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Damascus Airport Runways Out of Service After Israeli Strikes: Syrian Transport Ministry

Samizdat – 10.06.2022

The runways at Damascus airport are out of service as a result of airstrikes conducted by the Israeli air force, the Syrian Ministry of Transport said.

On Thursday, the Syrian Defense Ministry said that Israel had fired missiles at a number of targets south of Damascus. Syria said that Israeli warplanes aimed to hit the airport.

“As a result of the Israeli aggression, which hit the infrastructure of the international airport of Damascus, the runways are significantly damaged in several places along with the navigation lighting,” the ministry said, as quoted by the Shams FM broadcaster.

The attack also damaged the second terminal of the airport.

“At the moment, our specialists are working to eliminate the consequences of the airstrikes and repair what was damaged as a result of the attack. The airport’s operations will be resumed immediately after repair and safety checks,” the ministry added.

Syria’s Cham Wings Airlines said earlier that all of its flights were diverted from Damascus airport to Aleppo in the north of the country.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry Strongly Condemns Israeli Airstrike at Damascus Airport

Also on Friday, Maria Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman, said that Moscow strongly condemns the Israeli airstrikes at the airport and calls on the Israeli side to halt such activities.

“In this regard, we are forced to emphasize again that the ongoing Israeli shelling of Syria territory … is absolutely unacceptable. We strongly condemn Israel’s provocative attack on critical Syrian civilian infrastructure,” the spokeswoman said in a statement published by the ministry.

Zakharova also said that such strikes create risks “for international air traffic.”

“We demand from the Israeli side to halt such activities,” Zakharova added.

June 11, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

On Ukraine, ‘progressive’ proxy warriors spell disaster

Urging leftists to support the Ukraine proxy war, Bernie Sanders aide Matt Duss whitewashes the US role, attacks The Grayzone, and advocates dangerous militarism.

By Aaron Maté | The Grayzone | June 7, 2022

The unanimous vote by progressive lawmakers for the $40 billion Ukraine funding bill has been followed by a near-unanimous refusal to defend it. To date, no member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus – with the sole exception of Cori Bush – has publicly explained why they chose to hand over billions of dollars to the weapons industry and intensify a proxy war against nuclear-armed Russia.

Amid this resounding silence, Matt Duss, a foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders, has stepped in to fill the void. In a New Republic article titled “Why Ukraine Matters for the Left,” Duss attempts to convince fellow progressives that the “provision of military aid” to Ukraine “can advance a more just and humanitarian global order.” Duss has only praise for a Biden administration that, in his view, “should be applauded for its judicious reaction to the Ukraine crisis.” By contrast, Duss opts to launch an attack on dissident journalists, myself included, who don’t share his enthusiasm.

To make his case, Duss omits an abundance of inconvenient facts, betraying either considerable ignorance of the Ukraine-Russia conflict or a deliberate effort to distort it.

While apologia for US hegemonic projects is normal in DC foreign policy circles, Duss’ contribution is particularly noteworthy given his painstaking attempt to cast himself as an outsider. “Our political class,” Duss states, “advocates military violence with a regularity and ease that is psychopathic.” Duss’ comment is both accurate and wildly ironic, given his choice to advocate our political class’s military violence in Ukraine — with the remarkable ease that he identifies in others as psychopathic.

When it comes to how the Biden administration has handled the Ukraine crisis, Duss cannot identify a single fault. “The Biden team clearly did not seek this war,” Duss claims, and “in fact… made a strenuous, and very public, diplomatic effort to avert it.”

Duss does not explain what the administration’s “strenuous” diplomacy entailed, perhaps because even its top officials now openly admit that none existed.

In an interview with War on the Rocks, State Department counsellor Derek Chollet was asked if NATO expansion into Ukraine was “on the table” in pre-invasion contacts with Russia. “It wasn’t,” Chollet replied. The White House, Chollet explained, “made clear to the Russians that we were willing to talk to them on issues that we thought were genuine concerns they have that were legitimate in some way,” including “arms control.” (emphasis added) But when it comes to “the future of Ukraine” and its potential NATO membership, Chollet said, this was deemed a “non-issue.”

To Duss, the Biden administration’s (openly admitted) refusal to even discuss Russia’s core demands – and to only entertain issues that it deemed to be “legitimate” on Russia’s behalf – is apparently a “strenuous diplomatic effort.” If “diplomacy” amounts to enforcing US hegemony, as many in DC seem to believe, then Duss would have a case. But in the rest of the world, where diplomacy entails constructive dialogue with a semblance of parity, he does not.

Duss also takes aim at the argument, advanced by prominent leftists including former Brazilian President Lula da Silva, that a US-European pledge that Ukraine won’t join NATO “would have solved the problem” with Russia.

To refute Lula, Duss stresses that “in the weeks leading up to the war, U.S. allies, specifically German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron, signaled clearly” that Ukraine’s NATO ascension “was not going to happen.” According to Duss, it is Putin who sabotaged their efforts by invading, and who “has now made that discussion moot.”

Duss omits what also happened in the weeks leading up to the war. While Germany and France did indeed float a proposal to keep Ukraine out of NATO, it was Ukraine – with US backing – that rejected it. According to an account in the Wall Street Journal, Scholtz proposed to Volodymyr Zelensky on Feb. 19 – five days before Russia’s invasion — that Ukraine “renounce its NATO aspirations and declare neutrality as part of a wider European security deal,” signed by both Putin and Biden. But Zelensky rejected Schultz’s plan, a response that “left German officials worried that the chances of peace were fading.” In dismissing the Germans’ NATO proposal, Zelensky joined the Biden White House, as State’s Derek Chollet acknowledged and other Biden officials made clear in public.

Ignoring US-Ukrainian rejectionism, Duss then declares that “it seems absurd to suggest that even an ironclad public pledge from President Biden that Ukraine would never be accepted into NATO would have convinced Putin to draw back the 180,000 troops he had placed on Ukraine’s borders.” Perhaps, but that very public pledge happened to be the centerpiece of Germany’s last-minute diplomatic effort – one that Duss himself invoked, and that Zelensky (along with Biden) chose to reject.

Duss’ whitewashing of the Biden administration’s rejection of diplomacy before the Russian invasion carries over to the period since.

Since Russia’s invasion, Duss says, the White House has “acted with restraint and care not to get drawn into a wider war with Russia.” While it is true that Biden has opted not to start World War III – in other words, has opted not to trigger a global suicide pact — he has done anything but act with “restraint.” One day before Duss’ article was published, Biden authorized the delivery of medium-range advanced rocket systems to Ukraine. These rockets have the capacity to strike inside of Russia; the US is acting on Ukraine’s assurance that it won’t.

Duss may support undermining diplomacy in Ukraine and shipping off billions of dollars worth of heavy weaponry instead, but this can only be described as “restraint” if the sole measure is an immediate — rather than merely prospective — nuclear holocaust.

Duss is so impressed with Biden’s handling of the war that he cannot even detect a tangible path that could end it.  “As of this writing,” Duss declares, “I have seen no evidence of a settlement in the offing—as in, a deal that Putin would actually entertain, let alone accept—that we’re refusing to ‘push for.'”

If Duss cannot see evidence of a realistic settlement that Russia could accept, then he is being willfully blind. Russia’s explicit proposals, issued before the war and after, including two weeks into the invasion, called on Ukraine to “cease military action, change its constitution to enshrine neutrality, acknowledge Crimea as Russian territory, and recognise the separatist republics of Donetsk and Lugansk as independent states.”

It is worth noting that the latter is Russia’s only new condition: for the eight years before the February invasion, Russia formally accepted the Minsk accords, which, to end the Donbas war, would have kept the Donetsk and Lugansk regions inside Ukraine’s borders, with limited autonomy.

Duss is free to argue that Russia’s terms for ending the war are unacceptable. But to pretend that Russia has not even laid out those terms, is to essentially advocate that the war never end.

By omitting Russia’s stated terms for a settlement, Duss also allows himself to erase one of the invasion’s key causes: the 2014 Maidan coup, and the ensuing eight-year Donbas war that had left more than 14,000 people dead by the time Russian forces crossed the border on February 24th.

In his 2500+ word piece, Duss makes no mention of the Donbas war and how it began: the 2014 ouster of a democratically elected Ukrainian president, with new leadership selected by Washington; the coup government’s assault on Ukraine’s ethnic Russian and anti-coup citizens, who launched a rebellion in the Donbas; the critical role of fascists and neo-Nazis in the Maidan coup and the Donbas war since; the fascist-led sabotage of the 2015 Minsk accords, which could have put an end to the conflict. By omitting this history, Duss can also omit how the US has helped undermine the Minsk agreements by siding with Ukrainian’s far-right and choosing to use the Donbas war to “fight Russia over there” (Adam Schiff) and “make Russia pay a heavier price,” (John McCain), because Ukraine’s “fight is our fight.” (Lindsey Graham).

After ignoring Russia’s stated grounds for a peace settlement, Duss goes on to disingenuously claim that the Ukrainian government has been pushing for one.

“Ukraine presented Russia with a far-reaching set of proposals over a month ago, including a commitment to ‘permanent neutrality,’” Duss claims. “Volodomyr Zelenskiy continues to offer to negotiate directly with Putin to end the war.”

It is true that Ukraine presented Russia with a 10-point plan in late March. But Duss omits what happened immediately after: while Russia “signaled its preliminary support,” (RAND analyst Samuel Charap) Ukraine’s Western backers sabotaged it, and Zelensky acquiesced. In early April, Ukrainian and Russian officials were finalizing details for a Zelensky-Putin summit. But UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson traveled to Kiev and ordered him to halt diplomacy. Citing sources close to Zelensky, Ukrayinska Pravda reports that Johnson informed his Ukrainian counterpart that Putin “should be pressured, not negotiated with.” Johnson also relayed that even if Russia and Ukraine chose to sign security guarantees, the UK and its allies would not take part – rendering any such agreement worthless.

Zelensky clearly received the message, as Duss’s own source makes clear. When Duss claims that Zelensky “continues to offer to negotiate directly with Putin to end the war,” he links to a Reuters article that reveals such an “offer” to be hollow. Zelensky, Reuters reports, said he would only negotiate with Putin if Russia first withdrew entirely from Ukraine – an obvious non-starter. “Get out of this territory that you have occupied since February 24,” Zelensky said. “This is the first clear step to talking about anything.” Zelensky also “ruled out suggestions… that Ukraine should make concessions for the sake of securing a peace agreement that would allow Putin to save face.”

Thus, returning to Duss’ rendering, Zelensky’s “far-reaching proposals” were immediately rescinded under Western orders, and Zelensky’s “offer to negotiate” was premised on a condition that would have made negotiations impossible.

None of this is to suggest that Russia was justified in launching an invasion of Ukraine. To defend the use of force, which has been so catastrophic, Russia has to meet a high burden of evidence that, in my view, it has not. But one does not need to defend Russia’s invasion to see through Duss’ attempt to whitewash the US role in provoking and prolonging it.

Tellingly, Duss is openly hostile to journalists who have reported on the context that he has omitted. Out of nowhere, Duss introduces an attack on The Grayzone, the Max Blumenthal-founded news outlet that I work for. While Duss has nothing but praise for Biden, he has nothing but ad hominems for us (“pernicious authoritarian agitprop,” “atrocity-denying grifters” “click-baiting provocateurs”). After sharing this vitriol, he then immediately declares that engaging with us is “wasting time.”

I feel the same way about his juvenile name-calling, but interested readers can judge for themselves whether his insults are supported by facts. (He links to two “sources,” one a Medium blog post that, true to the neo-McCarthyite norm, peddles innuendo that The Grayzone is funded by Russia, among other smears).

If Duss is genuinely concerned about wasting time, he also might reflect on why he devotes ample space to paying lip service to progressive principles, only to ultimately endorse policies that flagrantly violate them. “Centering opposition to U.S. imperialism and militarism is an entirely appropriate starting point,” Duss states. Yet Duss’ desired end point would see leftists center U.S. imperialism and militarism, with disastrous results: among them, prolonging a proxy war against a nuclear armed power, threatening a worsening global food crisis, and sentencing more Ukrainians to death.

Even putting aside US complicity in the Ukraine proxy war and its dangers for the planet, progressives like Duss might wish to consider the likely political consequences. One obvious guide is the election of 2016, when Donald Trump won over a significant portion of voters by claiming to oppose the military interventionism that Duss is now urging progressives to embrace. Having seemingly learned nothing from 2016, Democrats in 2022 are again ceding anti-war sentiment to Republicans, 68 of whom voted against the $40 billion Ukraine bill in the House and Senate (versus zero Democrats).

As at least some Republicans vote against the proxy war, Biden has defended the domestic pain caused by his Ukraine proxy war by blaming “Putin’s Price Hike” and trying to argue that “defending freedom is going to cost.” Biden’s defense of “freedom” in Ukraine is now costing him a transatlantic flight to grovel at the feet of the Saudi autocracy, in the hopes of staving off a humiliating cost in the November midterms.

Continuing his mealy mouthed approach, Duss both claims to support diplomacy while simultaneously declaring it to be unattainable. The US, he says, “should certainly be actively engaged in finding a diplomatic path to end the war, and avoid committing to maximalist aims that could foreclose one.” But yet, according to Duss, “for the moment that path is unclear.”

If the path toward peace for Ukraine is unclear to Duss, then that can only be because he has chosen to erase the factual background and the diplomatic solutions on offer, thereby reinforcing the “maximalist aims” that he claims to oppose. Duss’s proxy war apologia will certainly win him a warm reception in establishment DC circles. For the US progressive movement, Ukraine, and the rest of the planet, it only spells disaster.

June 10, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Biden Rocks the Middle East

Partitioning Syria may be on the way

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • JUNE 7, 2022

That dwindling band of observers that continues to express concern over the catastrophe that constitutes United States foreign policy under President Joe Biden have come to realize how the Ukraine situation is being used as cover for interventions and other similar mischief in other parts of the world. Recent reporting, for example, reveals that the Biden Administration has decided “to reestablish a persistent US military presence in Somalia to enable a more effective fight against al-Shabaab” in spite of the fact that “there is absolutely no constitutional authority for President Biden to send troops into Somalia or drop bombs on Somalia.” Nor does al-Shabaab represent a threat to Americans or American interests.

To be sure, the emphasis on Ukraine has a certain cogency as it is particularly dangerous and could lead to nuclear devastation in a situation where intervention by the United States was not only unwarranted but also unresponsive to any actual national interest of threat. And escalate it will if the White House continues on its current path. Ukrainian government sources are now stating that the United States is preparing to destroy the Russian Black Sea fleet to end the blockade of Ukraine’s ports. The commander of US forces in Europe General Christopher Cavoli seems to be confirming that report when he refers to the preparation of “military options” to help export Ukrainian grain.

One might suggest that such a move could just be enough to start World War III and World War III would almost certainly turn nuclear very quickly. Some might consider that taking a deliberate step that would inevitably escalate into destruction of the entire planet as we know it just might be a foreign policy mistake on the part of the President Joe Biden Administration but I’m sure the chairborne warriors down at Foggy Bottom would disagree, pointing out that nothing would make old Vladimir Putin run and hide faster than a barrage of harpoon missiles imbibed with his breakfast tea.

And, of course, there’s more. There’s always more. The focus on Ukraine in the US and international media combined with a stream of befuddling malapropisms coming out of the White House has obscured what is going on in other corners in the world, where Washington is also flexing its biceps in full knowledge that a manageable war or two will surely help one’s favorability rating come elections in November.

And there is always Israel. The Israeli army and police have recently been shooting dead Palestinian teenagers on a nearly daily basis, and that comes on top of the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh a month ago. Israel’s Defense Minister Benny Gantz was in Washington two weeks ago to meet and greet and one might suspect that he just might have been in town inter alia to express some apology for his army’s assassination of Abu Akleh, but that would be to misunderstand the bilateral relationship. In reality, when Israel shouts “jump” the Biden Administration responds “how high, sir?”

Also in the Middle East and also related to Israel, the US State Department has gone into a hissy fit over the May 26th Iraqi parliament’s unanimous vote to make illegal all “normalization” ties with Israel. State was quick to react, in contrast to its torpor dealing with most issues, but it was Israel involved, not just “most issues.” A statement was issued saying “The United States is deeply disturbed by the Iraqi Parliament’s passage of legislation that criminalizes normalization of relations with Israel [while also] jeopardizing freedom of expression and promoting an environment of antisemitism…” Ah yes, the old anti-semitism canard surfaces yet again!

There are also several interesting stories relating to Syria, which continues to be a hotspot because Israel wants to maintain its ability to freely bomb targets that it describes as “terroristic” or connected to arch enemy Iran. The bombing has continued regularly since the Ukraine situation started and has hardly ever been reported in the US media. And, yet again, there is more to the story in terms of US involvement. First of all, Russia reacted to the lukewarm Israeli support for its invasion of Ukraine. An Israeli attack on targets in Syria last week was met by a S-300 missile fired by Russian army manned air defenses. Up until now, Moscow has refrained from attempting to shoot down Israeli warplanes, but the missile was clearly a warning of what might be coming if Israel persists in its attacks.

Also relating to Syria, it is ironic that the US has accused Russia of war crimes over its intervention in Ukraine while at the same time continuing its own illegal occupation of Syria. And it has its own war crimes record. Last week the Pentagon announced that it had completed its investigation into an attack in Syria on March 18, 2019 that killed some presumed ISIS guerrillas as well as four civilians while wounding fifteen others. The Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said the Defense Department had determined that that the airstrike “did not violate the laws of warfare or the rules of engagement. Neither the ground forces commander nor anyone involved in carrying out the airstrike ‘acted inappropriately or acted with malicious intent’ or ‘deliberately wanted to and sought out to kill civilians.’” In an earlier investigation concluded last December, the Pentagon said “it would not hold anyone accountable for a drone strike also in Syria in late-August that killed 10 civilians, including seven children. A review of the strike concluded it was a ‘tragic mistake’ that was the result of ‘execution errors.’”

And there are also credible reports that the United States is preparing to de facto partition Syria, to create a separate state run by its Kurdish allies in the country’s northeast that would be under Washington’s protection and would include a garrison of American troops. Such a move would, of course, be completely illegal and is in fact eerily reminiscent of the alleged “war crimes” that the US is claiming regarding Russia for its attempted partition of Ukraine. Interestingly, the planning has not been reported in the mainstream media, yet another instance of the Ukraine crisis serving as cover to drown out all background noise and provide the US with opportunities to increase its meddling in places like the Middle East on behalf of feckless allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Ironically, when the United States initially intervened in Syria, it claimed to do so to fight the terrorist group Islamic State in Syria (ISIS). Subsequently, it cooperated with an al-Qaeda affiliate while close ally Israel had a similar arrangement with ISIS itself. The Kurds and both ISIS and al-Qaeda are all believed to be involved in the theft and sale of Syrian oil. Now the US, which also has been stealing the oil, is seeking something like a permanent presence to solidify its control over Syrian resources.

Interestingly, the planning by Washington to create a sub-state or autonomous region in the north east of Syria was revealed by no less than State Department number three Victoria Nuland at a recent conference held in Morocco. Nuland, who was the driving force behind regime change in Ukraine in 2014, described the Syria development as a “stabilization” activity. The new entity would include Syria’s major oil producing region, which is currently being exploited by Washington and its “allies,” as well as much of the country’s arable land.

Washington has already applied unprecedented punitive sanctions on the parts of Syria controlled by the Russians and President Bashar al-Assad, to include the so-called Caesar Syrian Civil Protection Act’s secondary sanctions that punish anyone trying to avoid the restrictions placed by Washington. Former US Ambassador to Syria James Jeffrey put it this way “And of course, we’ve ratcheted up the isolation and sanctions pressure on Assad, we’ve held the line on no reconstruction assistance, and the country’s desperate for it. You see what’s happened to the Syrian pound, you see what’s happened to the entire economy. So, it’s been a very effective strategy….” He also added “My job is to make it a quagmire for the Russians.”

To circumvent the existing sanctions, the new mini-state would therefore be granted economic viability by making it sanction free as an inducement for foreign investment and development of settlements largely inhabited by Kurds associated with the United States. A “general license” will be issued to facilitate investment and other economic activity. The US will commit $350 million to the project, which is being carried out with the cooperation of the Turkish authorities controlling their own militias along the border. By securing the north east of Syria, Washington would also be able to maintain and protect the illegal US Al-Tanf military base in the south-east of the country bordering Jordan. Al-Tanf blocks the creation of a contiguous “Resistance Axis” from Iran to Lebanon and ultimately to Palestine, thereby maintaining “Israeli security” in the region. As is all too frequently the case, Israeli interests always come first in the minds of Washington politicians.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

June 7, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

On the Darknet: Ukrainians flood Europe with NATO arms shipments

Free West Media | June 6, 2022

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the US and other NATO countries have been sending state-of-the-art heavy weapons to Kiev. But many of the weapons systems do not end up at the front – but on the internet.

The Darknet is becoming an online wholesaler for war materiel. And the customers are also based in Europe.

Anti-tank missiles, automatic weapons, ammunition, drones or even mines – the warehouses of Darknet dealers are full. Thousands of weapons systems sent by Western allies to Ukraine can be found for sale on the internet.

Europe soon threatened by rocket launchers?

“It is surprising to say the least that after the fall of Mariupol, the United States was willing to send an additional 40 billion dollars to Ukraine where it had already lost another 14 billion dollars. In reality, two-thirds never reached their destination,” Thierry de Meyssan pointed out.

The FGM-148 Javelin is a man-portable anti-tank guided missile (ATGM). The US developed this weapon system to be able to combat heavily armoured vehicles such as main battle tanks and lighter military vehicles. It is hard to imagine what terrorists with weapons like these could do in a European city centre. Austrian daily eXXpress reported on this serious threat.

How many of these systems are already in Europe – presumably in the hands of criminals or terrorists? Police could eventually face massive problems with armed terrorists. It is easy to see how this could become a major security risk for large cities in Europe.

Darknet sales

It has never been easier to get hold of various NATO shipments – directly from Ukraine – to anywhere in the world to anyone with money. The assortment from Kiev includes rifles, grenades, pistols, body armour. Just one of the listed sellers already had 32 successful transactions to his name.

Already during the Balkan War, authorities witnessed how thousands of handguns had simply disappeared – and were then sold on the black market to criminal organisations or even to terrorists.

High-tech armament and an assortment of automatic weapons can now be ordered from the comfort of a screen. Grenades, incidentally, have been on special offer. If criminals moreover get hold of bullet-proof vests it would make it difficult for the police to stop them in the future.

Executive Director of Europol Catherine De Bolle stated in an interview with Welt am Sonntag recently that her agency was bracing for an influx of illegal weapons into Europe originally shipped to Ukraine by Western countries, including Greece, Sweden, Spain and Germany. She noted that the “weapons from [Kosovo] are still being used by criminal groups today”.

Jihadists and other radicals are already in the war zone, according to the database of the SIS (Schengen Information System).

Weapons outlive conflicts

“It would be prudent to consider the immediate and long-term security implications of arms transfer decisions and apply lessons hard-learned from past armed conflicts,” the US-based think-tank Stimson Center said about this development back in March.

“The United States and its partners may be doing a disservice to the very people they aim to protect without considering the potential risks of the infusion of weapons to the country. While there have been noteworthy pledges of additional military assistance, the lifecycle of an arms transfer is often quite long. Arms promised today may not be available for months or even years to come, at which point the situation on the ground will have evolved. Though these pledges have symbolic value they may have little real effect on the battlefield.”

The think tank furthermore warned: “From Afghanistan to Iraq to Colombia, well-intentioned transfers have a habit of outliving their political contexts, and risk fueling new conflicts, being captured by illicit groups, or contributing to enduring ecosystems of insecurity.”

The authors warned that the strategic risks of transferring arms to an area of active hostilities include exacerbating the conflict, extending the duration thereof, increasing its lethality, and contributing to civilian harm. “Moreover, arms have a long shelf life, and will still be around long after the guns inevitably fall silent,” they concluded.

June 6, 2022 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism | | Leave a comment

Anti-war demonstrations held in Italy on Republic Day

By Max Civili | Press TV | June 3, 2022

Rome – Anti-war demonstrations were held in Italy with protesters calling on the government to stop sending weapons to Ukraine and leave NATO.

It came as the Italian authorities were celebrating the 76th anniversary of the Republic.

June 2 is the day Italy celebrates becoming a Republic. On this day, in a referendum held in 1946, Italians opted to abolish the country’s short-lived monarchy and adopt a Republican form of government.

Every year, the celebrations feature large military and official parades along with the ancient Roman Forum in the presence of the highest offices of the State.

Never before have controversies over the military parade been this contentious with anti-war demonstrations held in a number of Italian cities including Bologna, Padua, and Bari.

One of the anti-war protests was held in central Rome, 500 meters away from the Republic day celebrations. The initiative had been called by the base union USB and political party Power to the People.

Since the start of the Ukraine conflict, opinion polls have steadily shown over half of the Italians oppose sending weapons to Kiev and believe sanctions against Russia are useless.

The protesters are angered not only over Mario Draghi government’s military spending on Ukraine, which they say would be better spent on raising workers’ wages. They are also opposing officials’ decision to raise military expenditure from 1.4 to 2% of the country’s GDP.

According to studies carried out by a number of Italy-based think tanks, Italians have never been eager to increase defense expenditures.

Based on data from the 1950s to date, on average, less than 20% of respondents believe that military spending is too low or should be increased.

June 3, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Solidarity and Activism | , | Leave a comment

Brazilian front-runner slams US billions for Ukraine

Samizdat | June 2, 2022

Brazilian presidential candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called out US President Joe Biden in two campaign speeches this week, citing the $40 billion in military aid Washington has pledged to Ukraine. Lula is polling far ahead of the incumbent, Jair Bolsonaro, in the upcoming presidential election.

“Biden, who has never made a speech to give $1 to those who are starving in Africa, announces $40 billion to help Ukraine buy weapons,” Lula said on Wednesday in Porto Alegre. “This can’t be!” he added.

The 76-year-old is the candidate of the leftist Party of Workers (PT), and currently the favorite to win the presidential election in October.

Speaking in Sao Paulo on Tuesday, Lula brought up the $40 billion in another context. How is it possible, he asked, that the world’s supposedly strongest economy is reduced to scouring the globe for baby formula – amid shortages in the US – even as Biden pledges billions in weapons sales to Kiev?

About half of the $40 billion package is directly earmarked for US weapons headed to Ukraine, while the rest would fund the government in Kiev, replenish the depleted Pentagon stockpiles, and fund US military deployments in Europe. Biden signed it on May 21 after both chambers of Congress passed it with token Republican opposition. The physical bill was flown to Asia, where Biden was visiting at the time, so he could formally attach his signature.

Lula has previously criticized Biden over the conflict in Ukraine, saying the US leader could have prevented it, but instead chose to give a blank check to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“The United States has a lot of political clout. And Biden could have avoided [the conflict], not incited it,” Lula said in an interview with Time magazine in early May.

“And now we are going to have to foot the bill because of the war on Ukraine. Argentina, Bolivia will also have to pay. You’re not punishing [Russian President Vladimir] Putin. You’re punishing many different countries, you’re punishing mankind,” he added.

Lula was president of Brazil from 2003 to 2010 and remains one of the most popular Brazilian politicians ever. He was convicted on corruption charges and jailed in 2018 – during the interim presidency that had impeached his successor, Dilma Rousseff – but the conviction was annulled in 2021. The Brazilian Supreme Court ruled that Lula did not receive a fair trial, and cleared him to run for office again.

The most recent polls by Datafolha show Lula with a 21-point lead over Bolsonaro.

June 2, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Surprise! The Texas Shooter and the Ukraine Military Get Their AR-15s From the Same Place

By Michael Tracey | June 1, 2022

Like many pundits, Michael McFaul took a quick break this past week from his usual area of “expertise.” Instead of pontificating 24/7 about the need to funnel massive amounts of uncontrolled arms into Ukraine, he adroitly pivoted to pontificating about the need to more stringently control arms in the US. McFaul, a former Ambassador to Russia who is currently working with the Ukraine government to formulate war-related policy recommendations, issued the following command:

To all the manufacturers of AR15s, please stop. Just do the right thing. And the rest of us might consider stopping to focus on a legislative solution, and instead focus on a non-violent civic resistance campaign against these AR15 makers directly.

Few figures on the punditry scene are more adept at getting themselves into comical face-plant scenarios than McFaul — or more useful at highlighting unexamined contradictions of the yammering liberal commentariat. In this instance, McFaul demonstrates why he and likeminded commentators are so steadfastly determined to compartmentalize their positions on foreign policy versus domestic policy. Because it would apparently never even occur to McFaul that there might be some tension between his passionate calls to aggressively curtail gun circulation in the US, and his similarly passionate calls to circulate a giant number of guns in Ukraine.

McFaul and company demand both policies with roughly equal ardor, voicing them in the standard register that has come to define almost all left-liberal advocacy: “this thing must be done right now or everyone will die.” Meanwhile, they evince not even a hint of awareness that the positions could represent contradictory impulses. On the one hand, they want to ensure that the American populace is prevented from obtaining certain high-powered rifles. On the other hand, they want to ensure that the Ukrainian populace is enabled to obtain these same high-powered rifles. Both positions somehow manage to co-exist seamlessly alongside one another, like two of those inflatable tube things floating merrily downstream — never even coming close to clashing.

Is it possible that any contradictions between these stances could be resolved with some sort of reasoning or argumentation? Sure, it’s possible. A liberal who holds both positions could theoretically argue something along the lines of: “In the case of Ukraine, my purported belief in the sacrosanct necessity of gun control is superseded by my belief that unlimited, unregulated, uncontrollable proliferation of guns in Eastern Europe is necessary to Defend Democracy.” Or whatever — something to that effect. And then followup counter-arguments could be raised, such as: “Shouldn’t the mass proliferation of uncontrolled guns in Ukraine, which is occurring as a result of the policy you favor, call into question how vehemently you really value the principle of gun control? Because if the policy you favor in Ukraine is totally inimical to your stated belief in the absolute paramount necessity of gun control, shouldn’t that at least raise the bar for whether the Ukraine policy is justified?” And so on.

The point being, tensions between these two counterposing positions would at least require some argumentation to resolve. But what makes today’s McFaul-style advocacy so notable is the complete and total obliviousness to any such tension even existing in the first place. As they issue their emotionally-heated policy demands, most Democrats appear to have no concept whatsoever that there might be some discordance between their desire to increase regulation on gun ownership at home, while simultaneously obliterating any regulation on gun ownership abroad. Members of the media, the activist class, and the wider punditocracy lack even the basic cognizance that would be needed to broach the subject. So, as usual, the McFaul-style advocates just barrel zealously forward, demanding these two policy prescriptions with equal, unmitigated gusto — without anyone ever pausing to ask for clarification.

And there are plenty of good reasons why clarification might be sought. Here’s how an investigator for Amnesty International reacted to one of the many influxes of weapons to Ukraine ushered in recently by Congress and the Biden Administration. (Yes, the batches include thousands and thousands of assault rifles):

History predicts that someday I’ll track some of these weapons to a new conflict that hasn’t even started yet.

Does anyone feel as if these guns rapidly pouring into Ukraine are being subjected to adequate “control”? Because whenever US officials are given an opportunity to speak candidly on the topic, they grudgingly admit the weapons are dropping into what they call “a big black hole.” Which gives the strong impression that no “controls” are being applied, at least according to the criteria that would ordinarily be demanded by gun control proponents.

And yet amidst the frantic cries for domestic “gun control,” US policy continues to facilitate less “control” of guns entering key foreign markets. The newly-revived “Lend-Lease” law — enacted with near-universal backing from Congress — provides for certain Ukraine-specific exemptions from the Arms Export Control Act, the main statutory mechanism for “end-use monitoring of defense articles and defense services” that the US sends abroad. As one “defense” industry trade publication put it, the main allure of the new Lend-Lease law is that it “will trim the bureaucracy” involved in getting weapons to Ukraine as quickly as possible — eschewing the usual types of restrictions which would ordinarily govern these shipments.

So here we have Michael McFaul appealing to every gun manufacturer in the US to stop producing the AR-15. Plenty of Democrats and liberal pundits echo this exact sentiment: that the US must cease disseminating so-called “weapons of war,” lest they continue getting into the wrong hands. Special ire has been directed at Daniel Defense, the Georgia-based company that manufactures the AR-15 style rifle used by the school shooter in Uvalde, Texas. McFaul implores them to halt production.

Does McFaul know that this would also halt the production of AR-15 shipments to the Ukraine government? Because they get their rifles from the same place the Uvalde shooter did: Daniel Defense. The Ukraine Border Guard — which has been on the front-line of some of the war’s most fierce fighting — revealed as much in a statement announcing their conversion from shoddy old Kalashnikovs to a new modern rifle called the “UAR-15.” The parts for these new rifles come straight from the US, they proudly revealed: “The barrel and the trigger mechanism, on which the accuracy of firing directly depends, are made in the USA by the Daniel Defense company,” the statement reads.

Photos posted on the subreddit dedicated to fans of Daniel Defense purportedly show unidentified pro-Ukraine fighters posing on the battlefield with the exact same model that the Uvalde shooter used:


A website for Special Ops impresarios describes the fancy new Ukraine rifle as such: “The new addition to the small arms inventory of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is a UAR-15 (Zbroyar Z-15), which, as you can easily guess, is one of the many clones of the AR-15.” The site further notes that “American company Daniel Defense obtained the license” on behalf of a Ukrainian company “to produce weapons based on the worldwide AR-15 and AR-10 systems.” Daniel Defense, it would seem, is critical to this ongoing campaign to “Defend Democracy”!

And it’s not just this one newly-reviled company. A smaller manufacturer, Adams Arms, has been celebrated for delivering “more than 1,000 piston driven, semi-automatic AR-15 style rifles into Ukraine for civilian use” since the war started. They even put out press releases touting these shipments, indicating that they thought their pro-Ukraine disposition would be good for business — and were showered with laudatory media coverage for their efforts. Is McFaul saying he wants to shut down Adams Arms, thereby preventing them from continuing to ship rifles into Ukraine?

There have even been photos of Azov Battalion fighters brandishing the despised AR-15s…

I realize people will nonetheless insist that there is just no conceivable tension at all between the indiscriminate dumping of guns into a warzone, and the demand that these same guns be strenuously controlled in the US. But that’s just a testament to how carefully the two issues have been compartmentalized, as is very often the case with foreign policy and domestic policy.

Dreaded gun industry lobbying outfits have even released helpful tip-sheets for domestic US manufacturers, detailing how these companies can secure the necessary authorization to “donate” guns, ammo, and other equipment directly to Ukraine. One would assume McFaul also yearns for this practice to be shut down. But chances are, he’s never thought the matter through. Like most others shrieking for the AR-15 to be proscribed, while at the same time shrieking for AR-15s to be ferried off to the Donbas, the connections between foreign and domestic policy have never crossed their minds. They might be shocked to discover that even the relentlessly demonized NRA has found common ground with McFaul and ilk. As an NRA spokesperson told the Washington Times: “The NRA and our members support the efforts of firearms and ammunition manufacturers helping the people of Ukraine.”

Remington, the gun manufacturer that’s been sued into bankruptcy after being found liable for the Sandy Hook school shooting — because the perpetrator used a gun they produced — has also joined the frenzy to arm Ukraine:

We heard President Zelenskyy’s call. Remington is sending 1M rounds of ammo to Ukraine.

Do McFaul and his ideological peers want to shut down Remington’s ability to send boatloads of bullets to those brave warriors fighting on the frontlines of Democracy?

There’s obviously no direct, concrete, empirically-verifiable connection between the recent mass shootings in the US and the ongoing military escalation in Ukraine. But at one point, it was at least contemplated that US foreign policy could have some extenuating role in conditioning a certain subset of the population toward excess violence. In Bowling for Columbine, which became the most financially successful documentary of all time when it was released in 2002, Michael Moore makes the case that the prevalence of mass shootings in the US is not exclusively or even primarily explainable by the availability of guns.

Moore cites what he says are comparable rates of gun ownership in the US and Canada — and the far lesser prevalence of mass shootings in Canada — as reason to believe that other cultural and political pathologies unique to the US are to blame. In the movie, Moore goes out of his way to note that on the day of the Columbine shooting, April 20, 1999, Bill Clinton dropped more bombs on Yugoslavia than were dropped on any other day of that particular war. Moore further explained his theory about the prevalence of gun-related violence in the US by reference to cultural attitudes, such as those which say “It’s OK to reach for the gun whenever you have to resolve a dispute. Whether it’s personally with your neighbor, or someone in your family. Or whether it’s with Saddam Hussein.”

I don’t bring up this aspect of the Bowling for Columbine thesis to assert that Moore is 100% correct — only to point out that the connection between US foreign policy and mass shooting events at least used to be commonly discussed, including by the most successful documentary-maker of all time. And yet today, if you even mention the US shipping high-powered rifles into Ukraine as a potentially relevant factor to consider when talking about gun control in the US, you’ll draw blank stares. And that’s if you’re lucky. More likely, you’ll draw angry reproaches from people who are indignant that you’d dare to “go there,” when the only place you should be going is to support the latest 10-point plan for gun control furnished by one of Mike Bloomberg’s lavishly funded advocacy groups.

Since Bowling for Columbine came out two decades ago, a few mass shootings have given some credence to Moore’s thesis. In 2018, a veteran of the Afghanistan war named Ian David Long killed 12 people at a bar in Thousand Oaks, California, before killing himself. According to a report by the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office, Long was “a machine gunner in the US Marine Corps who had true combat experience while serving in Afghanistan,” having fought there from 2010 to 2011 — the period when the “surge” orchestrated by Barack Obama and David Petraeus produced more US casualties than at any other point of the 20-year war. According to the Sheriff’s report, ex-girlfriends of Long attested that he was “suffering emotionally from witnessing the travesties of war,” and was afflicted with PTSD. In the year or so before the shooting, he had become heavily isolated. Investigators concluded Long was motivated by “strong disdain for civilians, or individuals not associated with any branch of the US military,” in particular college students — hence his decision to target a “College Night” at the bar.

That’s one example of US foreign policy potentially having some conceivable bearing on a mass shooting. And you could go back further; one of the first mass shooters of the modern era, Charles Whitman, honed his skills as a Marine sharpshooter before firing at random from atop the Clock Tower on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin, all the way back in 1966.

So yes, sometimes there are theoretical connections that can be posited between US foreign policy and mass shootings, like a society-wide habituation to violence, as was suggested by Michael Moore. Sometimes you can get a little more tangible, as when an Afghanistan vet with PTSD shoots up a college bar. And sometimes you can even draw connections between the actual rifle used, such as when the Texas school shooter got his AR-15 from the same US company that also produces the AR-15 used by elements of the Ukraine armed forces. Don’t hold your breath for any “national conversation” about that latter connection, though.

Because all the while, Michael McFaul continues to spout off his desire to “increase arms to Ukraine,” even as he simultaneously calls for the shuttering of US gun manufacturer production lines — which would result in the cessation of arms being sent into Ukraine. But yeah, no tension at all between these dueling positions. Sure thing.

May 31, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

Duque forces MNNA status on Colombia despite unpopularity of NATO

By Paul Antonopoulos | May 31, 2022

Colombian president Iván Duque announced on his social media that his country is officially a non-NATO strategic ally. With less than two months to go until the end of his government, the Colombian president will seemingly be replaced with a centre-left candidate, the first in the country’s history.

“We welcome the memorandum sent by US President Joe Biden and the Secretary of State, which formalizes the designation of Colombia as a strategic non-member ally of NATO. A decision that reaffirms the good ties in our bilateral relations,” Duque wrote on Twitter on May 23.

The South American country will now have privileges when it comes to accessing the US military industry and extensive financing for procurements. However, this action by Duque has not been welcomed by the Colombian opposition, who showed their rejection of the announcement and reiterated that it is just one more move by the current administration to try and bolster the presidential elections that will have its second round on June 19.

Sandra Ramírez, a senator for the opposition Commons Party, said: “Colombia as an extra ally of NATO does not benefit us at all. On the contrary, we join their interventionist and war policies. In addition, it goes against sovereignty, which in the end is the voice of the majority of Colombians, and which is anchored to the self-determination of the peoples.”

Ramírez highlights that it is a simple lobby on the part of Duque, who has always put his personal interests above Colombia. “Surely that’s what his advisers told him and that’s why he spent so much time lobbying and not governing. NATO represents a policy of war and here we want a policy of peace and social inclusion to prevail. With this agreement we will continue to be at the mercy of US interests, which we reject.”

With Gustavo Petro, founder of the centre-left Humane Colombia, leading the polls and expected to be the next president of the Latin American country, Ramírez says he must reverse Duque’s decision and leave the NATO program immediately to focus his energies on solving local problems instead.

Another Commons Party Senator, Carlos Antonio Lozada, says that according to his sources, “Petro will get out of any military agreement that ties us to the geopolitical interests of the United States, which would be aimed against strengthening regional integration.”

A Major Non-NATO Ally (MNNA) does not mean that in the event that Colombia suffers external aggression, the US will intercede to protect the country, as is the case with actual members states. In this way, Colombia’s only advantage is that it can gain access to American weapons – at a time when much of South America is moving towards the just as effective but far cheaper Russian and Chinese weaponry.

The process for Colombia’s MNNA status began on March 10 during the meeting between Duque and Biden at the White House. Colombia thus joined the list of 17 MNNA countries, being the third in Latin America after Brazil and Argentina. The other allies are Australia, Egypt, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Jordan, New Zealand, Thailand, Kuwait, Morocco, Pakistan, Bahrain, the Philippines, Afghanistan and Tunisia.

Colombia having MNNA status certainly makes the June 19 election all the more interesting, especially when considering this could be the country’s most historic election as for the first time a progressive candidate could be president of the country.

As Colombia has a central place for US policy in Latin America, the second round vote then holds an even greater importance for Washington, which closely observes events in the world’s leading cocaine-producing country.

For the South American country, a progressive government could mean more favorable conditions for the strengthening of Latin American integration. Colombia, with its first potential progressive president, could leave behind a foreign policy that looks exclusively at the US and be an active part of continental integration. But until then, the question remains whether Petro would engage in the task of reversing Colombia’s MNNA status.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

May 31, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

A World at War?

Biden lashes out against “enemies” as our country declines

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • MAY 31, 2022

One recalls that when war fever surged demanding intervention by Imperial Britain in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877, a song became popular in the music halls which included “We don’t want to fight, But by Jingo if we do, We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money too.” If the refrain sounds familiar, it should as the United States has been experiencing extreme “jingoism” since 2001. Any rejection of the “rules based international order” established and policed by “leader of the free world” Washington has resulted in immediate punishment by sanctions followed by threats of military intervention. In some cases, as in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, the actual armed intervention seeking regime change has been the end result. And it is all done to spread “freedom” and “democracy,” a claim that might be disputed by the millions of dead mostly Muslims who have had to suffer the consequences.

So the United States of America has been a country, like its best friend Israel, that seems to be perpetually at war… so what else is new? What’s new is that under President Joe Biden there has been zero diplomacy and almost reflexive reliance on wielding the “big stick.” To quote another bon mot from one of my favorite authors Raymond Chandler, creator of private eye Philip Marlowe, “… when in doubt, have two guys come through the door with guns.”

Don’t worry, Chandler’s two guys and many more like them are now in Ukraine under cover and in mufti training Ukrainians to use all the nifty Raytheon and Lockheed toys Uncle Joe has sent them. They are working together with the largely neocon advisers coaching Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is guarded by British and US special forces, on what to say and do during his increasingly strident international calls to widen the war. If they are successful and manage to sink another Russian ship or two using harpoon missiles, which Zelensky is threatening to do, the proxy US war with Russia could quickly become for real. Zelensky’s family meanwhile is reportedly safely ensconced in an $8 million villa in Israel. He also has a multi-million dollar villa property near Miami and another in Tuscany. Who would have thought that being president of the poorest country in Europe could bring such material rewards?

Australian journalist Caitlin Johnstone, who has a huge worldwide audience, opines that Biden is possibly the worst US president ever, worse even that his consistently denigrated predecessor and media punching bag Donald Trump. Her recent article succinctly addresses what makes Biden’s egregious failure both different and incredibly dangerous. She writes “Preventing nuclear war is a US president’s single most important job. It’s so important you shouldn’t even really have to talk about it, because it’s so self-evidently the number one priority. And this administration is just rolling the dice on nuclear conflict with increasing frequency every day. Even if humanity survives this standoff (and the one with China that’s next in line), Biden will still have been an unforgivably depraved president for allowing it to get this close. There’s no excuse whatsoever for just casually rolling the dice on all terrestrial life like this.”

Indeed, Joe Biden’s latest tricks include declaring that the US will go to war with China to protect Taiwan if Beijing should prove so bold as to want to take control of its wayward province. But the US established policy is to maintain “strategic ambiguity” about China/Taiwan, a diplomatic solution crafted in 1979 to help prevent any provocations by either party that would lead to the situation developing into a shooting war. Joe seems to have missed that point, if he ever understood it in the first place, and certainly his advisers appear to be no more savvy than he is, though the White House quickly issued a correction on the apparent gaffe in the form of a statement that automatic defense of Taiwan is not official policy. Yet.

But my favorite move by the Biden Administration, if one might be so bold as to suggest that it is actually capable of administering anything more kinetic than a hot dog stand, is the latest pander to Israel. The recent murder by military sharpshooter of Palestinian/American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh followed by a humiliating spectacle of police violence at the funeral as well as subsequently at a second Palestinian funeral, actually found some administration flunkies and congress critters calling for a full investigation by Israel. The Israeli government and army refused to do so and the White House has pretended that there is no longer anything to see or consider. Israeli Defense (sic) Minister Benny Gantz recently visited Washington but the issue of a murdered American was not even raised as top officials tried to outdo each other in expressing both their love for and fealty to the Jewish state, which Biden will soon be visiting. The US president will ignore the fact that Israel is celebrating his visit with its greatest eviction of Palestinian residents in twenty years.

That the United States has been a major source of money, weapons and political cover for Israel since 1967 if not before is indisputable, the result of corruption of America’s government at all levels by the groups and billionaires euphemistically described as the “Israel Lobby.” War criminal Israeli leaders like Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu have boasted about their control over Congress and the White House as well as the media and every time Israel does something atrocious the only US response has been to give it more money. Israel would sorely love to have the United States fights its wars, most prominently by attacking Iran, but somehow that military intervention and regime change, apart from a number of assassinations, has not yet taken place.

But now all of that might be changing due to a combination of the Biden regime’s recklessness and Israel’s genuine contempt for the American people, who they have been parasitically feeding off of since their settler state was founded. The US has, for the first time, participated in a large-scale military exercise with Israel on May 18th which was designed to simulate an attack on Iran using American Air Force refueling planes to enhance the ability of Israel to keep its jets flying to maintain air superiority over the Persians. It was a war game in the most literal sense even though the tanker aircraft did not actually refuel any Israeli planes and it basically commits the United States to be a dedicated participant if the Israelis should throw the dice and chance on a military attack on Iran’s presumed nuclear and air defense sites.

I also smell a possible false flag if the exercise is repeated, as it surely will be. What if one of the US planes taking part in a future exercise were to be shot down in an incident staged by Israel that might plausibly be attributed to Iran? As the exercises will presumably take place over the Mediterranean Sea in the coastal waters part of which Israel has inter alia stolen from Gaza and controls, bringing Iran into the equation would be difficult but possible to manage with enough cleverness combined with hubris, which the Israelis have in plentiful supply. That Israel would without hesitation shed American blood if it were to advance its own perceived interests should not be doubted by anyone. Look only at the two Israel false flag attacks against the US, the Lavon bombing incident in 1954 and the bloody assault on the USS Liberty in 1967, which killed 34 American sailors and injured more than a hundred others in an attempt to sink the ship and kill all its crew. That is the Israel America has grown to love and nourish, a viper in one’s bosom, always willing to strike the body that feeds it.

But to return to Caitlin Johnstone’s observation, America is in deep trouble. Its economy is visibly sinking while standards of living are dropping and will decline further as military spending grows while both the increasingly “woke” educational system and industrial base are no longer competitive. We have a plausibly psychopathic government that is bringing us to the brink of war with several nuclear powers. What we Americans need is not another war, but rather an end to war, particular those wars that can somehow kill most or even all of us. Instead, help build pressure to wind down the Ukraine war through negotiations, stop feeding Zelensky with weapons and money. Leave China alone and stop being Israel’s patsy against Iran and inside Syria. Try to get along with competitors. It would indeed be a Brave New World, wouldn’t it? A country at peace with itself and working to benefit the American people – something that we have rarely seen since 1945.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

May 31, 2022 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

Finland to Build New Air Base in Lapland for Its F-35 Fighters

By Igor Kuznetsov | Samizdat | May 31, 2022

The first of the 64 US-made F-35 fighter jets that will arrive in Finland in 2026 will be placed at a new air base in Lapland, its northernmost county. Its construction will begin this year and will cost the Nordic country 150 million euros ($161 million), the national broadcaster Yle reported.

According to the commander of the Lapland air base, Colonel Tuukka Karjalainen, the location was chosen based on its proximity to Norway, a NATO member which already uses F-35s. As of now, Finland’s northernmost air force base, in Rovaniemi, stages regular training missions with the Swedish and Norwegian air forces. To begin with, the new base will receive two to six new aircraft.

“The hope is that this will create opportunities for cooperation and facilitate the implementation of the technology,” Tuukka Karjalainen told Yle. “We are very pleased. We are proud to be adopting new equipment. The jobs at the Lapland air base will certainly attract many,” he added.

According to Karjalainen, auxiliary buildings, fences and roads will be built by the end of this year. The main construction will begin in the first half of 2023. Over the past two years, the cost estimate has soared by tens of millions of euros, with Karjalainen blaming stricter technical requirements and increased prices.

Pilots, mechanics and maintenance personnel will be trained in the US. According to Karjalainen, 18 pilots and about 50 technicians will go to the US for training in 2025. Later, they themselves will train specialists in Finland.

The Finnish Air Forces announced the purchase of 64 Lockheed Martin F-35 multi-role fighters back in February in an 8.4 billion euro ($9 billion) deal with the US defence contractor. The new fighters will replace Finland’s ageing fleet of F-18 Hornets, which is planned to be phased out by 2030.

Previously, Finland’s neighbours Norway and Denmark opted to make the F-35 the backbone of their air forces, procuring 52 and 27 fighter jets respectively.

May 31, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Ukraine to get just 15% of $40-bln US aid, but must return entire sum, Duma speaker says

TASS | May 24, 2022

Russia’s State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin took to his Telegram channel to highlight that the US and its partners do not plan to provide real assistance to Ukraine.

Ukraine will only get 15% of the $40 billion promised by the US, he said.

“Washington and Brussels do not really intend to help Ukraine, or solve its economic and social issues. They only need Ukraine to fight Russia till the last Ukrainian,” Volodin said.

According to the recent aid to Ukraine legislation signed by President Joe Biden, 35% of the $40 billion is going to finance the US Armed Forces, he explained. Meanwhile, 45.2% of that amount is set to be spent on other countries, not Ukraine, while another 4.8% will be earmarked to support refugees, and restore the US diplomatic mission in Ukraine. “Ukraine will only receive 15% of the allotted sum,” the speaker revealed.

But Ukrainians will have to pay off the whole sum, he said. The US is aware that Kiev will not be able to service the debt in the future. “That is why they are seizing Ukraine’s last reserves, including grain, which is what we are seeing right now”.

May 25, 2022 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Sen. Cruz, Gen. Milley, Zelensky Say Ukraine Is Vital to National Security

By Kyle Anzalone and Will Porter | The Libertarian Institute | May 23, 2022

As the costs of supporting Ukraine’s war effort soar well beyond $50 billion, high-level officials are seeking to sell Americans on even more military spending, with senators, generals and the Ukrainian president himself each insisting aid to Kiev is vital to American interests, amid rampant inflation, mounting shortages and monumental public debt in the US.

In a statement justifying a recent vote to send another $40 billion in assistance to Ukraine, Republican Senator Ted Cruz argued the move was essential not only for the security of the US, but to ward off a Chinese attack on Taiwan as well.

“If Putin wins in Ukraine, it will confirm for Xi that he can confidently invade Taiwan,” he said, referring to the Russian and Chinese heads of state.

“The reason we should support our Ukrainian allies is because it protects American national security, it keeps America safer, and it prevents our enemies from getting stronger, from threatening the safety and security of Americans, and from driving up the cost, the economic damage, to Americans,” Cruz added.

Following repeated appeals for additional Western arms, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is now warning that American troops may have to face down the Russians if they are not stopped in Ukraine, adopting a version of the ‘fight them over there…’ slogan popular during the US War on Terror.

“If we fall, if we don’t hold the line, Russia will proceed, attacking the Baltic states – Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia… The US military will have to go to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, according to the fifth article, and they will have to fight there and die there,” he said in an interview with Axios on Monday, citing NATO’s Article 5 collective defense provision.

During his West Point commencement speech over the weekend, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley echoed similar sentiments regarding Ukraine, all while predicting that future wars would be fought against ‘great powers’ like Russia and China.

In a further callback to the Cold War, the top US military officer asserted that such powers would only be encouraged if acts of “aggression” are not met with a serious response.

“Yet again in Ukraine, we are learning the lesson that aggression left unanswered only emboldens the aggressor,” he said.

The three statements somewhat resemble the Cold War-era ‘domino theory,’ which contended that the presence of Communism in one country would quickly spread into neighboring states – a key public rationale behind US intervention in Vietnam. However, former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara acknowledged in 1995 that the theory did not play out as predicted, stating, “I think we were wrong. I do not believe that Vietnam was that important to the Communists. I don’t believe that its loss would have led – it didn’t lead – to Communist control of Asia.”

May 25, 2022 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

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