In spite of president Donald Trump’s promise to cull the unnecessary wars that the United States is constantly involved in (or starting), they continue to use tax money to kill civilians with impunity. The blood the U.S. continues to spill is often that of innocents, such as civilians and children.

War is a racket. It always has been, and in the U.S., it enriches the political elites as innocents die overseas.  Far too many Americans have become far too comfortable with the killing being done in their name.  According to RT, the Trump administration has not only expanded the U.S.’ covert and lethal drone program but has taken the covering up of its civilian death toll to a whole new level.  For an administration claiming to be “pro-life,” this new revelation should be incredibly disturbing to everyone.

Like most of the battlefields opened more widely under the Obama administration, Donald Trump ramped up airstrikes against the infamous Al-Shabaab terrorist group in Somalia approximately two years ago. But at least Obama never claimed to be pro-life.  He was pretty open about his disregard for others. And, like most drone wars expanded under Obama and dramatically widened under Trump, the details of this covert assault are continuously swept under the rug, particularly when it comes to civilian casualties.

The Pentagon has openly said that its airstrikes in Somalia have killed zero civilians.

Yet, recently, an Amnesty International investigation into just five of the strikes carried out since March 2017 by both manned and unmanned Reaper aircraft found that the strikes resulted in at least 14 civilian deaths, with instances of eight civilian injuries as well. In total, the US has carried out more than 100 strikes in Somalia since 2017. –RT

Lying by governments to further wars is nothing new and no one should expect that it stop. The U.S. as a country is wholly obsolete if they cannot bomb and kill with impunity. The source of their power is the massive military-industrial complex they hold over the heads over everyone on the planet – including their own citizens. (This is seen daily as everyday Americans thank the troops for killing and following the orders of the political elitists without asking questions. In fact, it’s “un-American” to question the wars and those actually spilling the blood on foreign soil.)

Amnesty International has made it quite clear that these attacks have violated international humanitarian laws and may amount to war crimes (remember, they have only assessed five out of over 100 so far). Regardless of this, American media outlets won’t report the fact that the government is slaughtering people. The New York Times appeared to be protecting their “drone king” Barack Obama by failing to mention that he was also a murderer who committed war crimes and violated the most basic of human rights – the right to live.

In just the first few months of 2019 alone, the U.S. military has already carried out 24 strikes on Somali territory, compared to only 14 in the whole of 2016, prior to Trump taking office. In 2018, US airstrikes killed 326 people and yet, not a single civilian has died or been injured if you ask the government.

Just recently, Trump allowed the CIA to keep secret how many civilians are killed in its airstrikes outside of war zones. As it transpires, a law passed by Congress making it compulsory for the Pentagon to publicly report civilians killed in its operations applies to the Pentagon only, and not the CIA drone program.

The law is pointless anyway when one considers how the Pentagon assesses whether civilians have been killed or not. Donald Trump’s relaxation of the rules surrounding airstrikes are in and of themselves a pathway to a war crime tribunal. According to a retired US brigadier general who was consulted by Amnesty, Trump’s executive order widened the list of potential targets to include adult males living in villages sympathetic to Al-Shabaab who are located within range of known fighters. This was already a known tactic under the peace-prize-winning president Barack Obama, who counted all “military-age males” in the vicinity of a target as militants. –RT

The U.S.’ laws have become increasingly pointless over the past few decades.  That goes for all their laws – both to try to control the military and to exert control over the people.  Someday, people will realize laws are nothing more than commands written by ink on paper by men andwoment generally considered to be crooks and liars. Once the vast majority figures this out, the wars and violence and hatred against others will cease as government power dwindles.

By Stephanie Savell

This March marked the 16th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

In 2003, President George W. Bush and his advisers based their case for war on the idea that Saddam Hussein, then dictator of Iraq, possessed weapons of mass destruction — weapons that have never been found. Nevertheless, all these years later, Bush’s “Global War on Terror” continues — in Iraq and in many other countries.

It’s a good time to reflect on what this war — the longest in U.S. history — has cost Americans and others around the world.

First, the economic costs: According to estimates by the Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, the war on terror has cost Americans a staggering $5.6 trillion since 2001, when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan.

$5.6 trillion. This figure includes not just the Pentagon’s war fund, but also future obligations such as social services for an ever-growing number of post-9/11 veterans.

It’s hard for most of us to even begin to grasp such an enormous number.

It means Americans spend $32 million per hour, according to a counter by the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies.

Put another way: Since 2001, every American taxpayer has spent almost $24,000 on the wars — equal to the average down payment on a house, a new Honda Accord, or a year at a public university.

As stupefying as those numbers are, the budgetary costs pale in comparison with the human toll.

As of 2015, when the Costs of War project made its latest tallies, up to 165,000 Iraqi civilians had died as a direct consequence of U.S. war, plus around 8,000 U.S. soldiers and military contractors in Iraq.

Those numbers have only continued to rise. Up to 6,000 civilians were killed by U.S.-led strikes in Iraq and Syria in 2017 –– more civilians than in any previous year, according to the watchdog group AirWars.

In addition to those direct deaths, at least four times as many people in Iraq have died from the side effects of war, such as malnutrition, environmental degradation, and deteriorated infrastructure.

Since the 2003 invasion, for instance, Iraqi health care has plummeted — with hospitals and clinics bombed, supplies of medicine and electricity jeopardized, and thousands of physicians and healthcare workers fleeing the country.

Meanwhile, the war continues to spread, no longer limited to Afghanistan, Iraq, or Syria, as many Americans think. Indeed, the U.S. military is escalating a shadowy network of anti-terror operations all across the world — in at least 76 nations, or 40 percent of countries on the planet.

Last October, news about four Green Berets killed by an Islamic State affiliate in the West African nation of Niger gave Americans a glimpse of just how broad this network is. And along with it comes all the devastating consequences of militarism for the people of these countries.

We must ask: Are these astounding costs worth it? Is the U.S. accomplishing anything close to its goal of diminishing the global terrorist threat?

The answer is, resoundingly, no.

U.S. activity in Iraq and the Middle East has only spurred greater political upheaval and unrest. The U.S.-led coalition is seen not as a liberating force, but as an aggressor. This has fomented insurgent recruitment, and there are now more terrorist groups in the Middle East than ever before.

Until a broad swath of the American public gets engaged to call for an end to the war on terror, these mushrooming costs — economic, human, social, and political — will just continue to grow.

By Stephanie Savell / Creative Commons / OtherWords

This article was sourced from The Mind Unleashed.

Humanity never seems to learn.  During the 20th century, at least 108 million people were killed during all wars combined, and you would think that after so much bloodshed humanity would never want to go down that road again.  And in this century, an enormous amount of American blood has already been shed in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.  Unfortunately, the drumbeats of war are starting to get louder once again.  Very angry talk often precedes military conflict, and right now there sure is a lot of angry talk going on.

Before we get to the U.S., let’s talk about India and Pakistan.  They are both nuclear powers, and thanks to a horrific terror bombing last month, they are once again on the verge of war…

Pakistan’s prime minister offered to hold talks with India, even as he warned New Delhi to refrain from launching any attacks on his country following last week’s suicide bombing in Indian-controlled Kashmir.

Imran Khan said he hoped “better sense” would prevail after the attack on a paramilitary convoy that killed at least 40 Indian troops. But he warned in a televised speech Tuesday that if India attacks, “Pakistan will not merely think of retaliation, but rather, we will retaliate.”

In fact, it is being reported on Twitter that Pakistan has even “begun its logistics preparations for possible war with India”…

#BREAKING: Pakistan has begun its logistics preparations for possible war with India, has put hospitals along the frontier on stand-by mode – @timesofindia

Of course most Americans don’t even know that this is happening.

Sadly, the truth is that most Americans couldn’t even point out where Pakistan and India are on a blank map of the world.

But Americans should at least be concerned that the U.S. could soon be entering a new war.  President Trump has repeatedly threatened to use the U.S. military in Venezuela if the Maduro government does not step down peacefully, and that is definitely not going to happen.

In fact, Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino had said that if the U.S. wants regime change in his country, they are going to have to do it “over our dead bodies”…

Trump has refused to rule out US military action in Venezuela. He raised the pressure on Monday, issuing a warning to the Venezuelan military.

He told them that if they continue to support Maduro, ‘you will find no safe harbor, no easy exit and no way out. You will lose everything.’

Padrino rejected Trump’s threat, branding the US president ‘arrogant.’

If foreign powers try to help install a new government by force, they will have to do so ‘over our dead bodies,’ Padrino said.

And could it be possible that U.S. troops are already being positioned for an invasion of Venezuela?  That is exactly what Cuba is claiming…

Cuba said Wednesday that the U.S. is secretly moving special forces closer to Venezuela as part of a plan to practice military adventurism in the country under the guise of “humanitarian intervention.”

In a release from Granma, the Cuban government’s official press, Havana officials say that between Feb. 6 and 10 there has been military transport from the U.S. to Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and other Caribbean nations without the knowledge of those countries.

Of course the U.S. is claiming that Cuba already has troops inside Venezuela and is helping to prop up the Maduro regime.  And that is probably true.  So if the U.S. decides to invade Venezuela, we could find ourselves fighting a war with Cuba also.

In addition, John Bolton is talking as if regime change is on the agenda for Nicaragua too.  Just check out what he just posted on Twitter…

The Ortega regime has sentenced three farm leaders to 550 years in prison for their roles in protests in 2018, where Ortega’s police forces reportedly killed 300 activists. As President Trump said Monday, Ortega’s days are numbered and the Nicaraguan people will soon be free.

And previously Bolton had collectively referred to Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba as “the Troika of Tyranny”…

The US has repeatedly backed the uprising against the left-wing government, and last November Bolton made a keynote speech calling for the “crumbling” of what he called the “Troika of Tyranny” – Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba – saying the states represented a “a sordid cradle of communism in the Western hemisphere.”

On Monday, Trump name-checked the same three countries, saying their “great potential” would be unlocked with the collapse of socialism.

On top of everything else, Russian President Vladimir Putin is warning that U.S. that we could soon be facing “a Cuban Missile-style crisis”…

Vladimir Putin has said that Russia is militarily ready for a Cuban Missile-style crisis – if Donald Trump is is ‘foolish’ enough to want one – and that his missiles could reach the US faster that theirs could hit Moscow.

Putin has said he does not want an arms race with the United States, but that he would have no choice but to act if Washington deployed new missiles in Europe, some of which he says would be able to strike Moscow within ten to 12 minutes.

When I hear people call President Trump “a Russian asset”, I just have to laugh.

Our relations with the Russians are going downhill very rapidly, and Trump and Putin are much more likely to start World War 3 than they are to sit down and have a beer together.

And the Russians continue to prepare for the coming war with the United States by creating impressive new weapons systems.  For example, they just completed tests on a new intercontinental nuclear torpedo known as “the Poseidon”…

The 24 m long UUV armed with a nuclear warhead is designed to navigate autonomously with a maximum speed of 107 kt and detonate near an enemy coastal city, generating a tsunami wave, Russian state media reported.

“On its way to a target, ‘Poseidon’ will be able to avoid and overcome any anti-submarine barriers and other enemy defence systems due to the fully automated operating system. All together, the intellectual and performance characteristics of the vehicle will make it invulnerable and secure a guaranteed target destruction,” an unnamed defence industry source told Russian state media.

We do not have a similar weapon, and we have absolutely no way to defend against it.

We live at a time of “wars and rumors of wars”, and over the last several decades the nations of the world have armed themselves to the teeth with weapons of mass destruction that would have been unimaginable in previous eras of human history.

We literally have the technology to wipe ourselves off the face of the planet, and let us pray that cooler heads prevail before it is too late.

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters. His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News. From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites. If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so. The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.

Richard Moyes, a founding member of the non-government organization Campaign to Stop Killer Robots (CSKR), warns that autonomous military robots may develop their own intelligence and turn against its human creators. In particular, Moyes says that advancing technologies are opening doors to opportunities (and risks) that even the smartest experts cannot predict.

“A human can’t really make legal or moral judgments about the effects that they are creating through the use of these systems,” he says.

Moyes expresses his concern that a “malfunction” in how these robots operate can potentially lead to the loss of lives of actual human soldiers. He is pushing toward creating an international law that would ensure humans remain in complete control of robotic weapons systems.

“This is about protecting civilians and human dignity — but it is also a practical issue for [the military]. Soldiers don’t want to be sent into battle alongside systems that are unpredictable and might go off the rails,” he admonishes.

CSKR has repeatedly called for autonomous weaponry to be banned on all battlefields. Their efforts, however, have not manifested into anything concrete — robot systems are still being deployed in today’s warzones.

The evolution of war and how it is fought

Gone are the days of warriors on horses, wielding swords, and screaming battle cries. As society has changed, so too has warfare and how we fight it. Today, battles are fought in the technological sphere, and we’re more likely to die from people pressing buttons or wielding virtual reality data than being shot.

That doesn’t mean that physical battles do not happen. Tactics also play a huge role in which side will win a skirmish. For these scenarios, governments are now turning toward robotic systems that not only possess more physical strength than a human, but can think and react to various stimuli autonomously. Prototype robot soldiers are already being deployed in many of today’s warzones, including those being fought in Iran and Afghanistan. They range in size from tiny eight-pound robots to the world’s biggest robot, a 700-ton dump truck that can haul 240 tons of earth at a time.

These robots are not even what military experts call “finished.” Robotics executives say that what we’re seeing is only the first stages of this type of technology.

Are we sowing the seeds of our own destruction?

The concept of using robots for war is based on life preservation. If less humans were in vulnerable states, such as in a warzone, then it makes sense that less humans would die. Furthermore, robots don’t need to sleep, never get tired, and are accurate almost all of the time. They are the perfect killing machines. It seems like a win-win situation until you stop to consider the potential consequences of making an amoral being highly intelligent and capable.

Or, perhaps amorality is no longer an accurate characteristic of robotic systems. When discussing the ethics of artificial intelligence, experts warn that autonomous systems are inherently “tainted” by its programmers. Decision-making processes, for example, are biased toward the person who designed the software.

Foregoing the potential ramifications that this might have in war, this could also imply that robots may eventually develop very real human emotions. We may soon witness robot psychologists getting sad, or robot doctors getting stressed.

Or robot soldiers getting angry?

It is difficult to determine what lies ahead in our future, especially as our horizon is slowly (yet steadily) being colored by the steel touch of robotics.

Sources include:

DailyStar.co.uk

Brookings.edu

NickBostrom.com ^[PDF]

We always knew that this was coming.  We always knew that there would eventually be a war between Israel and Iran, but we had hoped that it could be put off for as long as possible.  Well, now it appears that time may have run out.  The exchange of missiles between the IDF and Iranian forces based in Syria on Sunday represented a major escalation of a conflict that has been simmering at a low level for months.  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pledging to continue to “strike at the Iranian entrenchment in Syria”, and on the other side the Iranians and the Syrians have changed the rules of the engagement to allow for a military response against Israel every time Israel strikes targets inside Syria.  What this means is that there are going to be more missiles going back and forth, and it seems inevitable that both sides will eventually cross the point of no return.

And even now, we may be dangerously close to that line.  In the aftermath of the missile exchange on Sunday, the Israeli Minister of Intelligence declared that Israel is now in “an open confrontation with Iran”…

Yisrael Katz, Israel’s Minister of Intelligence, later told Galatz that the policy for taking on Iran in Syria had changed and that the Jewish state was now in “open confrontation” with Iran.

“This is an open confrontation with Iran. When we need to step it up, we’ll step it up,” Katz said while again adding that Israel would not allow the continuing Iranian entrenchment in Syria.

But the Iranians are not going anywhere, and they do not intend to back down at all.  So Israel will continue to strike the area in and around the airport in Damascus, and the Syrians are threatening to hit Ben Gurion Airport in return…

Syria’s United Nations envoy called on the world body’s Security Council to take measures against Israel’s continued assault on Syrian territories, as reported by the Syrian news agency Sana, wondering whether it would take a Syrian attack on Tel Aviv Airport to draw the council’s attention.

“Does drawing the attention of the war-makers in this Council require us to exercise our legitimate right to self-defense and respond to Israeli aggression on Damascus International Airport by responding in the same way on Tel Aviv Airport?” the Syrian envoy, Dr. Bashar Al-Ja’afari, asked.

If Ben Gurion gets hit, we will immediately see fireworks in the Middle East like we haven’t seen in decades.

And the Iranians fully expect such a conflict to break out.  In fact, earlier this week the commander of Iran’s air force boldly declared that his forces “are fully ready and impatient to confront the Zionist regime and eliminate it from the Earth”…

The head of Iran’s air force said on Monday the country was ready to fight Israel and destroy it.

Speaking to the Young Journalist Club, a website supervised by state television, Brigadier General Aziz Nasirzadeh said: “The young people in the air force are fully ready and impatient to confront the Zionist regime and eliminate it from the Earth.”

The Iranians fully mean what they are saying.  They absolutely hate Israel with a passion and they will not stop until it no longer exists.

Last month, another top Iranian official made it exceedingly clear what Iran intends to do…

Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Naqdi, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Deputy Commander for Cultural and Social Affairs, said in a December 28 interview with the Iraqi television network Al-Nujaba that the “Islamic revolution in Iran will not back down” from the goal of “wiping out” the Jewish state.

And he went on to add that he plans to personally raise a flag over the city of Jerusalem once they conquer it…

He vowed to take part in that effort. “We were, we are, and we will continue to be the soldiers of Imam Khamenei,” he said, “until our last breath and until the last drop of our blood. I myself will hoist the flag of the Islamic Revolution in Jerusalem, Allah willing.”

Are you starting to understand why war between Israel and Iran is inevitable?

Iran is run by a bunch of nut jobs that all believe that they have a religious duty to wipe Israel off the face of the planet.  They think about this every day when they wake up, and they are still thinking about it every day when they go to sleep.

And if Israel and Iran go to war, guess who else will almost certainly enter the conflict?

President Trump has pledged to do whatever it takes to defend the nation of Israel, and it was recently revealed that at one point the White House actually asked the Pentagon to draw up a plan for bombing Iran.

Of course the Russians are already allied with Iran and their forces are already in Syria, and so they could easily be dragged into the conflict on the other side.

What we are talking about is an apocalyptic scenario which could easily lead to the outbreak of World War 3.

But we have gotten this far without a major regional war erupting in the Middle East, and hopefully cooler heads will prevail and things will calm down in the days ahead.

Because war is truly a horrible thing, and nobody should want to see a conflict erupt in which millions of people could potentially die.

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.  His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News.  From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites.  If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so.  The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.