted between February 22 and August 9, alleged to have wiped out a total of 11 jihadists.

The Pentagon maintains the latest operation on August 14 resulted in zero deaths or injuries to civilians, in line with virtually every previous AFRICOM report on US strikes in the country. In the command’s last casualty assessment published in late July, it said it received no new reports of civilian deaths, though went on to note possible “discrepancies” between its own numbers and those of humanitarian monitors – some of which have accused the Pentagon of serious underreporting.

While the military launched a comparable number of strikes in Somalia last year, air operations appear to have accelerated since Biden’s decision to redeploy some 500 troops to the country in mid-May. Former President Donald Trump had ordered a full withdrawal of the roughly 800 soldiers on the ground in 2020, but Biden’s Pentagon later stressed the need for a “persistent US military presence in Somalia” in order to “enable a more effective fight against al-Shabaab.”

Despite years of American bombing raids and ground missions against al-Shabaab, however the group has only grown more radical since its 2006 founding, even pledging loyalty to al-Qaeda in 2012. It has also gained in strength in the meantime, with the United Nations estimating up to 12,000 fighters in its ranks earlier this year – potentially tripling its membership since 2013, when the African Union offered a lower-end figure of 4,000.

Shabaab rose from the ashes of Somalia’s civil war in the early 2000s, when warlords vied for power and control following the collapse of the Somali state. Though it began as a youth wing of the more moderate Islamic Courts Union (ICU) – which resumed some semblance of governance in Mogadishu and worked to oust warlords – foreign interventions led by Washington helped to drive the group into increasing militancy until it finally broke off from the ICU, eventually growing into an armed insurgency which rages on to this day.

August 20, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

US on verge of becoming party to Ukrainian conflict, Moscow warns

Samizdat | August 19, 2022

Washington’s continued support for Kiev during Moscow’s military operation has put the US on the verge of becoming party to the Ukrainian conflict, Russia’s deputy Foreign Minister, Sergey Ryabkov has said.

“We don’t want escalation. We’d like to avoid a situation, in which the US becomes a party to the conflict, but so far we don’t see any readiness of the other side to take these warnings seriously,” Ryabkov told Rossiya 1 TV channel on Friday.

Moscow rejects Washington’s explanation, that providing Ukraine with weapons and other aid is justified by Kiev’s right to self-defense, he pointed out.

“Excuse me, what kind of self-defense is it if they are already openly talking about the possibility of attacking targets deep in the Russian territory, in Crimea?” the deputy FM wondered.

According to Ryabkov, such statements are being made by the Ukrainian side “not just under the blind eye of the US and NATO, but with the encouragement of this kind of sentiment, approaches, plans and ideas directly from Washington,” Ryabkov insisted.

“The ever more obvious and deeper involvement in Ukraine in terms of countering our military operation, in fact, puts this country, the US, on the verge of turning into a party to the conflict,” he reiterated.

The US has been the strongest supporter of Kiev amid its conflict with Russia, providing Kiev with billions of dollars in military and financial aid, as well as intelligence data. Washington’s deliveries to the Ukrainian military have included such sophisticated hardware as HIMARS multiple rocket launchers, M777 howitzers and combat drones.

Reuters reported on Friday that US President Joe Biden is about to announce another lethal aid package for Kiev of around $800 million.

An unnamed official from the Biden administration told Politico on Thursday that the White House had no problem with Ukraine attacking Crimea, which became part of Russia after a 2014 referendum staged in response to a violent coup. The US believes that Kiev can strike any target on its territory, and “Crimea is Ukraine,” the American official insisted.

There have recently been a number of explosions near a Russian ammunition depot and at a military airfield in Crimea, which the Defense Ministry said were acts of “sabotage.” However, Ukrainian authorities haven’t officially confirmed involvement in the attacks.

Russia sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, citing Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements, designed to give the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state. The protocols, brokered by Germany and France, were first signed in 2014. Former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko has since admitted that Kiev’s main goal was to use the ceasefire to buy time and “create powerful armed forces.”

In February 2022, the Kremlin recognized the Donbass republics as independent states and demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join any Western military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked.

August 19, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

‘Call to Boost Arm Supplies to Kiev by Former US Officials Violates UN Charter, US Laws’

By Ekaterina Blunova – Samizdat – 18.08.2022

Nearly 20 national security officers and former diplomats have claimed that Washington must further arm Kiev in an open letter to US President Joe Biden. According to them, the US’ “vital interests are at stake” as the Russian special operation in Ukraine allegedly poses “a clear danger to US security and prosperity.”

“The United States has no interest in Ukraine other than to avoid war with Russia,” explained Michael Springmann, a political analyst and former US diplomat with postings in Germany, India and Saudi Arabia. “That country is the holder of half the supply of atomic bombs in the world. This is extremely unprofessional, extremely dangerous, and shows the horrible ties between the military, big business and the American government. They all control the government rather than the politicians or the people.”

According to Springmann, it is especially troubling that former diplomats, national security professionals and State Department officials openly called to intensify weapons supplies to a third country.

“It’s a violation of the UN Charter and America’s own regulations and laws,” he said. “This is an absolute outrage (…) It’s dangerous nonsense.”

Among the open letter signatories are 17th Supreme Allied Commander for Europe General Philip Breedlove, former State and Defense Department official Debra Cagan, 12th Supreme Allied Commander for Europe General (Ret.) Wesley K. Clark, former Ambassador to Finland and Turkey Eric Edelman, and former Ambassador to Ukraine, Uzbekistan and others John Herbst.

The former officials urged the US president to provide Kiev with more ammunition, spare parts, short- and medium-range air defense systems and, most notably, ATACMS munitions fired by High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) “with the 300km range necessary to strike Russian military targets anywhere in Ukraine” as well as in Crimea. Previously, the Biden administration ruled out delivering long-range munitions for HIMARS.

Moreover, the authors of the open letter also cited the nuclear card as a possible option.

“The US is also a nuclear power, and it is a strategic mistake to suggest that nuclear deterrence no longer works. Nuclear deterrence still works,” they argued.

US Record of Subversive Actions Against Russia

If the letter’s signatories think that they can win a war against the Russian Federation, they are completely detached from reality, argued Springmann. Still, the letter’s agenda does not surprise him: the crux of the matter is that the US has a long record of subversive actions against Russia, he explained.

“The United States has been at war with first the Soviet Union and now the Russian Federation for the past century,” he said. “In 1919, Peace President Woodrow Wilson sent 13,000 American soldiers to fight the Bolsheviks after the Russian Revolution, and in 1940s and 50s and really into the 60s and 70s, the CIA worked closely with Nazi collaborators such as [Ukrainian nationalist leaders] Stepan Bandera and Micola Lebed, who had engaged in murder, war crimes and human rights violations.”

Much in the same vein, the former diplomat claimed that the United States staged a coup in Ukraine in 2014 and “had done their best to ensure that former CIA officials had gone to Ukraine to help set up NGOs and other government agencies.” He warned that the Biden administration is currently arming Kiev and neo-Nazi battalions, thus prolonging the conflict.

“Biden and his predecessors had advanced NATO up to the very frontier of the Russian Federation and now has NATO members stretching from the Baltic to the Balkans,” Springmann said. “They have American bases in these countries and there are other American bases encircling the Russian Federation and other countries.”

Who Benefits From Ramping Up the Russo-Ukraine Conflict?

While US military contractors like Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Raytheon have benefitted from Biden’s arming of Ukraine, US and European economies have already suffered from the anti-Russia strategy, according to Springmann. Anti-Russia sanctions and the energy embargo have backfired on the US and Europe by sending food and gasoline prices higher and accelerating already soaring inflation.

“The result, of course, has been a collapse of the American economy, a collapse of the European economy,” said the former diplomat. “I’ve seen articles in Germany about how the country is cutting back its lighting systems, telling people not to use hot water for showers and not to use the heating system in their homes and apartments. What Biden and his neocon crazies have done is essentially destroy the European and the American economies.”

According to Business Insider, the US has already provided Kiev with roughly $10 billion in security assistance under Joe Biden. The aid packages included HIMARS, Stinger anti-aircraft systems, Javelin anti-armor systems, drones, small arms, and attack helicopters, among other systems.

On August 8, the Pentagon detailed the content of a $1 billion assistance package for Ukraine provided under presidential drawdown authority, the 18th drawdown so far. According to the DoD’s official website, among the items included in the latest package are additional ammunition for HIMARS; 75,000 rounds of 155 mm artillery ammunition; twenty 120 mm mortar systems and 20,000 rounds of 120 mm mortar ammunition; munitions for the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems, or NASAMS; and 1,000 Javelin and hundreds of AT4 anti-armor systems.

August 18, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

US to Deploy Strategic Assets to Region If DPRK Conducts Nuclear Test: Pentagon

Samizdat – 17.08.2022

The United States and South Korea agreed to deploy US strategic assets to the region if North Korea conducts a nuclear test, the two nations said in a joint statement for their 21st integrated defense dialogue.

“Both sides shared their assessments of activities at the DPRK’s Punggye-ri nuclear testing site. The two sides affirmed that, should the DPRK conduct a nuclear test, the ROK and the U.S. will engage in a strong and firm bilateral response, to include options to deploy U.S. strategic assets to the region,” the statement said.

On Wednesday, North Korea launched two cruise missiles toward the Yellow Sea, the South Korean military said.

The 21st South Korea-US Integrated Defense Dialogue was held in Seoul on August 16-17. The delegations were led by US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia, Siddharth Mohandas, and South Korean Deputy Minister for National Defense Policy, Heo Tae-keun.

The United States and South Korea will expand the scope and scale of joint military drills in response to recent missile tests conducted by North Korea, and will start with the Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise next week, according to a joint statement.

“The leaders discussed the DPRK threat, particularly the increased volume and scale of DPRK missile tests over the course of the last year. With this in mind, and considering the evolving threat posed by the DPRK, both leaders committed to expanding the scope and scale of combined military exercises and training on and around the Korean Peninsula—starting with Ulchi Freedom Shield next week—to bolster combined readiness,” the joint statement said.

On August 16-17, the two countries held their 21st integrated defense dialogue in Seoul. The delegations were led by US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia, Siddharth Mohandas, and South Korean Deputy Minister for National Defense Policy, Heo Tae-keun.

August 17, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

NATO’s 2030 Strategic Concept threatens to destabilise the world

By Ahmed Adel | August 17, 2022

The new NATO 2030 Strategic Concept indicates a disturbing change in the Alliance’s strategic orientation. As a result, provocations towards Moscow, as well as Beijing, are escalating, especially after the former was labelled by NATO as “the most significant and direct threat to Allies’ security and to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area.” In this context, the Atlantic Alliance urged member states to allocate more resources for military purposes, as well as to increase the rapid reaction forces on its Eastern European front from 40,000 troops to a staggering 300,000. This is in addition to escalations in the South China Sea.

NATO’s Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, explained that, unlike the previous document of the same title, which was adopted in Lisbon in 2010, there are no longer any guidelines on cooperation with Moscow, not even in the areas of arms control, the fight against terrorism or drug trafficking. Relations with Russia are continuously deteriorating as the West instigates less cooperation and more conflict. 

The behaviour of NATO’s main members – the US and the United Kingdom, as well as Germany and France, in Ukraine, but also in the Caucasus and Central Asia, signify that Russia is the most direct threat to Western hegemony despite China’s massive economic rise. Therefore, there is nothing epochal about the positioning on NATO’s eastern borders since it is a logical epilogue of a process that has been ongoing since at least 2014. Arguments can be made though that this process began with the Syrian War in 2011, or perhaps even as early as 2008 with the NATO-instigated Russo-Georgia War.

The change in strategic orientation, projected in the medium term, also concerns China’s relations with the West and Russia. The tightening of relations between China and Russia is contrary to the interests of the Alliance because, according to NATO, “China seeks to undermine the current world order by controlling global logistics and its economy,” hence NATO’s strengthening of relations with its Asia-Pacific partners.

It is also for this reason that the US encouraged the dismantling of the EU-China investment agreement, openly supports protesters in Hong Kong and repeats claims of a Chinese-perpetrated genocide against the Uyghurs, escalates tensions in the South China Sea, and helped dismantle the 17 + 1 format, which in practice can no longer function. This is also in addition to Nancy Pelosi’s recent visit to Taipei and the establishment of the AUKUS alliance.

For the most part, in NATO’s new strategic orientation, China could arguably be heading towards a similar situation to that of Russia in 2014. For NATO strategists, China’s response to Pelosi’s visit, manifested by military and naval exercises in the South China Sea, is excessive. They are of this view because China exposed how easily Taiwan could be isolated from the outside world, with the US only able to watch on.

NATO is moving very explicitly and in a targeted manner against China. Perhaps such a step was induced or accelerated by Beijing’s refusal to align itself with the West’s anti-Russian sanctions and condemnation of the demilitarisation of Ukraine. 

Proceeding with such provocations and escalations is also very risky for NATO though. A NATO-instigated war against China, just as the Alliance left Russia no choice but to demilitarise Ukraine to ensure its own national security, would reshape the world much faster and more fundamentally than what has already occurred due to the war in Eastern Europe. The attempted isolation of Russia not only failed, but in fact accelerated the changing of the global geopolitical and economic system away from Western hegemony. 

As China is the largest industrial power in today’s world, as well as a massive market for consumer goods and a key investor and creditor in numerous regions, without a stable China, there is no global stability. If the Alliance was not able to achieve its goal in Ukraine, a region where several NATO members directly border Russia, there is little prospect that it can make any major achievement on the Asian front.

If the Alliance is not capable of coping with a direct confrontation with Russia in Europe, it raises the question on how it will be able to cope with a direct confrontation on two fronts against a potential Russian-Chinese coalition. NATO’s anti-Chinese and anti-Russian strategic commitment, which has been framed until at least 2030, is a dangerous provocation, and not only for the targeted countries. The West’s provocations are a danger to the entire world as it can dramatically affect global stability and the quality of life of everyday citizens, hence why the NATO 2030 Strategic Concept is alarming. 

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

August 17, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

US recent ballistic missile test boosts world’s re-nuclearization 

By Lucas Leiroz | August 17, 2022

Nuclear tensions are rising more and more. The US military said on August 16 that it had conducted a test with the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile. In the official statement, it was also stated that the operation was already previously scheduled, having been postponed in order to avoid increasing tensions with Beijing during China’s show of force near Taiwan earlier this month. For some unexplained reason, Washington considered the current moment to be the most “appropriate” for the maneuver.

The missile was launched from the Vandeberg Space Force base in California and traveled about 6,760 km. Military spokespeople indicated that the self-propelled projectile was unarmed and equipped with a test reentry vehicle. Additionally, the statement makes clear that the mission was intended to demonstrate the readiness of US nuclear forces.

“Air Force Global Strike Command Airmen launched an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile equipped with a test re-entry vehicle from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, Aug. 16 at 12:49 a.m. Pacific Time to demonstrate the readiness of U.S. nuclear forces and provide confidence in the lethality and effectiveness of the nation’s nuclear deterrent”, the statement says.

Manufactured by Boeing, the Minuteman III is a missile with nuclear capability and high destructive power. Currently, this missile is a key element in the US military’s strategic arsenal. The weapon has a range capability of over 9,660 km and can travel at a speed of approximately 24,000 km per hour. Minuteman III is also considered a part of the so-called American “nuclear triad”, along with the submarine-launched ballistic missile Trident and nuclear weapons carried by long-range strategic bombers.

Commenting on the relevance of the test, Colonel Chris Cruise, 576th Flight Test Squadron Commander, said: “Make no mistake – our nuclear triad is the cornerstone of the national security of our country and of our allies around the globe (…) This scheduled test launch is demonstrative of how our nation’s ICBM fleet illustrates our readiness and reliability of the weapon system. It is also a great platform to show the skill sets and expertise of our strategic weapons maintenance personnel and of our missile crews who maintain an unwavering vigilance to defend the homeland”.

It must be mentioned that tests with this equipment had previously been canceled by the US on at least two occasions, one in April and another in early August. The first cancellation was motivated by the need to avoid nuclear tensions with Russia in the midst of the special military operation in Ukraine. The second one was due to tensions with China over Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei.

What is not clear, however, is why the current moment was considered appropriate by the US military to conduct this type of test. Tensions with Russia and China have not ceased – not even decreased. Washington continues to destabilize Eastern Europe’s security by sending weapons to the Ukrainian government in order to “delay” Russian victory in Ukraine – even though it is well known that these weapons are being used to hit civilian targets and nuclear plants (Zaporozhye). In the same sense, provocations against China are still on the rise, with recent new visits by American officials to the island, even after constant Chinese messages for the US to stop violations of Beijing’s sovereignty.

So, in fact, the American test can only be interpreted as a real show of force. Despite previous cancellations, the choice of the current moment was not motivated by being a “more stable” scenario – because it is not. The choice was made precisely to, in the midst of the global security crisis, show the world the power of the American war arsenal. Furthermore, it is obviously a response to Chinese military activities in the Taiwan Strait, considering that this issue is the current major global focus of tensions.

The result of the American attitude will be only one: boosting even further the militarization and re-nuclearization of the world. What is expected for the near future is that the US rival countries put themselves in a state of alert – including nuclear alert, in the case of the powers that have this technology. For example, the North Korean government, according to recent reports, is planning a new nuclear test. With the US launching ballistic missiles, it is likely that projects in this direction will be heightened. Something similar can be said about Iran, which, in the face of the US threat, is expected to become even more resistant in negotiations on a new nuclear deal.

Once again, the US is pushing for the re-nuclearization of international politics. It is unreasonable for a country to provoke its rivals and then, faced with the responses, decide to dissuade them by launching missiles. Washington needs to understand that the multipolar world order will be built through multilateral dialogue and non-interventionism, not through military intimidation.

Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.

August 17, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | | Leave a comment