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In a sign that the US is preparing for yet another evil war, Marco Rubio is now claiming that Cuba poses a “national security threat” to the United States, saying the likelihood of a peaceful agreement is “not high”.
“Cuba not only has weapons that they’ve acquired from Russia and China over the years, but they also host Russian and Chinese intelligence presence in their country — not far from where we’re standing right now,” Rubio told the press on Thursday. “So Cuba has always posed a national security threat to the United States. They, by the way, have been one of the leading sponsors of terrorism in the entire region.”
Rubio’s comments come as a US intelligence report laundered through Axios claims that Cuba may be preparing to launch a drone strike against US military forces. Havana said the Axios report misrepresents Cuba’s defensive measures as a preparation to attack, accusing the US of “fabricating pretexts, creating and spreading falsehoods, and distorting as extraordinary the logical preparation required to face a potential aggression.”
The US has also unsealed an indictment for Raul Castro, the 94 year-old brother of Fidel Castro, in a move that resembles the playbook used for the kidnapping of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro.
The excuses for military action are already being rolled out. This happens as US war machinery relocates to the Caribbean, and as Cuba flounders under a crushing US oil blockade that is already inflicting a severe humanitarian toll.
And everyone knows it’s all based on lies. You know it. I know it. Marco Rubio knows it. The war propagandists know it. The gusanos brigading social media begging for war know it. We all know it’s a sham.
Not one person sincerely believes Cuba poses a threat to the United States.
No one sincerely believes Cuba just coincidentally became an urgent menace to US national security all of a sudden right when the US began scrambling to consolidate geostrategic control in the middle east and the western hemisphere.
Nobody actually thinks that a tiny, impoverished island nation is preparing to launch a war of aggression against the United States.
This is a performance put on by warmongers and bootlickers. It insults our intelligence and robs us of dignity.
If things cool down with Iran, then it’s a safe bet they’re going in for the kill shot on Cuba. The US empire never makes peace, it just moves the crosshairs of its war machinery from nation to nation.
We see this over and over again.
Yay! The troops are leaving Afghanistan — oh, now they’re waging a proxy war in Ukraine.
Excellent, they’re deescalating against Yemen — whoa, now they’re kidnapping the president of Venezuela.
Oh hey, it looks like the mass slaughter in Gaza has slowed down — oh, now they’re going to war with Iran.
Look, they’re pulling thousands of troops out of Germany — oh, it’s so they can move them to Poland.
Hey these Iran negotiations are finally getting somewhere — ah man, now they’re invading Cuba.
Over and over and over and over again. As soon as the human butchery slows down in one place, it picks up somewhere else.
The US empire exists in a constant state of war. War is the glue that holds the empire together. If the wars stop, the empire stops.
That’s why the denizens of the empire are never allowed to vote for an end to wars. You can vote for candidates who will end abortions or trans rights or corporate regulations, but you can’t vote for a candidate who will actually end the wars. Peace is never on the ballot, because war is too critical for the functioning of the empire.
Which is why it’s so important for us all to stand against the war machine. If we can end the wars, we can end the empire. Not until then will we have a shot at building a healthy world.
___________________
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In the first hours of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, up to 175 young children and school staff were blown to pieces at an elementary school. Others were maimed and burned, and will be suffering from their injuries for the rest of their lives. Even any comparatively fortunate ones with minimal injuries will surely experience permanent trauma from having witnessed something so horrific. Witnesses describe scenes of unfathomable horror, with limbs and blood strewn across classrooms. "People were pulling out children's arms and legs. People were pulling out severed heads," said a woman whose child was killed. The Guardian cites verified videos that show "children's bodies lying partly buried under the debris":
In one video, a very small child's severed arm is pulled from the rubble. Colourful backpacks covered with blood and concrete dust sit among the ruins. One girl wears a green dress with gingham patches on her pockets and the collar, her form partly obscured by a black body bag. Screams can be heard in the background.
Drop Site News spoke to the father of a six-year-old girl, Sara Shariatmadar, who was killed in the attack. "I cannot understand how a place where innocent children learn can be bombed like this," he said. "We are talking about small children who knew nothing of politics or wars. And yet they are the ones paying the highest price."
The United States and Israel have not denied responsibility for the attack, although it is still unclear which country fired the missile. The U.S. said that it does not "target" schools, which does not mean that it does not bomb them. ("We take these reports seriously," a spokesman said.) Israel's spokesperson said the government was not "aware" of such an attack, which does not mean its military did not carry one out. Photos supposedly showing that a misfired Iranian missile caused it were debunked, although they spread widely online among Americans and Israelis desperate to believe that only the Bad Guys do things like this.
Domestic coverage of this horrible crime against humanity has been muted. U.S. media has a policy of not showing gruesome images of violence---the Guardian explicitly stated that it was concealing the photos and videos it had "due to their graphic nature." As a result, war is always sanitized, so that Americans can read that 150+ schoolgirls were killed without having to confront the full horror of what it means for their country to drive a missile into a crowded school in the middle of the day. (Saturday is a school day in Iran, a fact that the U.S. government would easily have been able to know when deciding how to time its attacks, but Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has been open about the fact that he regards such niceties as rules of engagement and international law as meddlesome hindrances that can be ignored, lambasting those who "wring their hands and clutch their pearls, hemming and hawing about the use of force.")
I suspect that this attack is also difficult for U.S. media to cover because the basic facts of the situation are so twisted, so depraved, so evil, that they shatter the comforting narrative that the U.S. has the moral high ground over the Ayatollah. In fact, the U.S. government is on the moral level of the Sandy Hook school shooter, a fact that even president Trump's critics may have a hard time fully accepting.
And this was not the only massacre carried out by the U.S. and Israel in a war that has been going on just a few days. The Human Rights Activists News Agency reports that there have already been over 1,000 civilian deaths in Iran, including 181 children under the age of ten, with thousands more civilians injured. Drop Site reports on the nauseating scene in a middle-class Tehran neighborhood following a "double tap" strike (dropping one bomb first, and then dropping another on the survivors and emergency responders, a favorite war crime of the U.S. and Israel). Warning, the following description is extremely graphic and may undermine any love you may have for your country:
Videos of the immediate aftermath of the attack showed several individuals dead and wounded as well as massive destruction on the street outside. In Cafe Ahla, next to the square, blood and debris soaked the floors. Several patrons who had been sitting there when the attack struck could be seen dead on the floor or with their mutilated bodies still sprawled across their seats. "We were sitting here around 8:00-8:30 p.m. and suddenly there was the noise and explosion. We got up and a few people ran away. We turned around to get our belongings and we saw that blood was spraying everywhere. Someone's hand had fallen on the floor, a head had fallen on the floor," said Shahin, a witness who had been at the cafe and asked to be identified by first name only. "There were scalps torn off, hands severed, a few people were laying here all cut up and two people were martyred."
I will get to the many ways in which the Iran war is illegal, making us less safe, founded on lies, strategically insane, unbelievably costly, etc. But let us dwell for a moment on what we are doing to these people. The right-wing Telegraph newspaper reports that in Tehran, "millions of civilians are trapped under relentless bombardment as food and medical supplies dwindle and the death toll mounts," and the city is an "'apocalypse' of hospitals in flames and children buried beneath rubble." The paper records a total humanitarian disaster, with sick people lacking medicine, children going hungry, diabetics running out of insulin, and the repeated bombing of residential areas. While Americans pat themselves on the back for assassinating Iran's repressive head of state, everyday Iranians (even those with little love for their theocratic government) are facing the prospect of being killed at any moment, or watching their children be ripped to pieces. I realize that in the U.S., the devaluation of Middle Eastern lives means that little Iranian girls will receive a fraction of the compassion and concern that has arisen around, say, Nancy Guthrie. But if we apply our morality consistently, I cannot see how we can be anything other than completely revolted by the carnage our president is choosing to inflict (and will apparently soon be further escalating, according to Marco Rubio, who is promising an increased use of force to come, and Pete Hegseth, who is salivating about delivering "death and destruction all day long").
We are all complicit. If you are an American, you paid your government to murder those little girls and those Tehran cafe-goers. Money was withdrawn from your paycheck in the form of federal income taxes. If the attack was conducted with a Tomahawk missile (of which 400 were fired in 72 hours), that money would have been paid to the RTX Corporation (formerly Raytheon). Each missile fired costs somewhere between $1.3 million and $2.2 million, of which approximately $200,000 would be pure profit. Thus the killing of the Iranian schoolgirls, which left their bloody backpacks and tiny severed limbs scattered across classroom floors, transferred hundreds of thousands of dollars from us (the American taxpayers) into RTX's bank accounts. It also boosted the GDP. And the stock market.
Stock price of RTX (formerly Raytheon)
It is hard for me to write about this war, because I am so sickened every time I contemplate the full dark reality of the country I live in. I realize that not only are there people who will drop a bomb on a school without losing a wink of sleep, but there are people who get rich when we bomb schools, who have a direct financial stake in ensuring we keep dropping as many bombs as possible. (And that's just the weapons companies. Others are getting rich from betting on the atrocities on prediction markets.) The fact that many Congressional Democrats implicitly or explicitly supported this war (whether by outright goading Trump into it, as Chuck Schumer did, dragging their feet on opposing it, or raising meek procedural objections) further adds to my disgust. Many Democrats apparently declined to try to stop the war, reasoning that if it achieved U.S. foreign policy goals it would be embarrassing to have opposed it, but if it went south Trump would own it anyway. When I open the New York Times op-ed page, and I find resident foreign policy guru Thomas Friedman cautioning against adopting any "black and white narrative" about what goes on in "a complicated, kaleidoscopic region," I want to vomit. The moment calls for moral clarity: our country is engaged in a mass murder campaign. It must be stopped. It is depressing to see so many debates around strategic end-goals, congressional authorization, or the consistency of the justifications. They take us away from the basic fact that our president, with the blessing of his party and many members of the so-called opposition, is gruesomely murdering children by the dozen. Every day this continues, we are paying our government to commit some of the worst crimes humans are capable of.
Of course, the war is also based on a pack of lies. The Trump administration can't even get its story straight on why the war is being waged and has produced no justification beyond vague invocations of National Security. (Trump says Iran was a "bad seed.") Some Republicans won't even admit that this is a war. (Perhaps they might want to borrow a phrase from Vladimir Putin: "special military operation.") House Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to have it both ways, saying that while the Iranians "have declared war on us," we're "not at war right now." Others are tying themselves in pretzels trying to explain how this differs from the "regime change" wars that Trump has so vocally opposed. (Pete Hegseth: "This is not a so-called 'regime change war.' But the regime sure did change.") Sometimes there are direct self-contradictions within a single sentence, as with Tom Cotton declaring that "Iran has been an imminent threat to the United States for 47 years." This was too much for right-wing commentator Matt Walsh, who accused Republicans of "gaslighting" for suddenly discovering that Iran has been waging a half-century of war against the U.S. Even leading Iraq war hawk Bill Kristol is confused about the reasoning behind the war, saying there is "no coherent rationale." (Of course, Kristol's own favorite Middle East war was equally illegitimate, but that's an argument for another day.)
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. attacked because it knew Israel was going to attack, and needed to defend itself against the inevitable Iranian retaliation for Israel's attack---perhaps the most tortured and unpersuasive case for self-defense ever made. Perhaps because this seemed like an admission that Israeli choices dictate U.S. policy, Trump subsequently denied that Israeli decision-making had anything to do with the attack, although it's clear that Benjamin Netanyahu lobbied heavily for this, as he has been salivating at the prospect of a major war with Iran for decades, and has been scheming for a way to get the U.S. involved.
The idea that Iran was a threat to the United States was always laughable. U.S. intelligence has consistently assessed that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon. The Trump administration itself declared that it had destroyed Iran's nuclear program with last year's bombings. Iran has in fact consistently shown itself very reluctant to engage in military confrontation with the U.S., often carefully limiting its retaliation after U.S. provocations. To the extent that Iran did want to become a nuclear threshold state, with at least the capacity to pursue a weapons program if it wanted to, credible analysts believe that Iran mainly wanted an insurance policy against potential U.S. and Israeli attacks. North Korea has shown that the possession of nuclear weapons is enough to make the U.S. think twice about forcible regime change, and there is a good argument that it would have been rational for Iran to pursue nuclear weapons for the sake of its own self-protection. As Israeli military historian Martin Van Creveld observed, the world "witnessed how the United States attacked Iraq for, as it turned out, no reason at all. Had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy." (Van Creveld is wrong that Iraq was attacked for "no reason," however. It was attacked for the same reason Iran is being attacked: the establishment of U.S.-Israeli dominance over the Middle East.) While U.S. commentators often talk as if Iran would pursue nuclear weapons mainly in order to destroy the U.S. or Israel (which would, of course, be suicidal given both countries' superior nuclear forces), there's no evidence that Iran would want nuclear weapons for any reason beyond deterring potential external attacks. (A fear that recent events have proven to be well-founded.)
In fact, the entire prevailing narrative about Iran is completely backwards. It's the U.S. that has been a threat to Iran, not the other way around. It was the United States and Britain that overthrew Iran's legitimately elected leader, Mohammad Mosaddegh, in 1953. (The New York Times was elated by the coup, commenting that "underdeveloped countries with rich resources now have an object lesson in the heavy cost that must be paid by one of their number which goes berserk with fanatical nationalism.") Since 1979, when the Iranians ousted the dictator (the Shah) that the U.S. had helped install and maintain in power, the U.S. has had a virtually unremittingly hostile attitude toward Iran. This is not because of the government's (very real) human rights abuses, since the U.S. is happy to support human rights abusing states that are pliant and servile (see, e.g., Saudi Arabia and Egypt). But Iran is viewed as a threat to U.S. dominance in the Middle East. Thus, in the 1980s, the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein as he waged a ruthless war of aggression against Iran, killing hundreds of thousands of Iranians including with chemical weapons. (The U.S. concealed evidence of Hussein's chemical weapon use from the UN, because it wanted him to go on killing Iranians.) More recently, the U.S. and Israel have tried to destabilize the country through devastating cyberattacks, economy-wrecking sanctions, and assassinations. The sanctions have been explicitly aimed at harming civilians, with Mike Pompeo boasting in 2019 that "things are much worse for the Iranian people" thanks to sanctions and hoping that their suffering would lead them to overthrow their government.
Importantly, while U.S. policymakers in both the Republican and Democratic parties constantly affirm that "Iran must not be allowed to have nuclear weapons," they rarely state their implicit corollary to this proposition, which is that Israel must be allowed to have nuclear weapons. As it happens, Iran actually agrees that it shouldn't be allowed to have nukes, and has long supported turning the entire Middle East into an official nuclear weapons free zone, much as Africa and Latin America have done. The problem is that the U.S. and Israel demand a double standard, with Israel refusing to contemplate giving up its nuclear weapons. The entire nuclear disagreement, then, is not about whether Iran should have nuclear weapons, but about whether Iran should hold itself to a different standard to Israel. (Amusingly, Chuck Schumer recently accidentally declared that "no one wants a nuclear Israel," and had to correct himself, because he does want a nuclear Israel.)
Anyone who values human life should treat war as an absolute last resort, to be engaged in only once every diplomatic option has been exhausted. In this case, it was the Trump administration that sabotaged diplomacy. First, even though asking Iran not to pursue nuclear weapons means imposing an unfair double standard that imperils Iran's national security, Iran had agreed under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to severely constrain its development of nuclear technology, and agreed to a detailed monitoring and compliance regime. It was confirmed to be adhering to that agreement until Donald Trump ripped it up in 2018, subsequently criticizing Iran for failing to adhere to the agreement that he himself had destroyed. Joe Biden declined to pursue the revival of that agreement, even though Iran signaled that it was open to it. But to this day, Iran has shown that it is willing to consider even highly unfavorable agreements in order to avoid war---it has never shown any sign of launching an unprovoked strike, only deploying military action in response to violence by others, such as an Israeli attack on its embassy or the assassination of its allies' leaders.
Iran has long wanted to keep a war with the U.S. from breaking out, which is why its responses to U.S. and Israeli attacks have previously been notably measured and cautious. (This time around, Iran reasons that unless it inflicts major damage, it will be perceived as weak and attacked further, since previous restraint only encouraged the U.S. and Israel to press their advantage.) Diplomatic talks between the U.S. and Iran were ongoing, and Oman, mediating talks, saw "the most promising diplomatic opening in years" and thought "diplomacy was producing tangible results and that a negotiated settlement was imminent." The U.S. and Israel decided to sabotage diplomacy and assassinate the Iranian head of state, possibly because they felt they just couldn't forgo the opportunity to kill as many high-ranking Iranians as possible in one fell swoop. (They killed so many Iranian government officials that Donald Trump admitted the U.S. had killed all of the people who had been considered likely candidates to take Khamenei's place.) Iran professed itself baffled as to why the U.S. attacked. "I do not know why the U.S. administration insists on beginning a negotiation with Iran and then attacking Iran in the middle of talks," said the country's foreign minister. He told NBC: "We were able to address serious questions related to Iran's nuclear program. We obviously have differences, but we resolved some of those differences, and we decided to continue in order to resolve the rest of [the] questions."
Because mass civilian casualties are a predictable consequence of intense airstrikes, to choose to unnecessarily end diplomatic engagement and start bombing is unconscionable depravity. But it's clear that the Trump administration didn't really care whether Iran was genuinely willing to engage in diplomacy, because Trump's position is that Iran should simply do what we say, period. There is nothing to negotiate, because for Trump, the only choice is whether a country is willing to comply with U.S. demands, or whether we will have to use force to ensure their compliance.
I haven't even gotten to the illegality of the war. Leaving aside the ridiculous Republican denials that this is a war (if a country assassinated our head of state and bombed our cities, would anyone doubt that they were waging war?), it's plain that all of this is unconstitutional. The Constitution vests the power to declare war in Congress, not the president. Congress didn't declare war, therefore the war is illegal. Case closed. I know presidents have stretched their powers as far as possible (Obama's drone strikes, etc.) but if a president has the power to wage a relentless bombing and assassination campaign without Congressional approval, the Constitution simply ceases to mean anything. Congress has plainly failed in its responsibility to ensure that Trump complies with the Constitution, but the failure of our politicians to enforce the law doesn't change what it says.
Of course, it virtually goes without saying that the war violates international law. The UN Charter prohibits the use of force (or even the threat of force) except in response to an armed attack. Iran had not attacked the U.S., nor was there any evidence Iran was going to attack the U.S. Propagandists assert that Iran (and its "proxies") have killed "hundreds" of Americans over the years, but they decline to specify who these Americans are or discuss the Iranians killed by the U.S. and our own "proxies." There's no real point discussing international law, because Trump has made it clear he simply doesn't care about it, saying he doesn't need it and is unconstrained by it. Unfortunately, other countries have been just as pathetically weak as members of the U.S. Congress, with countries like Britain and France issuing statements that were de facto supportive of the assassination of a foreign head of state. (Canada issued a supportive statement and then appeared to regret it after noticing that letting the U.S. and Israel tear up the last vestiges of international law might be unwise.) Germany's chancellor has even made the stunning statement that Iran shouldn't be protected by international law, waving away the obvious illegality of the attacks by saying that "now is not the time to lecture our partners and allies." The killing of a head of state is a major crime, the normalization of which would open a horrible Pandora's box of lawless state action, and the world should be unified in condemning U.S.-Israeli lawlessness, but even among the Arab states there is a reluctance to antagonize the U.S.
None of the long-term consequences of this war will be good. The Trump administration does not appear to have any kind of strategic plan for what will happen next in Iran. (Lindsey Graham says it's "not [Trump's] job" to have a plan for what happens to the country's government next.) We could see the country's collapse into civil war, Libya-style. (Obama adviser Ben Rhodes recently admitted that Obama's decision to topple Libya's dictator without a plan for the country was a major error.) We could simply see the hard-line theocrats be replaced by more hard-line theocrats who are more convinced than ever that there can be no negotiating with the U.S., that the only language this country understands is force, and that the best thing for Iran's safety would be for it to obtain a nuclear weapon as quickly as possible. What we are unlikely to see is a pro-American government emerging, and this war puts Americans everywhere in considerable danger. (Ask yourself: if what happened to Sara Shariatmadar happened to someone you love, would you see the country that carried out the bombing as a liberator? Or would you want revenge?) Although plenty of Iranians are justly celebrating the end of the Ayatollah's rule, like the Iraqis who celebrated in 2003, they will soon find out that the U.S. has no interest in their well-being, and will happily watch their country slide into civil war if this serves America's perceived "national security" interest.
Six Americans have already died in addition to the 1,000 Iranians. Because this is a war of choice, totally unnecessary and unjustifiable, their blood is on Donald Trump's hands, and he (as well as Congress) should be treated no differently than we would treat someone who murdered these Americans with their bare hands. But the costs to this country are only just beginning. Of course, if you're an RTX shareholder this may be a bonanza, but the rest of us are likely to see major economic disruption, in addition to all the resources that are put into the production of weapons. Eisenhower famously tried to warn Americans that war spending is an act of "theft" from the public, because it's money not spent on schools and hospitals, and the "opportunity cost" is therefore enormous. But Eisenhower's warning has largely been ignored.
Worse, as Abby Martin notes in the terrifying and important new film Earth's Greatest Enemy, military action has catastrophic climate consequences, since the U.S. war machine is the world's biggest polluter and the carbon emissions of our vast, brutal empire are driving us toward ever-worsening climate catastrophe. Unfortunately, that's just fine with some in the administration and the military---terrifying recent reporting suggests that some evangelical Christian officers are celebrating the war as hastening the apocalypse, claiming Trump was "anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth." These people would sacrifice the rest of us to the inferno to fulfill their delusional prophecies.
Of course, the war reveals that Trump and his coterie were complete frauds when they pledged to keep the U.S. out of senseless Middle East wars. Trump fooled a lot of people with this stuff, although hopefully their illusions will now be hard to maintain. (Former hardcore MAGA types like Alex Jones and Nick Fuentes are now admitting they were duped.) If there is one silver lining here, amid all of the horror, it is that because this war is deeply unpopular and Trump has no idea how to deal with its consequences, perhaps we will finally see the MAGA movement collapse politically. Trump's approval rating was already in the toilet, and while I sadly have no illusions that public opinion will be especially moved by the bombing of a school, when the fallout in cost, lives, and global chaos begins to come home, perhaps Americans will turn once and for good against their warmongering president.
But it is hard for me to think hopefully right now, as I see pictures of the remnants of former schoolchildren, schoolchildren whose lives were brutally extinguished with the help of my tax dollars. All I can feel is horror and rage at the sociopaths willing to do such things, who claim to want peace while ensuring that humanity will be consigned to a future of endless, senseless conflict.
PHOTO: Graves being dug for the elementary school girls killed in the bombing of the Minab school. Iran Foreign Ministry.
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U.S. intelligence raises fears of civil unrest and state breakdown in Israel ahead of October 27 elections.
The post CIA report warns Israel could head toward civil war, total collapse appeared first on MR Online.
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Senator Says Hegseth Barred Him From Gulf Base to 'Cover Up the True Cost' of Iran War
(www.commondreams.org)
A US senator visiting the Persian Gulf said Tuesday that the Pentagon blocked him from inspecting a heavily damaged American military installation and refused to arrange a briefing on the Iran War, accusing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth of mounting an "unprecedented" effort to conceal the conflict's costs and consequences from lawmakers and the public.
“This trip confirmed for me that there is an active, unprecedented, unconstitutional effort underway to hide the costs of this war and the implications of this war from Congress and the American people,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told reporters Tuesday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Murphy said he sought to inspect Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the largest US military installation in the Middle East and a crucial hub for American operations in the region. The base was struck by Iranian missiles during the opening days of the war and sustained heavy damage, including a direct hit to its Combined Air Operations Center.
“I've never encountered anything like this in my time in the Senate,” the senator said, describing the Pentagon's actions as “part of a deliberate campaign of obfuscation that my Republican colleagues in Congress should demand an end to."
"We appropriate the money for that military action, and it is an ordinary function of members of Congress to travel around the world and talk to our generals and to our troops about military activities, especially during a time of war," Murphy continued.
"Adding insult to injury, the Department of Defense, under orders from [Defense Secretary] Pete Hegseth, even denied me access to talk to military leadership," he alleged. "They would not provide me even a briefing at the [US] Embassy."
According to Murphy:
Never before has this happened. Never before has a member of Congress been denied access to military facilities and been refused briefings by generals in theater. And from what I understand, this is happening both to Democrats and Republicans when they are traveling to the Middle East.
So just understand what this is: This is Secretary Hegseth deliberately trying to cover up the extent of damage, likely in the billions of dollars, trying to cover up the true cost of this war, trying to hide from you, from the American public, not just from members of Congress, the actual consequences of a war that is spiraling out of control by the day.
"This should be unacceptable to every member of Congress—Republicans and Democrats—and this should be unacceptable to the American public," he added.
The Pentagon defended the decision, saying the senator's office had been informed before his trip that the department would not support his access to Al Udeid. A senior Pentagon official cited a March 3 directive issued by Hegseth restricting travel to the region.
The dispute comes as the Trump administration faces mounting scrutiny over the increasingly protracted war's human and financial costs.
The illegal US-Israeli war of choice has cost the lives of thousands of Iranians, dozens of citizens and residents of Gulf states, and more than 20 US troops.
The 220-day war has already cost US taxpayers more than $40 billion, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. It has driven up gasoline and energy prices, transportation and food costs, and is having broader inflationary effects caused largely by the disruption to global oil supplies and shipping.
Last week, President Donald Trump ordered the deployment of thousands more troops and another aircraft carrier to the Middle East.
"You know, by the way, we’re kicking Iran’s ass. You do know that, right? And that’ll end soon," the president told a Nebraska rally during a Monday speech in which he suggested he wouldn't mind Iran bombing California cities. "It’s gonna end one way or the other. It’s gonna end very soon.”
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U.S. intelligence raises fears of civil unrest and state breakdown in Israel ahead of October 27 elections.
The post CIA report warns Israel could head toward civil war, total collapse appeared first on MR Online.
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Keeping federal protections in place is our first line of defense against trophy hunting and recreational trapping, and our members of Congress and officials at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service must hear that message from us.
The post Removing federal protections for wolves would be catastrophic appeared first on MR Online.
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A Few Days of Protest Will Not Stop the Capitalist Steamroller! Against All Imperialist Wars: Class Struggle!
(leftcom.org)
Regions:
History:
Facts:
Workers' conditions and struggles
Publications:
(Flyers distributed by the ICT during the recent public sector strike in France and demonstrations on the third anniversary of 7 October in Italy.) · A few days of protest will not stop the capitalist steamroller! The only response to the degradation of our living conditions is the autonomous and organised struggle of the proletariat! · We have been warned.
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Faced with thousands on the streets Premier Sanchez’s attempt to placate widespread unrest over the housing crisis were sunk by a right-wing coalition. As John Rees explains, the political balance in Spain is at a critical stage.
The post Mass protests topples Spanish government, new election called appeared first on MR Online.
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Deepening anger over crumbling facilities, staff shortages, and police heavy-handedness drives nationwide classroom blockades.
The post Student protests sweep France over school underfunding appeared first on MR Online.
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Keeping federal protections in place is our first line of defense against trophy hunting and recreational trapping, and our members of Congress and officials at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service must hear that message from us.
The post Removing federal protections for wolves would be catastrophic appeared first on MR Online.
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He Confessed to an Afghanistan War Murder. The U.S. Military Promptly Closed the Case.
(theintercept.com)
In the spring of 2023, on a partly sunny day where the temperature flirted with 70 degrees, an Army veteran of the Afghanistan War walked into the unique Prairie-style police headquarters in Banning, California. In a private room in the detective bureau, the former specialist, who served with the storied 82nd Airborne Division, sat down with a special agent from the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division — better known as CID — to make a confession.
The veteran had served with roughly 20 mortarmen and scouts from a platoon in the 2nd Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment assigned to Combat Outpost Ware in Afghanistan’s Arghandab River Valley in 2010. A lush land of grape groves and pomegranate orchards, towering sunflowers and marijuana plants, the Arghandab was crisscrossed by canals and was a flashpoint in Kandahar Province, the spiritual homeland of Afghanistan’s once and future rulers, the Taliban.
The soldiers from the 82nd Airborne played a cat-and-mouse game with the Taliban. America’s official policy was counterinsurgency, or COIN: a re-tread of a failed strategy of the Vietnam War that promised a kinder, gentler brand of warfare aimed at winning Afghan hearts and minds. But in the Arghandab Valley, the COIN of the realm was kinetic.
The Taliban seeded the orchards with improvised explosive devices set off by a foot on a pressure plate, a boot on a tripwire, or Taliban hands gripping a remote control. The Americans countered with overwhelming firepower: attack helicopters, armored gun trucks, and infantrymen toting M4 carbines. It was a “rough time for the unit,” another veteran of the platoon remembered. They saw a great deal of “contact,” engaging the Taliban more times than another unit member could recall.
But the former mortarman in Banning had come to talk about one particular incident that, more than a decade later, he could not forget.
The CID agent gave the veteran a “cleansing waiver of rights” to read and sign. It advised the veteran that he had the right to remain silent, that any statement he made could be used against him at trial, and that he was providing testimony “freely and voluntarily.” The veteran waived his rights and signed the document on March 28, 2023 at 1:31 p.m. He acknowledged, according to exclusive criminal investigation documents obtained by The Intercept, that he killed an unarmed man and wounded a woman. More than that, he said that he “needed to be held accountable for his actions.” He told CID that he had “committed a war crime.”
A U.S. medical helicopter arrives to evacuate a soldier from the 1-320th Alpha Battery, 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division, in Arghandab Valley, Kandahar, Afghanistan, on July 30, 2010. Photo: Rodrigo Abd/AP File
Twenty-five years ago, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, an angry America went to war in Afghanistan. The conflict would become, by some counts, the longest in U.S. history, stretching across four presidential administrations. It ended where it started, with the Taliban in control of the country after a crushing 2021 defeat for the U.S. and the Afghan allies it propped up for two decades.
The U.S. lost around 2,400 troops in Afghanistan at a staggering cost of around $2.3 trillion. Afghans suffered far worse. In October 2001, President George W. Bush announced that “the oppressed people of Afghanistan will know the generosity of America.” But from almost the opening American salvo, they began dying at U.S. hands.
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During just the first five months of the conflict, there were no fewer than 136 media reports of U.S. attacks that killed between 1,200 and 3,155 civilians. Year after year, U.S. and coalition airstrikes killed Afghans – sometimes scores of civilians, sometimes hundreds. The deaths continued to the war’s final moments when an August 2021 drone strike targeting a suspected terrorist in the country’s capital, Kabul, instead killed 10 civilians, seven of them children. More than 70,000 Afghan and Pakistani civilians are estimated to have died as a direct result of the war, according to Brown University’s Costs of War project.
While the carnage of the American air war garnered the biggest headlines, Afghans were also gunned down, again and again, by U.S. ground troops. Following a 2007 ambush, Marines killed 19 civilians and wounded 50. An initial investigation found the Marines used excessive force when they killed civilians after a suicide bombing. Later, the Americans were recast as victims. In 2010, a “kill team” from the Army’s 5th Stryker Brigade slew at least three civilians over four months and mutilated the dead for war trophies. Eleven of the 12 soldiers charged were convicted of crimes, but most were released from prison by the mid-2010s. Staff Sgt. Robert Bales massacred 16 Afghan civilians in 2012. A Special Forces A-Team was accused of killing close to 20 civilians in 2012 and 2013. The remains of 10 victims were later found buried outside their base. A U.S. investigation exonerated the Americans of any wrongdoing. Only one man was punished: Zikria Kandahari, the unit’s Afghan interpreter.
Pete Hegseth, now the self-styled Secretary of War, served with the Army National Guard in Afghanistan during that era. In Trump’s first term, when he was a Fox News personality, Hegseth lobbied on behalf of three men who were convicted or facing charges related to war crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Trump intervened in all three cases, granting two pardons and reversing a demotion.
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During his confirmation hearing last year, Hegseth complained that “restrictive” rules of engagement had “difficult to actually do your job on the battlefield,” repeatedly recalling his own service. “I was the senior counter-insurgency instructor in Afghanistan. My job was to understand how the Taliban and Al Qaeda operated,” he explained. “They knew our rules of engagement, and when they were more restrictive, they took advantage of them.” He continued: “We don’t need burdensome rules of engagement that make it impossible for us to win these wars.”
But what the veteran in Banning described to CID agents was anything but burdensome.
In April or May — he couldn’t recall which — of 2010, that veteran said he was carrying an M4 carbine as his unit moved about 3 kilometers into the Arghandab and occupied an abandoned building at the edge of a village. When the Americans were attacked, they returned fire, killing a couple Taliban members.
The unit readied themselves, expecting the Taliban to regroup and mount another assault. The Americans intercepted a radio transmission. A translator told them that a single male militant on a motorcycle, transporting rocket-propelled grenades, was headed toward them, according to the documents. The unit’s chain of command authorized the use of force.
When a motorcycle rider came into view, a sniper took aim and fired off one round. He missed.
The respite for the motorcycle man was short-lived, however. About 500 feet away, close to 20 Americans raised their rifles.
An M4 carbine — a magazine-fed, gas-operated, air-cooled, shoulder-fired weapon — shoots lightweight bullets at extremely high speeds. In the spring of 2010, M855 5.56-mm bullets were de rigueur for U.S. forces. Fast with low mass, the rounds produce a tremendous amount of kinetic energy. When they slam into a human body, that energy is transmitted to the soft tissue of the victim creating a “wound channel” that causes massive blood loss.
The Banning mortarman fired off one round. Others from the unit opened up, too.
The motorcycle man never reached his destination. If someone was waiting for him to arrive on that spring day in 2010, they still are.
The Banning veteran and others walked up to the Afghan man and “witnessed a military aged male deceased with multiple gunshot wounds to the face and other areas of his body,” wrote the CID special agent, transcribing the mortarman’s testimony. “No RPG’s were present.”
Nobody knew how many rounds hit him, but the damage to the Afghan man’s body was so extensive that he was “unidentifiable,” according to another witness. The mutilation was so devastating that the Americans were unable to even collect his “biometrics”: fingerprints, iris scans, facial images.
The dead man, said the veteran, wasn’t alone. There was a wounded woman, too. He told the CID agent that the “woman was crawling on the ground.” There may also have been a baby or child present as well — CID’s redactions make it impossible to know for certain.
After the veteran made his confession, in late March 2023, Army criminal investigators started consulting U.S. sources. Despite detailed unit records for more than 100 notable incidents in April and May 2010, an Army historian could locate none for the killing of the motorcycle man.
When CID began interviewing unit members, the company commander — by then a lieutenant colonel — said the incident did not sound familiar to him. The unit’s first sergeant told CID that while he saw most “troops in contact” reports, he didn’t recollect the incident. He acknowledged that the details “sounded plausible.”
Others recalled the incident in detail but excused it. One soldier who never saw the motorcycle man before he was killed said, for example, that it “sounded like” the man handed off the RPG to someone before he was shot. Another former specialist — who by 2023 was a warrant officer — told CID that unit members “fired on the military age male on the motorcycle.” He also recalled that “a woman was on the motorcycle,” too. He told the Army investigators that it was “unfortunate that no RPGs were present” but believed “the incident was handled properly” since “they were authorized to fire from their command team.”
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Having never even attempted to identify the Afghan man, the woman on the scene, or the possible child; having never sought out any evidence beyond the testimony of members of the unit; and despite a signed, sworn confession by one of the shooters, Army CID concluded — within six weeks — that there was not “probable cause to believe that any soldier committed the offense of murder.”
CID refused to make the special agent in charge of the case available for an interview. “Unfortunately, we are unable to support your request to interview DACID personnel involved,” Special Agent Mark Lunardi told The Intercept, before leaving his job. More than a year ago, after multiple follow-up requests for information, Thomas Hamilton of CID’s press office wrote: “I will get back to you as soon as I can.” He has, despite repeated follow-ups, failed to respond.
Soldiers from the 1-320th Alpha Battery, 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division, patrol near COP Nolen, in the Arghandab Valley, Kandahar, Afghanistan, on July 26, 2010. Photo: Rodrigo Abd/AP File
For more than a century, the U.S. military has shown a consistent disregard for civilian lives. It has repeatedly cast or misidentified ordinary people as enemies; failed to investigate civilian harm allegations; excused casualties as regrettable but unavoidable; and failed to prevent their recurrence or to hold troops accountable.
A 2020 study of post-9/11 civilian casualty incidents found most have gone uninvestigated. When they did come under official scrutiny, the “military too often relies solely on its internal records and sources —which can be flawed and incomplete — to assess civilian harm,” the Center for Civilians in Conflict and Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute reported.
“There were probably hundreds of incidents that were just like it that we’ll never know about.”
These findings were bolstered by the groundbreaking work of the podcast “In the Dark.” Their 2024 investigation — a corollary to a reexamination of the 2005 killings of civilians in Haditha, Iraq — found U.S. troops had committed 781 possible war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq that the U.S. military actually investigated. In at least 65 percent of cases analyzed by “In The Dark,” investigators didn’t believe that a crime had taken place — even in cases where perpetrators had, like the Banning veteran, confessed. The 2010 killing of the Afghan motorcycle man is, however, not one of the cases in their database.
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In the 151 cases in which investigators found probable cause that a crime had occurred, that the rules of engagement had been violated, or that a use of force hadn’t been justified, true accountability was rare. While 572 alleged perpetrators were involved in these cases, only 130 were convicted; the records show they rarely received significant prison terms. Much more often, their cases were dealt with by commanders with broad discretion to punish their troops with extra duty, demotions, or reprimands, in lieu of formal prosecutions. Fewer than 1 in 5 perpetrators, investigators found, appeared to have been sentenced to any type of confinement. The median sentence was just eight months.
Todd Huntley, an active-duty Judge Advocate for more than 23 years who deployed to Afghanistan twice with a Joint Special Operations Task Force, believes killings like the one described by the Banning veteran were a common occurrence. “There were probably hundreds of incidents that were just like it that we’ll never know about,” he told The Intercept. A current government official, who was involved in the wars in the Greater Middle East, said the total could reach into the thousands.
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The 9/11 Wars -------------](/collections/the-911-wars/)
Since taking the helm of the Pentagon last year, Hegseth has launched overlapping efforts to weaken transparency, scuttle accountability, hobble military justice, and undercut protections for civilians in conflict zones — from replacing the Pentagon press corps with pro-administration sycophants, and firing the top legal authorities of the Army and the Air Force, to pursuing changes that would encourage lawyers to approve more aggressive tactics and take a more lenient approach to those who violate the laws of war.
The Intercept has previously reported on Hegseth’s gutting of civilian harm mitigation and response efforts. In late April, Hegseth repeatedly dismissed congressional concerns about civilian harm and respect for the laws of war in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee. “The Department of War fights to win,” Hegsethreplied when asked if he stood by his statement that the U.S. would afford enemies “no quarter” — a war crime. A recent report by the Pentagon’s top watchdog says cuts to civilian harm mitigation and response efforts have been so severe under Hegseth that the United States cannot adequately protect civilians in conflict zones. This was driven home at the outset of the Iran war when the U.S. attacked the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school, killing more than 150 people, most of them children.
The CID records of the motorcycle man investigation are redacted in ways that make it impossible to ascertain key facts about additional civilian harm. “An [REDACTED] woman was on the motorcycle with the military aged male and [REDACTED] from the engagement,” according to the summary of a statement by one unit member. The Banning veteran also “stated he [REDACTED] an unarmed [REDACTED] woman during his deployment.”
The redactions also prevented The Intercept from identifying the veteran and fellow unit members to gather additional information. “If it wasn’t for the soldier involved coming forward, this incident would never have come to light,” Huntley, now the director of the National Security Law Program at Georgetown University Law Center, told The Intercept. “The 13-year delay in reporting made any investigation difficult as others involved couldn’t remember details and the redactions in the report make it impossible to learn anything else about the incident.”
Only one member of the unit contacted by The Intercept agreed to speak about the incident. The veteran acknowledged, on background, that the incident occurred, but would not say if he was one of those interviewed by CID.
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Still, the case of the motorcycle man offers a stark counter-narrative to Hegseth’s assertions about the war on terror — and the basis for his efforts to undermine protections for civilians today.
The rules of engagement in Afghanistan in 2010 were so lax that a man was killed for no reason and with no repercussions.
It was so unremarkable that no record of the engagement could be located. It was so commonplace that senior unit members couldn’t recall it.
It was so typical that only one man even thought to report it — and he waited 13 years.
It was so characteristic of U.S. military policy that no inquiry was conducted into the rules of engagement in force at the time.
And the incident was so in keeping with U.S. military tradition that, despite a murder confession and little question that an unarmed man was gunned down, Army CID and the 82nd Airborne’s chief of military justice quickly concluded there was no probable cause for charges, and the investigation was closed.
The post He Confessed to an Afghanistan War Murder. The U.S. Military Promptly Closed the Case. appeared first on The Intercept.
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Deepening anger over crumbling facilities, staff shortages, and police heavy-handedness drives nationwide classroom blockades.
The post Student protests sweep France over school underfunding appeared first on MR Online.
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Faced with thousands on the streets Premier Sanchez’s attempt to placate widespread unrest over the housing crisis were sunk by a right-wing coalition. As John Rees explains, the political balance in Spain is at a critical stage.
The post Mass protests topples Spanish government, new election called appeared first on MR Online.
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KNE: Victory for the struggle of the school students in France – Victoire pour la lutte des lycéens en France!
(www.idcommunism.com)
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“Victory for the struggle of the school students in France!”, emphasises the Press Office of the Central Council of the Communist Youth of Greece (KNE) in a statement on the large-scale student protests, noting the following:
«We salute and express our solidarity with the thousands of school students - boys and girls - who have flooded the streets of France, demanding “Education for all” – the key slogan of their protests.
Classes of 35 pupils, schools without heating, thousands of teacher vacancies, class barriers and discrimination paint the true picture of the French education system, which is regarded as a “model” by the Greek government and the convenient opposition. Young people are reacting massively to the cuts in education spending, given that the French government, as in the rest of the EU, is spending billions on military equipment, at the expense of wages, healthcare and education.
We condemn the brutal state repression, which has resulted in thousands of arrested and hurt protesters, physical violence and the use of tear gas. A placard held by a student protester was particularly telling: “Can we have a discussion without you firing tear gas at us?”. This is the sham “democracy” across the EU, which wields the whip against anyone who raises their head and stands up for their rights.
In France, Greece and all over the world, anyone who thinks they can stop young people from fighting, demanding their rights and dreaming of a better world is deluding themselves.
On Thursday 8 October, it will be the school students' turn in Greece, as they organise the Pan-Hellenic Day of Action in schools across the country!»
KNE: Victoire pour la lutte des lycéens en France!
«Victoire pour la lutte des lycéens en France!», souligne le Bureau de presse du Conseil central de la KNE dans un communiqué sur les manifestations des élèves à grande échelle, en soulignant ce qui suit:
«Nous saluons et exprimons notre solidarité avec les milliers de lycéens – garçons et filles – qui ont envahi les rues de France pour réclamer “Pour tous l’éducation”, le slogan phare de leurs manifestations.
Des classes de 35 élèves, des écoles sans chauffage, des milliers de postes d’enseignants vacants, les barrières de classe et la discrimination brossent le véritable tableau du système éducatif français, considéré comme un «modèle» par le gouvernement grec et l’opposition convenable. Les jeunes réagissent massivement aux coupes budgétaires dans l’éducation, alors que le gouvernement français, comme dans le reste de l’UE, dépense des milliards en équipement militaire, au détriment des salaires, de la santé et de l’éducation.
Nous condamnons la répression brutale exercée par les forces de l’ordre, qui s’est soldée par des milliers de manifestants arrêtés et blessés, par des violences physiques et par l’utilisation de gaz lacrymogènes. Une pancarte brandie par un lycéen manifestant était particulièrement éloquente: «Peut-on discuter sans que vous nous tiriez des gaz lacrymogènes dessus?». Telle est la «démocratie» de façade qui règne dans toute l’Union européenne, qui brandit le fouet contre quiconque lève la tête et défend ses droits.
En France, en Grèce et partout dans le monde, ceux qui pensent pouvoir empêcher les jeunes de se battre, de revendiquer leurs droits et de rêver d’un monde meilleur se font des illusions.
Jeudi 8 octobre, ce sera au tour des élèves en Grèce, qui organisent la Journée d’action nationale dans les établissements scolaires partout dans le pays!».
inter.kke.gr
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Madinalag-on nga pagsilot sa isa ka rapist natigayon sang NPA-Southwest Negros
(philippinerevolution.nu)
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