What belongs together finally comes together ...

Israel's weapons manufacturer
Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, looking back onto the proud tradition of keeping Palestinians down since 1948, and Germany's number one car company Volkswagen, founded in the Third Reich allegedly for giving cheap cars to the Volk but actually ending up in motorizing Wehrmacht and SS

might join up to transform a car plant in Osnabrück into a producer of missile defense systems. So German workers would play a direct role in Israel's wars as defense and offense of course are two sides of the same medal.

#Israel #VW #Palestine #Militarism

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/israels-rafael-intends-to-buy-volkswagen-plant-in-western-germany-sources-say/

"After more than five weeks of fighting, the 14 days of fragile ceasefire between the US, Israel and Iran have given residents of Tehran the chance to take stock of the damage. The city of 9 million people is scarred by debris, rubble and bombed-out high-rises.

President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he was extending a ceasefire with Iran indefinitely a day before it was set to expire, even as plans for a fresh round of talks fell apart. The two sides remain far apart on key issues, including Iran’s nuclear program, its grip on the Strait of Hormuz and support for militant groups in the Middle East.

Even if the peace holds and a lasting solution is found, at least 3,300 Iranians, including civilians and members of the military, have been killed across the country, and the damage that’s already been done is substantial.

Iranian curbs on photography and internet access as well as US restrictions on high resolution satellite imagery have hampered visual damage assessment. But a study by Conflict Ecology researchers at Oregon State University, which draws on radar imagery, estimates conservatively that at least 7,645 buildings were damaged or destroyed across the country — including 60 education and 12 health facilities — between the beginning of hostilities on Feb. 28 and the start of the truce on April 8.

Members of the Iranian Red Crescent Society at the ruins of a building in Tehran on March 16.
A member of the Iranian Red Crescent Society at the ruins of a building in Tehran on March 16. Photographer: Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto/Getty Images

Bloomberg News analyzed land use within damage clusters in Tehran, and found that 2,816 buildings were hit, around 32% of which were linked to the military, 25% to industry, 21% to civilians, while 19% were commercial and 2% governmental."

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2026-iran-tehran-strike-damage-satellite-images/

#Iran #Tehran #USA #Trump #War #Militarism

"A crucial resource is being choked off from the world amid the ongoing conflict between the United States and Iran — and it’s not oil. It’s helium.

The rare, nonrenewable gas is a key ingredient for more than just party balloons. It’s needed for lifesaving medical procedures, groundbreaking research, and the current tech boom underpinning much of the US economy. The gas was also vital in the recent Artemis II mission that sent four astronauts around the moon and back.

But the war in Iran has cut off a significant portion of global helium resources, leading to a 50 percent price increase and warnings of a debilitating supply shortage. And although the United States and Iran are working to open key shipping routes in the region, the arrangement is far from certain, and the monthlong closure that has already transpired will still lead to supply shocks.

The crisis could have been avoided — if the United States had kept its Federal Helium Reserve, a national stockpile that accounted for nearly 40 percent of the world’s supply in 2013 and helped stabilize supply and prices.

For nearly thirty years, scientists, medical experts, and researchers urged lawmakers to preserve the national stockpile. Lawmakers instead spent that time selling it off bit by bit.

The privatization effort started in 1996 with the backing of President Bill Clinton, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), and the archconservative group that would go on to write Project 2025.

As the plan moved forward over the subsequent decades, federal agencies and congressional analysts failed to accurately forecast future helium demand, repeatedly promising that the private sector could meet industry needs — despite four global helium shortages that limited lifesaving procedures and forced universities to lay off researchers between 2006 and 2023."

https://jacobin.com/2026/04/iran-war-us-helium-crisis

#Iran #Helium #USA #Trump #Militarism #War

German citizens know that they have to take lesser financial support from the government into account
if they want to proudly present themselves as belonging to a nation that commands Europe's biggest and strongest armed forces.

And who doesn't like to indulge in the heroism of being respected an actor who can shove other states around due to its ability to project military power world wide?

Germans in their majority happily agree to live a more modest life if only the nation can succeed on the battlefield. And those who oppose striving to national greatness and putting the Bundeswehr above all other European armies - who by the way once celebrated victory over Nazi Germany - are just traitors to the nation and should be treated as such.

Good old times are here again as Prussian virtues are top priority once more - this time surely achieving what has failed in the last attempts to reach hegemony over Deutsch-Europa.

#war #militarism #Europa #Deutschland

https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-military-strategy-bundeswehr-boris-pistorius/

## WTAF

France and Poland plan to conduct air force exercises over the Baltics involving Rafale fighter jets "with nuclear warheads", they will practice strikes on targets in Russia, reported the Wirtualna Polska portal

Are these people insane?

#France #Poland #NuclearWeapon #Europe #FRpol #EUpol #Militarism #Idiocracy

Trump Allies Use Faith to Justify War as Divine Mission Through Hegseth and Graham

Trump allies use religious rhetoric to justify war, framing violence as God’s will. This analysis exposes the danger of blending faith, power, and militarism.

#Antimilitarism in not #pacifism. Altough there are overlapping motivations, they are different, where pacifism bears a deep moral component and anti-militarism has stronger analytic and strategic leanings.

Anti-militarism focussus more on the societal and structural effects of how the military is organised and what function it plays for the interests of the bourgeois class, the enforcement outwards for the state and internally in disciplining the #workingclass. This can also be the case for pacifism.

Anti-militarism however is not the rejection of the understanding that in the case of social revolution, the bourgeoisie will mobilize against the revolution and the need for (armed) #selfdefense against this. I will post more on this in the near future. As these questions are very important and need to seriously updated to a 21st century theory.

The wars in #Ukraine, #Sudan, #Palestine, #Syria, #Kurdistan, #Lebanon, #Venezuela, #Cuba and many other places, and the rise of militarism across the whole western hemisphere, has shown us that it is very important to understand these dynamic, understand our own need for security, and the need to be able to put something in opposition to the #militarism and #imperialism of the state and bourgeoisie, in order to prevent us from being dragged in their wars, become footsoldiers in defense of other regimes which we don't support either, or stand on the side as bystanders, instead of developing a truly revolutionary alternative that is able to navigate its own course.

#internationalism #antiimperialism #anarchism #war #revolution #socialism #communism #classstruggle #classwar

"A new visual analysis by The New York Times and munitions experts has uncovered additional evidence showing that the weapons that struck a sports hall, a school and two residential areas in the Iranian city of Lamerd were U.S.-made Precision Strike Missiles, or PrSMs.

The U.S. military has rejected the conclusions of earlier investigations by The Times and other news organizations that found that PrSMs had hit civilian locations in Lamerd on Feb. 28. It has denied it was attacking there on the day in question, and claimed the incoming weapon captured on video more closely resembled an Iranian cruise missile called the Hoveyzeh, given its length.

The strikes killed 21 people, according to Iranian officials. The Times was able to independently verify the identities of the victims. At least five were children, the youngest being 2 years old. All told that would make it the second known attack by U.S. forces to result in large-scale civilian fatalities on the opening day of the war. About six hours earlier, a Tomahawk missile hit a school in Minab some 250 miles away, killing 175 people, an episode President Trump initially tried to pin on the Iranians. A military investigation’s preliminary findings later showed that the United States was responsible for the strike.

The latest analysis is based on new video footage of detonations, new photo evidence of the damage, a missile-trajectory assessment, and the perspectives of multiple experts, including three U.S. government officials."

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/10/world/middleeast/iran-us-missle-strike-civilians-lamerd.html?unlocked_article_code=1.blA.bhBT.UAJyEcfaTV5t&smid=nytcore-ios-share

#Iran #War #Trump #Militarism