US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on 2 May ordered the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier to remain in West Asia for another week, marking the second time its deployment has been extended amid ongoing military operations against Yemen.
The move maintains the presence of two US aircraft carrier strike groups in the region—an uncommon occurrence in recent years—underscoring Washington’s commitment to end Yemeni attacks on Israeli-linked ships transiting the Red Sea.
The Ansarallah-led Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF) began attacking Israeli-linked ships starting in November 2023 in response to Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
A trio of Democratic senators on Thursday demanded answers from embattled Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth regarding U.S. airstrikes in Yemen, which have reportedly killed scores of civilians including numerous women and children since last month. “We write to you concerning reports that U.S. strikes against the Houthis at the Ras Isa fuel terminal in Yemen last week killed dozens of civilians…
Alamogordo, NM – Holloman (Drone Training) AFB – Anti-drone activists from across the U.S. shut down the West Gate entrance here at Holloman AFB early Wednesday morning – with one arrest – for nearly an hour in the 3rd annual “week of resistance” to the covert U.S. Drone Warfare Program.
Activists donned signs with names and ages of young Gazan children’s killed, and blocked traffic while chanting “15 thousand children killed in Gaza. No drones for genocide.”
One protester, Toby Blomé, was arrested after lying down on pavement in front of a stalled car when military police threatened to arrest her.
Alamogordo, NM – Holloman (Drone Training) AFB – Anti-drone activists from across the U.S. shut down the West Gate entrance here at Holloman AFB early Wednesday morning – with one arrest – for nearly an hour in the 3rd annual “week of resistance” to the covert U.S. Drone Warfare Program.
Activists donned signs with names and ages of young Gazan children’s killed, and blocked traffic while chanting “15 thousand children killed in Gaza. No drones for genocide.”
One protester, Toby Blomé, was arrested after lying down on pavement in front of a stalled car when military police threatened to arrest her.
Part Two of Solidarity’s Vietnam War series: The folly of imperial war
COMMENTARY:By Eugene Doyle
Vietnam is a lesson we should have learnt — but never did — about the immorality, folly and counter-productivity of imperial war. Gaza, Yemen and Ukraine are happening today, in part, because of this cultural amnesia that facilitates repetition.
It’s time to remember the Quiet Mutiny within the US army — and why it helped end the war by undermining military effectiveness, morale, and political support at home.
There were many reasons that the US and its allies were defeated in Vietnam. First and foremost they were beaten by an army that was superior in tactics, morale and political will.
The Quiet Mutiny that came close to a full-scale insurrection within the US army in the early 1970s was an important part of the explanation as to why America’s vast over-match in resources, firepower and aerial domination was insufficient to the task.
Beaten by an army that was superior in tactics, morale and political will. Image: www.solidarity.co.nz
‘Our army is approaching collapse’ Marine Colonel Robert D. Heinl Jr wrote: “By every conceivable indicator, our army that now remains in Vietnam is in a state approaching collapse, with individual units avoiding or having refused combat, murdering their officers and non-commissioned officers, drug-ridden, and dispirited where not near mutinous.” — Armed Forces Journal 7 June, 1971.
A paper prepared by the Gerald R Ford Presidential Library — “Veterans, Deserters and Draft Evaders” (1974) — stated, “Hundreds of thousands of Vietnam-era veterans hold other-than-honorable discharges, many because of their anti-war activities.”
Between 1965-73, according to the Ford papers, 495,689 servicemen (and women) on active duty deserted the armed forces! Ponder that.
For good reason, the defiance, insubordination and on many occasions soldier-on-officer violence was something that the mainstream media and the Western establishment have tried hard to expunge from our collective memory.
Something that the mainstream media and the Western establishment have tried hard to expunge from our collective memory. Image: www.solidarity.co.nz
‘The officer said “Keep going!” He kinda got shot.’ At 12 years old in 1972, I took out a subscription to Newsweek. Among the horrors I learnt about at that tender age was the practice of fragging — the deliberate killing of US officers by their own men, often by flicking a grenade — a fragmentation device (hence fragging) — into their tent at night, or simply shooting an officer during a combat mission.
There were hundreds of such incidents.
GI: “The officer said, ‘Keep on going’ but they were getting hit pretty bad so it didn’t happen. He kinda got shot.”
GI: “The grunts don’t always do what the Captain says. He always says “Go there”. He always stays back. We just go and sit down somewhere. We don’t want to hit “Contact”.
GI: “We’ve decided to tell the company commander we won’t go into the bush anymore; at least we’ll go to jail where it’s safe.”
Hundreds of GI antiwar organisations and underground newspapers challenged the official narratives about the war. Image: www.solidarity.co.nz
US Army — refusing to fight “Soldiers in Revolt: G.I. Resistance During the Vietnam War,” by David Cortright, professor emeritus at the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame, himself a Vietnam veteran, documents the hundreds of GI antiwar organisations and underground newspapers that challenged the official narratives about the war.
Cortright’s research indicated that by the early 1970s the US Army was close to a full mutiny. It meant that the US, despite having hundreds of thousands of troops in the country, couldn’t confidently put an army into combat.
By the war’s end the US army was largely hunkered down in their bases. Cortright says US military operations became “effectively crippled” as the crisis manifested itself “in drug abuse, political protest, combat refusals, black militancy, and fraggings.”
Cortright cites over 900 fragging incidents between 1969–1971, including over 500 with explosive devices.
“Word of the deaths of officers will bring cheers at troop movies or in bivouacs of certain units,” Colonel Heinl said in his 1971 article.
At times entire companies refused to move forward, an offence punishable by death, but never enforced. Image: www.solidarity.co.nz
At times entire companies refused to move forward, an offence punishable by death, but never enforced because of the calamitous knock-on effect this would have had both at home and within the army in the field.
‘The rebellion is everywhere’ It was heroic journalists like John Pilger who refused to file the reassuring stories editors back in London, New York, Sydney and Auckland wanted. Pilger told uncomfortable truths — there was a rebellion underway. The clean-cut, spit-and-polish boys of the 1960s Green Machine (US army) had morphed into a corps whose 80,000-strong frontline was full of defiant, insubordinate Grunts (infantry) who wore love beads, grew their hair long, smoked pot, and occasionally tossed a hand grenade into an officer’s tent.
John Pilger’s first film “Vietnam: The Quiet Mutiny”, aired in 1970. “The war is ending,” Pilger said, “because the largest, wealthiest and most powerful organisation on earth, the American Army, is being challenged from within — by the most brutalised and certainly the bravest of its members.
“The war is ending because the Grunt is taking no more bullshit.”
That short piece to camera is one of the most incredible moments in documentary history yet it likely won’t be seen during the commemorations of the Fall of Saigon on April 30.
At the time, Granada Television’s chairman was apoplectic that it went to air at all and described Pilger as “a threat to Western civilisation”. So tight is the media control we live under now it is unlikely such a documentary would air at all on a major channel.
“I don’t know why I’m shooting these people” a young grunt tells Pilger about having to fight the Vietnamese in their homeland. Another asks: “I have nothing against these people. Why are we killing them?”
Shooting the messenger Huge effort goes into attacking truth-tellers like Pilger, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden or Julian Assange, but as Phillip Knightley pointed out in his book The First Casualty, Pilger’s work was among the most important revelations to emerge from Vietnam, a war in which a depressingly large percentage of journalists contented themselves with life in Saigon and chanting the official Pentagon narrative.
Thus it ever was.
Pilger was like a fragmentation device dropped into the official narrative, blasting away the euphemisms, the evasions, the endless stream of official lies. He called the end of the war long before the White House and the Pentagon finally gave up the charade; his actions helped save lives; their actions condemned hundreds of thousands to unnecessary death, millions more to misery.
African Americans were sent to the front in disproportionately large numbers – about a quarter of all frontline fighters. Image: www.solidarity.co.nz
Race politics, anti-racism, peace activism
Race politics was another important factor. African Americans were sent to the front in disproportionately large numbers — about a quarter of all frontline fighters. There was a strong feeling among black conscripts that “This is not our war”.
In David Loeb Weiss’ No Vietnamese ever called me Nigger we see a woman at an antiwar protest in Harlem, New York. “My boy is over there fighting for his rights,” she says, “but he’s not getting them.” Then we hear the chant: “The enemy is whitey! Not the Viet Cong!”
We should recall that at this time the civil rights movement was battling powerful white groups for a place in civil society. The US army had only ended racial segregation in the Korean War and back home in 1968, there were still 16 States that had miscegenation laws banning sexual relations between whites and blacks.
Martin Luther King was assassinated this same year. All this fed into the Quiet Mutiny.
Truth-telling and the lessons of history Vietnam became a dark arena where the most sordid aspects of American imperialism played out: racism, genocidal violence, strategic incoherence, belief in brute force over sound policy.
Sounds similar to Gaza and Yemen, doesn’t it?
Eugene Doyle is a community organiser and activist in Wellington, New Zealand. He received an Absolutely Positively Wellingtonian award in 2023 for community service. His first demonstration was at the age of 12 against the Vietnam War. This article was first published at his public policy website Solidarity and is republished here with permission.
In anticipation of U.S. nuclear weapons returning to U.K. soil after their removal 18 years ago, activists from around the world are gathering at the Lakenheath Peace Camp from April 14-25, 2025 with a 24 hour a day, 7 days a week vigil at the main entrance of RAF Lakenheath.
Organized by Lakenheath Alliance for Peace and a coalition of many groups, the 11 day encampment with specific events each day will culminate in a peace conference on April 24, 2025 and a blockade of the air base on April 25, 2025.
The peace conference is titled “Analysing and Resisting US Nuclear Expansion” and will feature well-known speakers who will focus on topics from global militarism to the arms trade, with a detailed focus on the dangers of nuclear weapons.
The US military will deploy Northrop Grumman MQ-4C Triton high-altitude long endurance unmanned aerial vehicle (HALE UAVs) from Kadena Air Base in the southern Japanese prefecture of Okinawa for “an indefinite period”, the Japan Ministry of Defense (MoD) announced on 8 April. Japanese defence minister Gen Nakatani noted at a media conference in Tokyo that […]
At 7:30 a.m. on April 9, the heavy traffic flow into California’s Travis Air Force Base came to a sudden stop. As they have done numerous times, the “People’s Arms Embargo” blocked the main road into the base. The action this time commemorated the recently deceased long-time peace advocate David Hartsough, one of the co-founders of the Peoples Arms Embargo.
With traffic into the base stopped, one angry airman jumped out of his pickup truck and threatened to assault the peaceful protestors. He finally thought better of it and returned to his truck. Other waiting airmen and airwomen were patient and a few indicated support for the protest.
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has reaffirmed the Trump administration’s defence commitments to America’s Pacific territories of Guam and Northern Mariana Islands and that any attack on them would be an attack on the mainland.
Hegseth touched down in Guam from Hawai’i on Thursday as part of an Indo-Pacific tour, his first as Defence Secretary, in which he is seeking to shore up traditional alliances to counter China.
Geostrategic competition between the US and China in the Pacific has seen Guam and neighboring CNMI become increasingly significant in supporting American naval and air operations, especially in the event of a conflict over Taiwan or in the South China Sea.
Any attack on Guam and the Commonwealth Northern Marianas Islands would be met with “appropriate response,” Hegseth said during his brief visit, emphasising both territories were central to the US defence posture focused on containing China.
“We’re defending our homeland,” Hegseth said. “Guam and CNMI are vital parts of America, and I want to be very clear — to everyone in this room, to the cameras — any attack against these islands is an attack against the US.”
“We’re going to continue to stay committed to our presence here,” Hegseth said. “It’s important to emphasise: we are not seeking war with Communist China. But it is our job to ensure that we are ready.”
Key US strategic asset
Located closer to Beijing than Hawai’i, Guam serves as a key US strategic asset, known as the “tip of the spear,” with 10,000 military personnel, an air base for F-35 fighters and B-2 bombers, and home port for Virginia-class nuclear submarines.
The pledge from Hegseth comes as debate on Guam’s future as a US territory has intensified, with competing calls by some residents for full statehood and UN-mandated decolonisation, led by the Indigenous Chamorro people.
US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth (left) meets with Guam Governor Lou Leon Guerrero (far center) and CNMI Governor Arnold Palacios (far right) on his visit to the US Pacific territory on Thursday. Image: US Secretary of Defence
Defending Guam and CNMI, Hegseth said, aligns with President Donald Trump’s “goal to achieve peace through strength by putting America first”.
He delivered remarks at Andersen Air Force Base and took an aerial tour of the island before meeting with Lou Leon Guerrero and Arnold Palacios, governors of Guam and Northern Marianas, respectively.
Guerrero appealed to Hegseth about the “great impact” the US military buildup on Guam had had on the island’s residents.
“We welcome you, and we welcome the position and the posture that President Trump has,” Guerrero told Hegseth, during opening statements before their closed-door meeting.
“We are the centre of gravity here. We are the second island chain of defence,” she said. “We want to be a partner in the readiness effort but national security cannot happen without human health security.”
Funding for hospital
Guerrero sought funding for a new hospital, estimated to cost US$600 million.
“Our island needs a regional hospital capable of handling mass casualties — whether from conflict or natural disasters,” she told Hegseth.
“We are working very closely in partnership with the military, and one of our asks is to be a partner in the financing of that hospital.”
Afterwards Guerrero told reporters she did not have time to discuss the housing crisis caused by the US military buildup.
Earlier this month, Guerrero warned in her “state of the island” address of US neglect of Guam’s 160,000 residents, where one-in-five are estimated to live below the poverty line.
“Let us be clear about this: Guam cannot be the linchpin of American security in the Asian-Pacific if nearly 14,000 of our residents are without shelter, because housing aid to Guam is cut, or if 36,000 of our people lose access to Medicaid and Medicare coverage keeping them healthy, alive and out of poverty,” Guerrero said.
At the end of his visit to Guam, Hegseth announced in a statement he had also reached an “understanding” with President Wesley Simina of the Federated States of Micronesia to begin planning and construction of US$400 million in military infrastructure projects in the State of Yap.
Territorial background
Simina’s office would not confirm to BenarNews he had met with Hegseth in Guam, saying only he was “off island.”
As a territory, Guam residents are American citizens but they cannot vote for the US president and their lone delegate to the Congress has no voting power.
The US acquired Guam in 1898 after winning the Spanish-American War, and CNMI from Japan in 1945 after its defeat in the Second World War. Both remain unincorporated territories to this day.
The Defence Department holds about 25 percent of Guam’s land and is preparing to spend billions to upgrade the island’s military infrastructure as another 5000 American marines relocate from Japan’s Okinawa islands.
On Tuesday, Hegseth was in Hawai’i meeting officials of the US Indo-Pacific Command. Speaking with the media in Honolulu, he said his Asia-Pacific visit was to show strength to allies and “reestablish deterrence.”
Hegseth’s week-long tour comes against a backdrop of growing Chinese assertiveness. Its coast guard vessels have recently encroached into the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea and around the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea.
His visit will be closely watched in the Pacific for signs of the Trump administration’s commitment to traditional allies following a rift between Washington and Europe that has tested the transatlantic alliance.
The trip also threatens to be overshadowed by the fallout from revelations that he and other national security officials discussed attack plans against Yemen’s Houthis on the messaging app Signal with a journalist present.
Flagrant violation
Critics are calling it a flagrant violation of information security protocols.
During his first term, Trump revived Washington’s engagements in the Pacific island region after long years of neglect paved the way for China’s initiatives.
He hosted leaders of the US freely associated states of Palau, Marshall Islands and Federated States of Micronesia at the White House in 2019.
The Biden administration followed through, doubling the engagement with an increased presence and complementing the military buildup with economic assistance that sought to outdo China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
The new Trump administration, however, cut the cord, dismantling the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and along with it, the millions of dollars pledged to Pacific island nations.
The abolition of about 80 percent of USAID programmes sent mixed signals to the island nations and security experts have warned that China would fill the void it has created.
From Guam, Hegseth has travelled to Philippines and Japan, where he will participate in a ceremony commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima and will later meet with Japanese leaders and US military forces.
Republished from BenarNews with permission. Stefan Armbruster in Brisbane contributed to this story.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Asia Pacific.
The doctor recommended at least 18 weeks to recover from childbirth. But Jane (whose name was changed for this article) was entitled to only 12 paid weeks under the Federal Employee Paid Leave Act. So she put in a request with her employer, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, for advance sick leave to cover the other six weeks.
But her request was denied; the Army Corps said her work was too important for her to be gone that long. Jane asked to discuss a solution. Management suggested filing a grievance and declined to discuss it any further, despite its contractual “open-door policy.”
President Donald Trump has directed the Pentagon to prepare plans for carrying out his threat to “take back” the Panama Canal, including by military force if needed, two U.S. officials familiar with the situation told NBC News Thursday.
According to the outlet, the officials said that U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) is drawing up potential plans that run the gamut from working more closely with Panama’s military to a less likely scenario in which U.S. troops invade the country and take the canal by force. They also said that SOUTHCOM commander Adm. Alvin Holsey has presented draft strategies to be reviewed by U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who is scheduled to visit Panama next month.
Marshall Islands defence provisions could “fairly easily” be considered to run against the nuclear-free treaty that they are now a signatory to, says a veteran Pacific journalist and editor.
The South Pacific’s nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament treaty, known as the Treaty of Rarotonga, was signed in Majuro last week during the observance of Nuclear Victims Remembrance Day.
RNZ Pacific’s Marshall Islands correspondent Giff Johnson, who is also editor of the weekly newspaper Marshall Islands Journal, said many people assumed the Compact of Free Association — which gives the US military access to the island nation — was in conflict with the treaty.
However, Johnson said the signing of the treaty was only the first step.
“The US said there was no issue with the Marshall Islands signing the treaty because that does not bring the treaty into force,” he said.
“I would expect that there would not be a move to ratify the treaty soon . . . with the current situation in Washington this is going to be kicked down the road a bit.”
He said the US military routinely brought in naval vessels and planes into the Marshall Islands.
“Essentially, the US policy neither confirms nor denies the presence of nuclear weapons on board aircraft or vessels or whether they’re nuclear powered.
‘Clearly spelled out defence’ “The US is allowed to carry out its responsibility which is very clearly spelled out to defend and provide defence for the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia and Palau.
“So yes, I think you could fairly easily make the case that the activity at Kwajalein and the compact’s defence provisions do run foul of the spirit of a nuclear-free treaty.”
Johnson said the US and the Marshall Islands would need to work out how it would deliver its defence and security including the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defence Test Site, where weapon systems are routinely tested on Kwajalein Atoll.
Meanwhile, the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior will be visiting the Marshall Islands next week to support the government on gathering data to support further nuclear compensation.
“What we are hoping to do is provide that independent science that currently is not in the Marshall Islands,” the organisation’s Pacific lead Shiva Gounden told RNZ Pacific Waves.
“Most of the science that happens in on the island is mostly been funded or taken control by the US government and the Marshallese people, rightly so, do not trust that data. Do not trust that sample collection.”
Top-secret lab study
The Micronesian nation experienced 67 atmospheric nuclear tests between 1946 and 1958, resulting in an ongoing legacy of death, illness, and contamination.
In 2017, the Marshall Islands government created the National Nuclear Commission to coordinate efforts to address the impacts from testing.
Gounden said Project 4.1 — which was the top-secret medical lab study on the effects of radiation on human bodies — has caused distrust of US data.
“The Marshallese people do not trust any scientific data or science coming out from the US,” he said.
“So they have asked us to see if we can assist in gathering samples and collecting data that is independent from the US that could assist in at least giving them a clear picture of what’s happening right now in those atolls.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
In November 2005, a group of US Marines killed 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq. The case against them became one of the most high-profile war crimes prosecutions in US history—but then it fell apart. Only one Marine went to trial for the killings, and all he received was a slap on the wrist. Even his own defense attorney found the outcome shocking.
“It’s meaningless,” said attorney Haytham Faraj. “The government decided not to hold anybody accountable. I mean, I don’t know, I don’t know how else to put it.”
The Haditha massacre, as it came to be known, is the subject of the current season of TheNew Yorker’s In the Dark podcast and this week’s episode of Reveal. Reporter Madeleine Baran and her team spent four years looking into what happened at Haditha and why no one was held accountable. They also uncovered a previously unreported killing that happened that same day, a 25th victim whose story had never before been told.
Photos from this story, as well as a searchable database of military war crimes, can be found at newyorker.com/season-3.
The White House has eased constraints on US military commanders to authorize airstrikes and special operation raids outside conventional battlefields, allowing for a broader range of people who can be targeted, CBS News reported on 28 February.
According to US officials with knowledge of the policy shift, the quiet change drastically alters Biden-era rules governing strikes against so-called terror targets. It marks a return to the more aggressive counterterrorism policies US President Trump instituted in his first term.
My name is Joy Metzler, and I am an active duty Air Force lieutenant, looking to gain a conscientious objector discharge. This decision is largely due to my horror over the continued U.S. support of the genocide in Gaza in direct violation of many of the same laws and values I was taught about at the Air Force Academy.
I am waiting for my package to be approved, but I have been vocal about my opposition to U.S. policy in Gaza. Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation a year ago started me on my journey, and on the anniversary of his death, I feel the weight of our country’s crimes more heavily than ever.
The Pentagon will send another 1,500 active-duty soldiers to the Mexican border to support President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, an American official said yesterday. This would bring the number of troops on the US-Mexico border to 3,600.
A logistics brigade from the Airborne Corps based in Fort Liberty, North Carolina, will be sent, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to discuss the matter in public.
The troops going to the border are expected to help install barbed wire barriers and provide necessary transportation, intelligence and other support to the Border Patrol. The logistics brigade will help support and sustain the troops.
The United States’ support for the genocide in Palestine, especially since the launch of Operation Al Aqsa Flood in October 2023, has led federal employees and active duty military members to take action in opposition to violations of domestic and international law. Clearing the FOG speaks with two members of the US Air Force, Juan Bettancourt and Joy Metzler, who have applied for conscientious objector status. Together with Larry Hebert, who conducted a hunger strike in front of the White House last year, they created Servicemembers for Ceasefire to provide a space for members of the military to question US foreign policy. Bettancourt and Metzler describe their journeys, the level of dissent within the military and the deployment of US troops domestically.
Veterans For Peace strongly objects to the Trump Administration’s racist campaign of mass deportation of undocumented workers, who are our friends, neighbors and even our fellow veterans. We condemn the violent raids that are sowing fear and terror in communities across the United States. As veterans, we are particularly opposed to the misuse and abuse of U.S. military personnel, including their illegal deployment to the U.S. border with Mexico.
Since Donald Trump’s inauguration, about 1,000 U.S. Army personnel and 500 Marines have been sent to the border, in addition to 2,500 National Guard members already there.
Protestors led by Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and Drone Wars will gather outside the main gates of RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire at 1pm on Saturday 25 January to oppose plans to fly US Global Hawk drones from the base. The protest comes as the newly inaugurated US president Donald Trump once again repeated his plan to ‘Make America Great’ articulating a ‘peace through strength’ foreign policy.
The US plan to operate the huge RQ-4 Global Hawk drones from RAF Fairford as part of NATO’s ‘Agile Combat Employment’ (ACE) concept which argues that key military aircraft should be able to operate from different bases in order to make it harder for adversaries to conduct pre-emptive strikes.
This country, once a haven for immigrants, is now on the verge of turning into a first-class nightmare for them. President Donald Trump often speaks of his plan to deport some 11.7 million undocumented immigrants from the United States as “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” Depending on how closely he follows the Project 2025 policy blueprint of his allies, his administration may also begin deporting the family members of migrants and asylum seekers in vast numbers.
Among the possible ways such planning may not work out, here’s one thing Donald Trump and the rest of the MAGA crowd don’t recognize: the troops they plan to rely on to carry out the deportations of potentially millions of people are, in their own way, also migrants.
According to the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), “A U.S. military background is the single strongest individual-level predictor of whether a subject …in the PIRUS ( Profiles of Individual Radicalization In the United States) data is classified as a mass casualty offender.” A record of military service, START explains, is, in fact, an even more reliable predicator than mental health problems or a criminal history.
Consider the long list of those who preceded Din Jabbar and Livelsberger down the same path. In 1995, Gulf War veteran Timothy McVeigh parked his Ryder truck, with a home-made bomb, outside the federal building in Oklahoma City.
Former military installations can be success stories for the local community and small businesses. The former Brunswick Naval Air Station, Maine, has become Brunswick Landing, a “busy hub of tech businesses, some manufacturers, call centers, and service businesses,” in the words of News Center Maine. The former Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, now an office park home to many different industries, “supports more jobs than it did during its life as a military base,” Dr. Miriam Pemberton details in her book Six Stops on the National Security Tour (p. 109). Existing federal shipyards, from Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Virginia to Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard in Hawai‘i, could also adjust overnight to start maintaining and upgrading commercial ships, hospital ships, river barges, and scientific vessels, instead of warships.
Former military installations can be success stories for the local community and small businesses. The former Brunswick Naval Air Station, Maine, has become Brunswick Landing, a “busy hub of tech businesses, some manufacturers, call centers, and service businesses,” in the words of News Center Maine. The former Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, now an office park home to many different industries, “supports more jobs than it did during its life as a military base,” Dr. Miriam Pemberton details in her book Six Stops on the National Security Tour (p. 109). Existing federal shipyards, from Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Virginia to Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard in Hawai‘i, could also adjust overnight to start maintaining and upgrading commercial ships, hospital ships, river barges, and scientific vessels, instead of warships.
New Orleans- Our condolences go out to the families and friends of those killed and injured in the horrific attack in the French Quarter of New Orleans. We condemn it completely.
We also call upon all people of conscience to be skeptical of the official FBI account. We especially warn against this attack being used as a pretext for the persecution of Middle Eastern people, Muslims and immigrants or to repress protests against the Israeli genocide of Palestinians or justify martial law enforced by National Guard troops as requested by Governor Jeff Landry.
According to a headline in The Hill newspaper, which takes a position typical of U.S. corporate media, “New Year’s attacks fuel fears of extremism in military.”
In other words, an institution openly dedicated to mass killing and destruction may have fallen victim to infiltration by “extremists.” As if there could be something more extreme than a military.
The reason for this approach is that two U.S. military veterans attempted mass murders that made the news on the same day — and their status as veterans (or in one case active duty) made the news. The fact that those guilty of mass shootings in the United States are, and have long been, very disproportionately veterans is, and has long been, strictly avoided by U.S. corporate media, including in reporting and commenting on these new incidents.
Pentagon Press Secretary General Pat Ryder revealed on 19 December that the US has “around 2,000” troops deployed inside Syria, more than double the figure Washington has previously claimed to have inside the war-torn country.
“As you know, we have been briefing you regularly that there are approximately 900 US troops deployed to Syria. In light of the situation in Syria and the significant interests, we recently learned that those numbers were higher,” Ryder told reporters on Thursday, adding that he “learned today there are approximately 2,000 US troops in Syria.”
Washington, DC – On Wednesday, 17-year veteran and intelligence officer Josephine Guilbeau disrupted the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs to call out the billions of dollars Congress sends to fund genocide in Gaza while neglecting veterans at home. Here is what she had to say:
“US Congress is complicit in the genocide in Gaza! You keep sending billions of dollars to Israel meanwhile veterans are homeless and committing suicide with more budget cuts on the way. As a 17-year veteran and intelligence officer, I am watching you destroy American values and jeopardize our national security.
The national government of Daniel Noboa approved a resolution that enables US ships and crews to use the Galapagos Islands for control and patrol activities in the area.
On February 15, 2024, Noboa signed a series military cooperation treaties with the US government, allowing ships, military personnel, armament, equipment, and submarines to be installed in the natural reserve, which UNESCO declared a World Natural Heritage Site in 1978.
In doing so, Noboa ratified the Washington Agreement, signed by former President Guillermo Lasso. The agreement grants US soldiers and their contractors several privileges, exemptions, and immunity in Ecuadorian territory, similar to those enjoyed by members of diplomatic missions as agreed on in the Vienna Convention.
We, the undersigned organizations, strongly condemn the decision by Trinidad & Tobago’s Prime Minister, Keith Rowley, and the PNM Government, to allow the deployment of US troops on Trinidadian soil. This is a grave mistake.
Trinidad & Tobago and Guyana have become pawns in the US Empire’s nefarious plan to militarize the Caribbean region under the auspices of the US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM). The US claims that this military cooperation is about enhancing regional security and dealing with issues such as the trafficking of persons, drugs and weapons, and to improve the military capability of these Caribbean countries.
Suit claims state department is deliberately bypassing the Leahy Law by failing to sanction Israeli units accused of widespread atrocities in Palestinian territories
The state department is facing a new lawsuit brought by Palestinians and Palestinian Americans accusing the agency of deliberately circumventing a decades-old US human rights law to continue funding Israeli military units accused of widespread atrocities in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The lawsuit, which was filed on Tuesday, marks the first time that victims of alleged human rights abuses are challenging the state department’s failure to ever sanction an Israeli security unit under the Leahy Law, a 1990s-era law that prohibits US military assistance to forces credibly implicated in gross human rights violations.
