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"Profit-generating" and woke brainwashing: What's happened to US military?

The third Saturday of May is celebrated in the US as Armed Forces Day to honor all active members of the country’s military.

This year’s celebrations take place as the US war machine appears to be but a shadow of its former self, its reputation tarnished by the de facto humiliating defeat in Afghanistan in 2021 and the inability to stop Houthi attacks in the Red Sea.

The decline of the once-powerful military could be traced to the 1990s, the time right after the end of the Cold War, argues former US State Department counterterrorism analyst Scott Bennett, saying that liberal reforms quickly “cascaded into an avalanche of social justice”.

“Suddenly you saw a weakening of the military and that was the beginning of the end of the US military,” Bennett says.

The 9/11 terrorist attacks triggered a wave of US military interventionism across the world, ostensibly aimed at fighting terrorism but in reality serving as an “enrichment exercise for the military-industrial complex.”

“So you've seen the military transform from a nationally-owned organization to an organization that was really being used to feed corporate entities like Raytheon, McDonnell Douglas, Booz Allen Hamilton, SAIC, a myriad of defense contractors, missile manufacturers, arms dealers, and that was another death blow to the military because suddenly it became a profit-generating organization,” Bennett remarks.

According to him, the US military has suddenly lost interest in actually winning wars and resolving conflicts – instead, it aims to perpetuate conflicts and use the armed forces “as a social re-engineering organization” - with the promotion of feminism, homosexuality, and transgenderism under Obama.

“They completely corroded and decayed the military from within, causing a lot of the best soldiers, airmen, marines and sailors to depart, to not re-enlist,” he states.

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Russian air defenses destroyed a Ukrainian Tochka-U missile over the Belgorod region, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

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Armed Forces Day: Is the US ready for a real military challenge?

The United States’ military is surprisingly amateurish, says Mike James, a US Navy veteran and a mass communication specialist petty officer who served in Iraq in 2008.

“We're surprisingly caught up in such an enormous sense of false superiority and security that there's just really bad decisions made all up and down the chain of command, even at the highest levels. Yeah, just generally quite unprofessional and immature and goofy,” he tells Sputnik.

According to him, Western military science as a whole is essentially “an imperial project” and depends on “complete hegemony.”

“It depends on complete domination of the battlespace. So that means overwhelming logistics, overwhelming recruitment and fitness of their soldiers, of their troops. It requires overwhelming approval of the populace, the general populace of the nation or of the Western world, of the multiple nations participating in it,” he says.

James notes that the majority of US military recruits enlist for “education and travel, work experience” rather than out of a “huge feeling of patriotism,” with the veteran adding that the US military has become heavily reliant on immigrants and foreign nations who are “operating as mercenaries.”

He also did not seem particularly impressed with the current level of US military tech, suggesting that both the US military hardware and IT infrastructure have “become a giant hunk of s**t.”

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Israeli political crisis deepens as IDF failures prompt cabinet resignation threat

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s grip on power appeared under threat this weekend when a key member of the country’s war cabinet threatened to resign.

Opposition leader Benny Gantz issued an ultimatum Saturday, claiming he would leave the emergency political formation if Netanyahu does not implement his six-point plan for the country’s military operation in Gaza by June 8. Among Gantz’s demands are efforts to ensure the return of Hamas-held Israeli captives, a demilitarization of the Gaza Strip and a move towards international administration of the Palestinian territory.

“If you choose the path of fanatics and lead the entire nation to the abyss — we will be forced to quit the government,” he said.

Gantz, a retired army general, has criticized Netanyahu’s prosecution of the country’s military campaign in Gaza, reflecting public frustration in Israel over the prime minister’s failure to secure the return of Israeli hostages.

“The people of Israel are watching you,” Gantz said in the prime-time address to Netanyahu.

The threat suggests the transpartisan political cooperation that emerged after October 7 threatens to break down, potentially leading to calls for new elections. Critics have claimed Netanyahu has prolonged Israel’s military campaign in Gaza to maintain his hold on power. The Prime Minister was previously under investigation on multiple charges of corruption, with the judicial process against him set to resume if he is toppled.

The loss of the support of Gantz could make Netanyahu more politically reliant on hard liner members of his coalition such as Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, who have called for the rebuilding of Israeli settlements in Gaza.

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Two people were injured by an explosive device dropped from a Ukrainian drone in the village of Petrovka in the Belgorod region, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.

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The first shipment of humanitarian aid has arrived in the Gaza Strip via a temporary seaport in the north of the enclave.

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The Russian offensive in the Kharkov area has been so swift and strong that Ukraine's feeble defenses have failed to stop Russian troops, with the depleted ranks of the Ukrainian armed forces being caught off guard and failing to defend their positions, The New York Times reported.

“Russian troops punched across Ukraine’s northern border with such speed and force last week that Ukraine’s meager fortifications offered almost no obstacle. Some Ukrainian soldiers, caught totally by surprise, fell back from their positions,” the paper acknowledged in awe.

“Once over the border, the Russian soldiers easily pushed past fortifications — like trenches, land mines and tank barriers — some of which, Ukrainian troops said, were insufficient or sloppily constructed,” the article emphasized.

According to the newspaper, Russian forces have unleashed an overwhelming advantage over Zelensky’s fighters “in artillery shells and employed air power, including fighter jets and heavy glide bombs, to disastrous effect, unhindered by depleted Ukrainian air defenses.”

The article also highlighted that the Kiev regime has been struggling with a manpower shortage since a large part of Ukraine's soldiers have already been sacrificed for US interests.

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Revealed: US oligarchs demanded police crackdown on pro-Palestine protests (Part 1)

Reporting in US media this week revealed a private group of wealthy executives pressured New York City Mayor Eric Adams to use police force to dismantle pro-Palestine protests at Columbia University earlier this month.

The article revealed the existence of a secret WhatsApp chat group where pro-Israel business leaders discussed efforts to manipulate US public opinion on the ongoing Israeli military operation in Gaza. The influential billionaires obtained a private Zoom meeting with the NYC mayor in late April, where they urged Adams to dissolve the pro-Palestine encampment at Columbia’s Manhattan campus.

Some of the participants in the discussion appeared to use financial donations to the mayor as leverage to ensure the crackdown.

Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program featured a panel discussion on the revelations. “What this article is uncovering is that a number of these individuals, such as the former CEO of Starbucks Howard Schultz [and] Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell… were all using the WhatsApp application to pressure the mayor of New York to go in and remove these encampments,” noted host Wilmer Leon.

Leon said the incident was “one of the things I think that got President [Claudine] Gay from Harvard fired, that she refused to release the personal information on the students.” The host noted members of the secret WhatsApp group offered to hire private investigators to help New York City Police spy on and discredit pro-Palestine activists at Columbia.

Leon compared the incident to COINTELPRO, an illegal effort by the FBI to surveil and subvert activist groups in the 1960s. The infamous program led to the FBI’s assassination of civil rights leader Fred Hampton and attempts to discredit Martin Luther King Jr.

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Revealed: US oligarchs demanded police crackdown on pro-Palestine protests (Part 2)

Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program featured a panel discussion on revelations about business leaders’ influence over the New York City mayor, with Black Alliance for Peace activist Erica Caines and former Green Party vice presidential candidate Ajamu Baraka reflecting on the implications of the startling development.

“[Mayor Adams] mobilized police forces and they went in to smash this protest movement,” Baraka explained. “Why Columbia?... Because of the fact that you're talking about a $13 billion endowment. And this demand by the students for divestment [from Israel] was seen as a serious challenge to capital.”

Caines said the business leaders’ influence over the NYC mayor illustrated “the collaboration between corporate power and law enforcement. It also highlights the paramilitary form in policing today. We can see that this is what the use of policing has become… This suppression of protest and the arrest of demonstrators at Columbia University only highlights that erosion of civil liberties.”

US police departments have been criticized for their relationship with Israel, with officers often traveling to the country to receive training from Israeli security forces. Observers also question the so-called “Army-to-police pipeline,” with departments increasingly staffed by veterans who critics claim bring a militarized mindset to policing.

“Police departments have employed their newly acquired military weaponry not only to combat terrorism but also for everyday patrolling,” noted The Atlantic magazine in 2011. “Now, police officers routinely walk the beat armed with assault rifles and garbed in black full-battle uniforms… In recent years, police departments both large and small have acquired bazookas, machine guns, and even armored vehicles (mini-tanks) for use in domestic police work.”

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A Ukrainian kamikaze drone crashed into a church in the village of Maloye Gorodishche in the Belgorod region, causing a fire on its roof, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.

He added that there were no casualties.

The Church of St. Sergius of Radonezh, which was set ablaze by the Ukrainian drone, was erected in 1907 and is a recognized architectural monument.

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Ukrainian forces made attempts to attack civilian infrastructure in Russia's Krasnodar region overnight with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). At least 10 drones were fended off by means of radio and electronic jamming equipment, the regional authorities reported.

One UAV crashed on the premises of an oil refinery in the city of Slavyansk-on-Kuban. No fire, casualties or damage were reported per preliminary information.

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The deputy head of Volodymyr Zelensky's office military intelligence officer Roman Mashovets was put on Russia’s wanted list under an article of the Criminal Code by the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Last year, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) suppressed the activities of an agent network of Ukrainian military intelligence which was planning terrorist attacks in Crimea, including assassination attempts on the head of the Crimean republic Sergey Aksyonov.

Mashovets was named as the organizer of the terrorist attacks and coordinator of the planning of assassinations of high-ranking officials in the region.

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Russian air defenses destroyed a Ukrainian airplane-type drone in the Belgorod region, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said. Two buildings and a car were damaged, but no injuries were reported, the governor added.

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Ukraine conflict reveals Russian supremacy in high-tech warfare of the future - report

“The US has been Ukraine's single most important ally” in its conflict with Russia, observes analysis from Business Insider, but Kiev’s use of American weapons systems has left it reliant on technology with “serious flaws.”

“One area in which the US has revealed its shortcomings is in electronic warfare,” the author writes. “Russia's jamming systems have created major issues with Western precision weaponry, including GMLRS rockets and Excalibur artillery shells. Russia's electronic warfare units have become increasingly adept at scrambling the GPS navigation systems used to guide the missiles and shells to their targets, sending them off course and rendering them useless.”

The US military’s attempts to develop microwave weapons and drone swarms to counter Russian unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have so far failed to bear fruit, demonstrating the shortcomings of a military industrial complex that for decades has been focused on “war against militant groups such as the Taliban* in Afghanistan” rather than combatting large state actors.

The result has been an inefficient defense production base, both in terms of cost and developing sufficient quantities of weapons. Analysis published earlier this year revealed that Russia is now producing three times more ammunition than the United States and all European allies of Ukraine combined as Russian military industry has stepped into high gear.

The article observes that the United States is capable of producing high-quality armaments, but claims they are hopelessly expensive compared to similar Russian equipment that can be produced at a much lower cost, allowing the country to prevail in “fights which require endurance.”

*Taliban is under UN sanctions for terrorist activities.

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Russian air defense systems destroyed nine ATACMS missiles and one drone over the Crimea, three drones over the Russian Belgorod region, 57 drones were destroyed and intercepted over the Krasnodar region, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

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🥴 Where am I? Who are these people?

Dazed and сonfused Biden got lost again at a сampaign event in Atlanta, Georgia.

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