Sen. Rand Paul Slams Strikes on Boats in Caribbean as ‘Extrajudicial Killings’
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | October 27, 2025
Senator Rand Paul blasted President Donald Trump’s strikes on alleged drug traffickers as unconstitutional and illegal.
“A briefing is not enough to overcome the Constitution. The Constitution says that when you go to war, Congress has to vote on it. … The drug war, or the crime war, has typically been dealt with through law enforcement,” Paul said on Fox News Sunday. “And so far they have alleged that these people are drug dealers … and we’ve had no evidence presented. So at this point we would call them extrajudicial killings.”
So far, the Department of War has bombed ten boats it claims are smuggling narcotics into the US. Nine of the strikes have been on vessels in the Caribbean, against alleged cartels linked to Venezuela. The White House has not provided evidence that the ships were carrying drugs.
“So far, they have alleged that these people are drug dealers. No one said their name. No one said what evidence. No one said whether they’re armed. And we’ve had no evidence presented,” Paul said.
One survivor of a strike was released by Ecuador, finding he was not engaged in wrongdoing when the boat was attacked. One family member said a victim of a US strike was a fisherman, and not working for a cartel.
Trump has discussed expanding the strikes into Venezuela and has given the CIA approval to conduct lethal operations against cartels. Secretary of State Marco Rubio claims that Venezuelan President Maduro is the leader of a cartel designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
If Trump elects to expand the war, he told reporters that he will brief Congress on the plans. He went on to say he did not have to discuss the matter with the Legislator and has not sought a Declaration of War.
The Constitution explicitly grants Congress the authority to Declare War. However, the principle of preventing the President from unilaterally declaring war has been eroded over time. Congress has not declared war since World War 2 II. The last Authorization for Use of Military Force was passed in 2002 for the Iraq War.
Senator Paul has teamed up with Democratic Senator Tim Kaine to push a War Powers Resolution that would stop Trump from launching a war with Venezuela.
US to send world’s largest aircraft carrier to Latin America; Venezuela warns of dangerous prelude
Press TV – October 25, 2025
The United States has decided to deploy the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, and five accompanying destroyers to Latin America, prompting Venezuela to condemn the pending provocation as reckless and unlawful.
The move, which marks one of the most aggressive American naval buildups in the hemisphere in decades, was announced by a Pentagon spokesperson on Friday.
The official claimed that the expanded US regional interference aimed to “detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities.”
The decision has raised fears of an imminent attempt to destabilize or even invade Venezuela under fabricated pretexts.
Analysts and international observers have also cautioned that the scale of the deployment far exceeds anti-narcotics operations.
The Gerald Ford strike group will join some 6,000 US sailors and Marines already stationed aboard eight warships in the region, bringing total American military personnel in the area to more than 10,000.
The escalation follows Donald Trump’s recent admission that he had authorized CIA operations inside Venezuela and was “mulling land attacks.”
The US president has repeatedly made baseless accusations that President Nicolás Maduro’s government was linked to criminal groups “invading” the US through drugs and immigration, allegations repeatedly dismissed by international agencies and even US intelligence assessments.
Since September, Washington has launched several strikes against civilian and fishing vessels in the Caribbean, alleging drug links without offering evidence.
According to United Nations officials and international law experts, these attacks violate both US and international law and constitute extrajudicial executions.
Venezuelan authorities have vowed to defend national sovereignty with full resolve.
“Interpret it however you want: the Armed Forces will not allow a government here that is subservient to the interests of the United States,” said Foreign Minister Vladimir Padrino.
Calling the US deployment “the most significant military threat in the last 100 years,” Padrino reaffirmed Caracas’s commitment to peace and reiterated that Venezuela would not tolerate any aggression.
China Slams Remarks by US Ambassador to Panama About Canal
Sputnik – 06.10.2025
BEIJING – The Chinese embassy in Panama on Monday criticized the remarks by US Ambassador to Panama Kevin Marino Cabrera about Beijing’s alleged meddling in matters concerning the Panama Canal.
On Sunday, Cabrera said in an interview with the Contrapeso newspaper that China had “malign” influence on the Panama Canal, accusing Beijing of cyberattacks and corruption and threatening visa cancellations for those who cooperate with Chinese enterprises.
“The statements of the US Ambassador about China have no factual basis and scientific justification, they are aimed at provoking conflict between China and other countries in the region. Depriving these countries of their diplomatic independence serves the geopolitical interests of the United States, causing more criticism and opposition,” the Chinese embassy said in a statement.
China adheres to the principle of “joint consultation, joint construction and joint use” in mutually beneficial cooperation with all countries, the statement read.
“The projects of Chinese companies in Panama and other Latin American countries make a significant contribution to social-economic development. High-quality Chinese goods at a low price are popular. The US ambassador’s statement casts doubt on the ability of countries in the region to think sensibly and ridicules the local population,” the embassy said.
Beijing urges Washington to put aside arrogance and bias and “focus on the matters that truly contribute to the development of the countries of the region and the well-being of their peoples,” the embassy added.
US strikes another vessel off Venezuela, killing four
Al Mayadeen | October 3, 2025
The United States has escalated its military campaign in Latin America, carrying out yet another deadly strike off the coast of Venezuela under the false pretext of fighting narcotics trafficking.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the latest strike in a post on X, celebrating the destruction of a small vessel that US officials claimed was carrying drugs. A video accompanying the post showed the boat erupting into flames, a scene observers say reveals Washington’s growing reliance on extrajudicial force and its willingness to kill without evidence, trial, or accountability.
“Four male narco-terrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike,” Hegseth wrote, asserting that it “was conducted in international waters just off the coast of Venezuela while the vessel was transporting substantial amounts of narcotics — headed to America to poison our people.” He vowed, “These strikes will continue until the attacks on the American people are over!!!!”
The latest strike brings the death toll to at least 21 people across four attacks in recent weeks, none of whom have been positively identified as traffickers. Washington has offered no independent proof linking the victims to drug networks, raising concerns that the US is unilaterally executing individuals in foreign waters under a fabricated pretext.
This new military doctrine stems from President Donald Trump’s declaration that the United States is now in “armed conflict” with drug cartels, reclassifying them as “terrorist organizations”, a move legal scholars have condemned as an attempt to bypass international law. A Pentagon notice sent to Congress, obtained by AFP, claimed: “The president determined these cartels are non-state armed groups, designated them as terrorist organizations, and determined that their actions constitute an armed attack against the United States.” The same document described alleged smugglers as “unlawful combatants”, stripping them of legal protection under the Geneva Conventions.
Rights groups have warned that such terminological manipulation echoes past US practices, from the “war on terror” to the invasions of Panama and Iraq, where legal gray zones were exploited to justify preemptive violence and regime change.
Political Theater and Extrajudicial Killings
The Trump administration has openly celebrated these operations as demonstrations of strength rather than law enforcement. Trump’s communications director, Steven Cheung, declared that traffickers had been “turned into stardust.” On Truth Social, Trump himself echoed the narrative, writing: “A boat loaded with enough drugs to kill 25 TO 50 THOUSAND PEOPLE was stopped, early this morning off the Coast of Venezuela, from entering American Territory.”
But independent analysts and international law experts argue that the campaign bears all the hallmarks of a covert regime change operation. The strikes come amid an unprecedented US military buildup near Venezuela, including the deployment of F-35 warplanes to Puerto Rico, marking the largest show of force in the Caribbean in more than three decades. Venezuela’s Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino condemned the presence of US jets near Venezuelan airspace as “a provocation” and “a threat to our national security.”
New war power bill gives Trump sweeping authority to attack dozens of nations: Report
The Cradle | September 23, 2025
Legislation has been drafted that would give US President Donald Trump unchecked power to wage war against drug cartels as well as any nation he says has harbored or aided them, the New York Times (NYT) reported on 23 September, citing people familiar with the matter.
If passed, the legislation would allow the US president to deem as “terrorists” any groups that have trafficked in drugs or financed drug-related enterprises. The president would then have the authorization to use military force against such groups and any governments allegedly harboring them.
The US military carried out attacks this month on three boats that Trump claims were smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea. The strikes killed 17 people and were widely criticized as illegal. Human Rights Watch (HRW) called the strikes “unlawful extrajudicial killings.”
NYT notes that the draft legislation appears to be modeled on the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) that Congress granted former US president George W. Bush to launch the so-called “War on Terror” after the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
While theoretically passed to allow the US to target Al-Qaeda and its hosts in Afghanistan, the broad nature of the AUMF allowed the Bush, Obama, and first Trump administrations to invade Iraq and to target Islamic militant groups in Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen many times over a period stretching decades.
Neither the AUMF nor the new draft legislation being considered names a specific enemy. The president is therefore empowered to attack any group, anywhere, in an open-ended war.
NYT stated that this raises the question of whether Congress was giving Trump the “authority to wage a regime change war in Venezuela.”
In addition to striking the three boats, Trump has ordered additional US warplanes and naval ships to the Caribbean, while also accusing Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro of leading a drug cartel.
In July, Trump signed a still-secret order directing the Pentagon to begin using military force against certain Latin American criminal gangs and drug cartels, NYT added.
The Institute for Responsible Statecraft stated that the legislation could be used to justify US military intervention in at least 60 countries.
In comments given to NYT, Harvard Professor Jack Goldsmith called the draft legislation “insanely broad,” essentially “an open-ended war authorization against an untold number of countries, organizations, and persons that the president could deem within its scope.”
Earlier this year, the White House added a long list of Latin American drug cartels to the national “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” (FTO) list, giving the US the pretext to launch military action against many groups in dozens of different countries if the draft legislation is passed.
Donald Trump corrects Victor Hugo: “Those who live are those who surrender”
By Lama El Horr – New Eastern Outlook – September 20, 2025
The torment that Washington and its satellites inflict on the peoples of the world is so outrageous that it reveals the disarray of the supremacist bloc, which seems to be playing its final card: The resuscitation of a wrecked Empire.
This playbook for restoring fallen hegemony consists of “negotiating” with Beijing through a means of coercion dear to Washington: blackmail. This is done by orchestrating, directly or through proxies, state terrorism of unbridled savagery in every corner of the world where the supremacy of the Euro-Atlantic oligarchy is threatened. In other words, in every corner of the world.
The ensuing funeral ceremonies, also orchestrated by the Axis of the Fallen Hegemon, aim to impose as an irreversible reality the losses of territory, fundamental rights, and power that these destructions and killings are supposed to inflict on the BRICS, the global South, and, of course, China.
“Give me the moon,” Trump asks Xi
Observing the conflagration of conflicts surrounding China, there is no doubt that Washington has raised its level of aggression a notch. The nature of the crises encircling Chinese territory indicates that the US administration has moved from “courteous” blackmail to “martial” blackmail.
“Courteous” blackmail is a traditional coercive tool used by Washington. It might look something like this: “China will be able to strengthen its cooperation with the European Union if it renounces buying Russian energy,” and aims, in this case, to kill two birds with one stone, i.e., to subjugate both Beijing and Moscow.
But this type of blackmail also manifests itself in more ambiguous ways: this is the case with Trump’s announcement of an agreement with Armenia, which has reportedly ceded the development and management of the Zangezur corridor to Washington for a period of 99 years. It goes without saying that such an agreement, if confirmed, can only arouse the fears of Beijing and Moscow and the categorical rejection of Tehran, since it leaves open the threat of an American presence in the South Caucasus. Admittedly, this may be a warning to Beijing and Moscow regarding their security collaboration with Iran: “If you strengthen Tehran’s defense capabilities against Israel, we will deploy troops between Armenia and Iran.” But it may also be that Washington has drawn a parallel with South America: “If China goes ahead with the bio-oceanic rail corridor project, which is supposed to link Brazil to the port of Chancay via Bolivia, there will be a NATO presence on Iran’s northwestern borders”—with all the security implications that such a deployment would entail for Iran, for the North-South corridor, and for the BRI network in Central Asia.
When this “polite” blackmail fails to achieve the set objective, Washington changes its modus operandi. Most recently, for example, Trump asked his satellites to outsource pressure against Beijing: “The G7/NATO/EU bloc must impose sanctions on China and India to force them to turn their backs on Russia.”
But the American modus operandi can also involve resorting to “martial” blackmail. This type of blackmail is more complex than the previous one. While it also involves coercion, it relies on brute force, and it is not always easy to discern the actors or their true level of involvement.
Suddenly, a succession of violent events occurs in more or less strategic areas, which seem to reshuffle the cards of the regional geopolitical chessboard. This is the case of the countless military assaults in West Asia—Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran, and Qatar. It is also the case, in South and Southeast Asia, of the India/Pakistan or Cambodia/Thailand conflict; of the declaration of martial law by former President Yoon in South Korea; of the color revolutions in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal; of the sporadic riots in Mongolia; of the war of attrition in Myanmar; or of the insurrection in Indonesia, a member of the BRICS, on the eve of the Tianjin summit.
From these upheavals, in which Washington’s involvement through regional and local channels has been widely demonstrated (see the work of Brian Berletic), Washington’s ulterior motives become apparent. Although the terms of this “martial” blackmail are never fully acknowledged, it is easy to guess its content:
- If you ostracize the dollar in your trade with the BRICS and Africa, we will undermine the BRI infrastructure all around your borders;
- Give us shares in your strategic companies, or we will escalate the trade war against Chinese technology and the maritime industry;
- We demand the lion’s share of the New Polar Silk Road, or failing that, we will form a military alliance with Somaliland and Taiwan;
- Stay away from South America and Venezuela, or we will provoke “incidents” on your borders, like in Qatar and Poland, to strengthen the defenses of the countries hosting our military bases.
And so on. These muscular blackmails—in this case, fictions, even if they are inspired by reality—are based on objectives so extreme that they are completely out of reach. They therefore resemble far-fetched threats. Yet, the Axis of the Fallen Hegemon continues to resort to these methods of intimidation, no doubt because they provide it with an excellent pretext to pursue its real objective, which is to intensify hostilities against China.
The objective, in fact, is not the resolution of crises, but their intensification, the Atlantic bloc being convinced that the spread of chaos is the only means within its reach to restore its supremacy. Moreover, the United States is all the less inclined to renounce subjugation by war, or “peace through strength,” as it demonstrates daily through its Israeli clone, its true ambition: to annihilate any desire for diplomacy – even if it means bombing the place where the negotiations are to be held.
For Washington, mourning must precede death
In the midst of these hostilities, it is important not to lose sight of the ultimate goal of the Empire in its death throes: to shift toward a fait accompli by decreeing the death of struggles that are still ongoing. The objective is therefore to push China—and, with it, the rest of the world—into confusing the destruction and killings caused by Atlanticist savagery with defeat.
Clearly, the imperialist bloc is going through a phase of such acute megalomania that it is incapable of making rational decisions. The slightest sign of life from its geopolitical adversaries is perceived as an existential threat. One need only look at the unspeakable abominations that torment the Palestinian people, and that torment us all, to realize how worrying it is to leave the fate of humanity in the crime-hungry hands of the Axis of the Fallen Hegemon.
Under these circumstances, it is up to China, the BRICS, and the Global South to restore what can be restored of human dignity, since “Those who live are those who struggle.”
Lama El Horr, PhD, is the Founding Editor of China Beyond the Wall. She is a geopolitical consultant and analyst specializing in Chinese foreign policy and geopolitics
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Colossal industrial-scale warfare in NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict
By Drago Bosnic | August 26, 2025
Heavy industry has always been the key element of modern warfare. Without the ability to outproduce the opponent, your chances of winning are slim to none. Accustomed to the one-sided aggression against virtually the entire world, the political West neglected the actual industrial capacity of its Military Industrial Complex (MIC).
Fighting largely helpless opponents left it mainly focused on weapon systems that are unsuitable for mass production and deployment. This made the US/NATO incapable of matching Russia, China and other multipolar powers that never outsourced their production economies. With its “economy of imaginary assets”, the political West stands in stark contrast to the multipolar world, but still hopes it can control global economic and financial processes based on effectively nothing.
Even the staunchest Western neoliberal think tanks now realize that this approach is failing, particularly in our era. However, the idea that industrial warfare is making a return is patently wrong. The simple truth is that it was always there. The NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict dispelled virtually all Western myths about warfare in this day and age. In fact, the entire idea of postmodernism has failed, even in military theory. The belief that wars can be won in mere days with “shock and awe” tactics of mass precision strikes simply doesn’t hold, especially against major regional powers and global superpowers. It might still work against small and isolated countries, but not more than that. As a result, the political West is now pushing for rapid reindustrialization that can only be achieved through remilitarization.
The reason for this is quite simple. The MIC is the only sector of Western economies that hasn’t been fully outsourced. However, the process itself is still taking too long. Back in June, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte admitted that Russia alone is outproducing the world’s most aggressive racketeering cartel by a factor of four in several key sectors (particularly artillery).
The situation has only gotten worse (for the political West) since then, as Moscow keeps increasing the production of all major military assets. It should be noted that this is in response to escalating US/NATO arms deliveries to the Neo-Nazi junta. According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, published on August 23, the United States has authorized the sale of 3,350 ERAMS (Extended Range Attack Munitions) to the Kiev regime forces.
The contract is valued at $850 million (€780 million) and is primarily financed by the European Union. First deliveries are expected within six weeks. The Trump administration delayed the decision until after the conclusion of high-profile talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. ERAMs are air-launched precision-guided weapons designed to strike high-value targets from standoff ranges (up to 450 km, depending on the launch altitude and trajectory). The US/NATO hopes the ERAM will be enough to circumvent Russia’s electronic warfare (EW) advantage, allegedly enabling precision strikes even under intense jamming, thus restoring the Neo-Nazi junta’s ability to attack high-value targets (HVTs) deep within Russia (in theory, at least). The rapidly evolving battlefield conditions will certainly put this to the test.
ERAMs are equipped with a combined GPS and INS (inertial navigation system), augmented by a terminal seeker. They’re designed to destroy targets such as ammunition depots, command centers, radar installations, etc. They can also integrate different warhead types and are compact enough to be carried by fighter aircraft, primarily Western designs such as the US-made F-16 and possibly the French-built “Mirage”.
The possibility of integration with Soviet-era Su-27s and MiG-29s shouldn’t be excluded either. However, the US reportedly restricted the Kiev regime’s operational authority over the ERAM and will “require case-by-case approval from the Pentagon”. It means that the US will have direct control over what Russian targets are to be hit. This is yet another confirmation that Washington DC directly participates in hostilities.
Other NATO member states are also involved in similar projects through the so-called PURL (Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List) program. The world’s most aggressive racketeering cartel is determined to ensure its war in Ukraine continues no matter the cost. Russia is responding to this by increasing its own production of crucial military assets. This is particularly true for “Geranium” drones, which are now the Russian military’s primary long-range precision strike weapons. Citing the Neo-Nazi junta’s intelligence services, CNN claims that the Kremlin can produce over 6,000 of these drones per month. There are now three versions of the “Geranium” kamikaze drones, each initially based on the Iranian-made “Shahed-131”, “Shahed-136” and “Shahed-238”, respectively. The “Geranium-3” is powered by a turbojet engine.
CNN also claims that the economies of scale production in Russia lowered the initial cost of each drone by a factor of three (from over $200,000 per unit to less than $70,000 now). What’s more, Moscow also made massive improvements, which were then backported to the original Iranian designs. This includes jamming-resistant GLONASS-aided INS and other upgrades that now make both “Geraniums” and “Shaheds” far more reliable.
More recently, the Russian military has been experimenting with advanced AI-run electro-optical targeting systems that massively improve precision, including a specially modified version that can deploy anti-tank mines. Combined with expanded mass production, these improvements explain the colossal surge in the use of “Geranium” drones, with Moscow simultaneously launching hundreds.
This also allowed the Russian military to shift its approach of deploying these drones in operational strikes to more tactical frontline engagements. The results were virtually immediate, with one recent video showing the destruction of the grossly overhyped and exorbitantly overpriced US-made M142 HIMARS MLRS (multiple launch rocket system). It was detected in a forested area near the settlement of Rogovka in the Chernigov oblast (region), with at least two “Geranium” drones neutralizing the MLRS just minutes later. Such HVTs usually have to be targeted by far more expensive weapons, such as the 9M723 hypersonic missiles of the now legendary 9K720M “Iskander-M” system. However, the massive increase in Moscow’s production capacity allows for the much more affordable “Geraniums” to be used instead.
Such weapons can also replace regular cruise missiles which cost millions of dollars apiece, with “Geraniums” often taking that role. Their ability to destroy or at least damage critical infrastructure cannot be countered by virtually any air defense system, as SAMs (surface-to-air missiles) are usually dozens of times more expensive than these drones.
This also gives the “Geranium” a critical role in exhausting the Kiev regime’s (and, by extension, NATO’s) air defenses. Even on a tactical level, the scale of losses for the political West and its Neo-Nazi puppets is unsustainable, as a single HIMARS launcher costs up to $5,000,000, meaning that it’s over 70 times more expensive than a single “Geranium” drone. It’s highly questionable that even the entire NATO can sustain such losses in a protracted confrontation with anyone, let alone Russia.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Ukrainian Diplomats in Latin America Recruiting Mercenaries for 25th Air Assault Brigade
Sputnik – 18.07.2025
The Ukrainian Embassy in Peru, which also handles Kiev’s relations with Ecuador and Colombia, has been recruiting mercenaries with combat experience to join Ukraine’s 25th Air Assault Brigade via its website, Sputnik has found out.
The embassy’s website features a link to a portal that invites foreign fighters to join the 25th Brigade as infantrymen and drone operators. The brigade is active on the Dnepropetrovsk and Donetsk fronts.
The requirements include “high level of physical fitness and motivation, military experience and drone operation experience.” The posting says that recruitment is being conducted on an urgent basis.
In an interview with Sputnik in June, Russian Ambassador in Bogota Nikolai Tavdumadze said that Ukraine was recruiting mercenaries in Colombia through its embassies, in violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. In March, relatives of Colombian mercenaries protested outside the Foreign Ministry building in Bogota to demand clarity about the whereabouts of their loved ones.
The Russian Defense Ministry has repeatedly warned that Kiev uses foreign fighters as “cannon fodder” and that the Russian military will continue to strike mercenary troops across Ukraine. Colombians have been complaining about poor coordination in the Ukrainian armed forces, which makes survival in the high-intensity conflict in Ukraine much harder than in Afghanistan or the Middle East.
Colombia must sever ties with NATO – president
RT | July 17, 2025
Colombia must cut ties with NATO as the leaders of the military bloc support “genocide” of Palestinians, President Gustavo Petro has declared.
Colombia, a traditional US ally in South America, became the first country in the region to obtain the status of NATO global partner in 2017. Petro, who took office in 2022 as Colombia’s first leftist president, severed diplomatic relations with Israel last year over what he describes as a genocide being carried out by the Israeli government against Palestinians.
”What do we do in NATO? If NATO’s top brass are for genocide, what are we doing there?” Petro said at a pro-Palestinian international conference in Bogota on Wednesday.
”Hasn’t the time come for another military alliance? Because how can we be with armies that drop bombs on children?” he added. “Those armies aren’t armies of freedom, they’re armies of darkness. We must have armies of light.”
Petro argued that NATO is a Cold War relic and asserted that nations like Colombia are treated as “half-members” within the US-led military bloc, granted symbolic partnerships but not full accession.
The two-day conference in Bogota hosted representatives from a dozen countries in the Global South. Attendees signed a joint declaration calling for economic sanctions and legal actions against Israel, including an arms embargo, restrictions on dual-use goods, port denials for vessels carrying cargo for Israeli forces, and support for international accountability for crimes allegedly committed in occupied territories.
Petro’s criticism reflects a break from Colombia’s historically warm relationship with Israel. The late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez once dubbed Colombia the “Israel of Latin America,” arguing it served a similar geopolitical role in the region.
Israel launched its military campaign in Gaza following a deadly raid led by the militant group Hamas in October 2023. The first independent study of casualties in Gaza, published last month, estimated the number of fatalities in the enclave at almost 84,000 by January 2025. Israel is currently pushing Palestinians to move to a “humanitarian city” that would purportedly be free of Hamas influence – which critics say is just a euphemism for a concentration camp.
Russian Cybersecurity Gains Traction in Global South and East – Deputy Foreign Minister
Sputnik – 01.06.2025
Russian cybersecurity solutions have become increasingly sought after by countries in the Global South and East amid the growing discreditation of most leading Western IT firms, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin told Sputnik.
“In the field of information and communication technologies, we possess significant capabilities — from legislation and law enforcement practices to extensive experience and developments in ensuring ‘digital sovereignty,’” he said.
According to the senior diplomat, Russian companies are offering cybersecurity solutions that are in high demand among nations in the Global South and East.
“This is largely due to the fact that many leading Western IT corporations have discredited themselves,” Vershinin noted.
He pointed out that there have been recurring revelations about Western companies ignoring the laws of the countries in which they operate, embedding hidden “backdoors” in their products — often for the benefit of intelligence agencies — and carrying out politically motivated directives from Western governments.
“All of this is, of course, being noticed by our partners in developing countries, who are increasingly leaning toward supporting our depoliticized and impartial approaches and initiatives in the ICT sphere on multilateral platforms,” he emphasized.
Nayib Bukele’s El Salvador dictatorship: Made in Israel
By Alan MACLOED | MintPress News | May 14, 2025
Nayib Bukele may be Palestinian, but the dictatorship he has built in El Salvador is very much made in Israel. From arming his security forces to supplying him with weapons and high-tech surveillance tools, MintPress explores the Israeli influence helping to prop up the man who calls himself “the world’s coolest dictator.”
Arming a Dictatorship
Since Bukele’s ascension to the presidency in 2019, Israeli exports to El Salvador have been rapidly advancing, growing at an annual rate of more than 21%. This increase consists primarily of weapons. Salvadoran forces are well supplied with Israeli hardware. The military and police use the Israeli-made Galil and ARAD 5 rifles, the Uzi submachine gun, numerous Israeli pistols, and ride in AIL Storm and Plasan Yagu armored vehicles.
Some equipment Salvadoran forces use comes free, courtesy of Israeli sources. In 2019, an Israeli NGO, the Jerusalem Foundation (a group that builds illegal settlements on Palestinian land), announced that it would donate $3 million worth of supplies to the Salvadoran police and military.
For others, however, the Bukele administration is paying top dollar, meaning that this relationship is extremely profitable for the high-tech Israeli defense sector.
In 2020, the Salvadoran police paid around $3.4 million for one year’s use of three Israeli spyware products. These tools include GEOLOC, a program that intercepts calls and texts from targeted phones, and Web Tangles, which uses individuals’ social media accounts to build up files on people, including using their photos for facial recognition. A third, Wave Guard Tracer (marketed in some regions as Guardian), tracks users’ movements through the GPS on their phone.
Perhaps the most notorious piece of spyware used, however, is Pegasus, developed by the NSO Group, an outgrowth of the Israeli Defense Forces’ Unit 8200. The app hit the headlines in 2022, when it was revealed that repressive governments the world over had used it to surveil thousands of public figures, including kings, presidents, politicians, activists, and reporters. El Salvador was one of the most heavily penetrated nations. A report from Citizen Lab found that the Bukele administration was using it to secretly monitor dozens of public figures critical of the president, including 22 journalists from the independent outlet El Faro.
Incarceration Nation
Bukele has used these Israeli tools and weapons to crack down on dissent and opposition to his rule. Since 2022, when he declared a State of Exception, suspending rights and civil liberties, he has imprisoned at least 85,000 people, a staggering figure for such a small country. Today, around 2% of the adult population — along with over 3,000 children — languish behind bars in dangerously overcrowded jails.
The most well-known of these is the Terrorism Confinement Center (Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT), which is by far and away the largest prison in world history. Built to incarcerate over 40,000 people, it is to this center that the Trump administration has been sending migrants rounded up by ICE. In a meeting with Bukele in the Oval Office, President Trump stated that U.S. nationals would be sent there next.
El Salvador holds vastly more people in prisons per capita than any other country, and conditions are among the worst in the world. Food is sparse, lights are kept on 24 hours a day, and cells are frequently packed with more than 100 occupants. Those incarcerated at CECOT are allowed no contact with the outside world, not even with their families or lawyers.
Often, the first thing a Salvadoran family hears about their disappeared relative is news that he died while incarcerated. Torture is commonplace. Osiris Luna, the director of El Salvador’s prison system, has even been sanctioned by the U.S. government for his role in “gross human rights abuses.”
Bukele has justified the mass imprisonment of his countrymen as a necessary step to break the power of organized gangs and drug cartels. Yet a significant portion of those held are his political opponents. Among those detained are union leaders, politicians, and human rights defenders.
Facing the threat of imprisonment or other punishment, El Faro has moved its operations to neighboring Costa Rica.
A Palestinian Who Loves Israel
Amid the chaos, Bukele has fired tens of thousands of public service workers and reduced taxes on the business community. He has also reoriented El Salvador’s foreign policy from a progressive, anti-imperialist stance to allying itself with right-wing governments around the world, including Israel.
Despite coming from a prominent Palestinian family that emigrated from Jerusalem in the early 20th century, throughout his political career, he has made a point of vocally supporting Israel, its culture, and its foreign policy. As far back as 2015, when he was Mayor of San Salvador, the Israeli Embassy had identified him as a “partner for cooperation.”
Three years later, in February 2018, he visited Israel on a trip organized by Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, Tzipi Hotovely, and American Jewish Congress President, Jack Rosen. There, he participated in a security conference attended by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin, and made a public appearance at the Western Wall.
El Salvador is home to a large Palestinian population; some 100,000 live in the small country. And yet, the Central American nation is far from a stronghold of support for anti-colonial struggles. Palestinians in El Salvador have generally done very well and entered society’s upper echelons. Bukele is actually the third Palestinian to become president.
Historically, the Latin American business community has sided with conservative or reactionary forces, and the Palestinian diaspora has shied away from supporting resistance movements in the Middle East.
“Bukele’s culture is not so much Palestinian as it is neo-fascist. That’s his culture. So he is going to identify with repressive governments around the world,” Roberto Lovato, a Salvadoran-American writer and professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, told MintPress News.
The country is also home to a large and active evangelical Christian community, for whom Israel’s rise is a key issue. Despite being the son of the country’s most notable imam — one who claimed his son is a practicing Muslim — Bukele has positioned himself as a Christian conservative, and his evangelical supporters say he was chosen by God to rid the nation of gang violence. “I believe in God, in Jesus Christ. I believe in His word, I believe in His word revealed in the Holy Bible,” he said.
Dirty Wars and Dirty Politics
The connections between Israel and El Salvador, however, predate Bukele by decades. During the 1970s and 1980s, the country was a hotspot in the Cold War, and U.S.-backed death squads battled the leftist FMLN rebels. The military regime killed around 75,000 civilians in a dirty war that scars the region to this day. The violence was so extreme and so well-publicized that even the United States sought to distance itself from it. Into that void stepped Israel, providing 83% of El Salvador’s military needs from 1975 to 1979, including napalm. In return, El Salvador moved its embassy to Jerusalem, legitimizing Israel’s claim to the city.
Lovato, a former member of the FMLN, told MintPress that the country was turned into a “laboratory for repression.”
During the Civil War, the U.S. government aligned a whole panoply of different practitioners of torture and mass murder. You had trainers from Taiwan, Israel, and other countries going to El Salvador to train the Salvadoran government to do what they had learned how to do.”
One of the most notable individuals who received Israeli training was Major Roberto D’Aubuisson, leader of a far-right death squad. D’Aubuisson is known to have ordered the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero. Nicknamed “Blowtorch Bob” for his penchant for using the tool on his opponents’ genitals, his death squad is thought to have killed some 30,000 people, many of whom were tortured to death. Thus, it is no stretch to say that El Salvador’s repressive state apparatus has long been sustained by Israeli money, tech, and know-how.
But this is far from an isolated example. Indeed, Israel has supplied weapons and training to repressive governments around the world, honing the skills acquired suppressing the Palestinian population and taking them global.
In Guatemala, Israel sold planes, armored personnel carriers and rifles to the military, and even built them a domestic ammunition factory. General Efraín Ríos Montt thanked Israel for its participation in a coup that brought him to power in 1982, stating that it went so smoothly “because many of our soldiers were trained by Israelis.” Around 300 Israeli advisors worked to train Ríos Montt’s forces into genocidal death squads who systematically killed over 200,000 Mayans. A sign of the deep connections between the two groups is that Ríos Montt’s men began referring to the indigenous Mayans as “Palestinians” during their attacks.
It is a similar story in Colombia, where the country’s most notorious death squads were trained by Israeli operatives, such as General Rafael Eitan. To this day, Colombian police and military make extensive use of Israeli weaponry. So normalized has the Israeli influence become in Colombian society that, in 2011, sitting President Juan Manuel Santos appeared in an advertisement for Israeli mercenary firm Global CST. “They are people with a lot of experience. They have been helping us to work better,” he stated.
Israel also armed and supported the military dictatorships of Chile and Argentina in the 1970s and 1980s, even as the latter explicitly targeted over 1,000 Jews in the largest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
In Nicaragua, Israel supplied the Somoza dictatorship, helping it carry out a dirty war. In Rwanda, it sold weapons to the Hutu government as it was carrying out a genocide against the Tutsi population. Israeli weapons were used by Serbia during the Yugoslav civil war in the 1990s. And successive administrations in Tel Aviv also helped sustain the Apartheid government of South Africa, sending it weapons and sharing intelligence with it.
Therefore, it should come as little surprise that Bukele’s administration has sought and established such close ties to the Israeli government. These weapons and techniques, honed on the Palestinian population, are going global, helping a government thousands of miles away crack down on civil liberties. While Bukele — a Palestinian — is very much in charge of El Salvador, it is clear that his dictatorship has a distinct Israeli flavor.
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The Ways of the Jewish Slave Traders
NOI RESEARCH GROUP • UNZ REVIEW • JULY 8, 2024
“As Mr. Yakub continued to preach for converts, he told his people that he would make the others work for them. (This promise came to pass.) Naturally, there are always some people around who would like to have others do their work. Those are the ones who fell for Mr. Yakub’s teaching, 100 per cent.” — The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, chapter 55 of Message to the Blackman in America titled “The Making of Devil”
“Three blessings a Jewish man is obligated to pray daily: ‘(Blessed art Thou,) Who did not make me a gentile; Who did not make me a woman; and Who did not make me a slave.’” — Babylonian Talmud, Menahot 43b–44a
The story of the Jewish American experience that most Jews want to believe, and want the world to believe, is one of almost endless historical victimhood. They insist that they fled anti-Semitic oppression in Europe, landing safely on Ellis Island long after the Civil War’s end in 1865, and certainly some did. … continue
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