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Creating a Suspect Society: The Scary Side of the Technological Police State

By John W. Whitehead | Rutherford Institute | October 2, 2018

It’s a given that Big Brother is always watching us.

Unfortunately, thanks to the government’s ongoing efforts to build massive databases using emerging surveillance, DNA and biometrics technologies, Big Brother (and his corporate partners in crime) is getting even creepier and more invasive, intrusive and stalker-like.

Indeed, every dystopian sci-fi film (and horror film, for that matter) we’ve ever seen is suddenly converging into this present moment in a dangerous trifecta between science and technology, Big Business, and a government that wants to be all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful—but not without help from the citizenry.

On a daily basis, Americans are relinquishing (in many cases, voluntarily) the most intimate details of who we are—our biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.)—in order to navigate an increasingly technologically-enabled world.

Consider all the ways we continue to be tracked, hunted, hounded, and stalked by the government and its dubious agents:

By tapping into your phone lines and cell phone communications, the government knows what you say.

By uploading all of your emails, opening your mail, and reading your Facebook posts and text messages, the government knows what you write.

By monitoring your movements with the use of license plate readers, surveillance cameras and other tracking devices, the government knows where you go.

By churning through all of the detritus of your life—what you read, where you go, what you say—the government can predict what you will do.

By mapping the synapses in your brain, scientists—and in turn, the government—will soon know what you remember.

By mapping your biometrics—your “face-print”—and storing the information in a massive, shared government database available to bureaucratic agencies, police and the military, the government’s goal is to use facial recognition software to identify you (and every other person in the country) and track your movements, wherever you go.

And by accessing your DNA, the government will soon know everything else about you that they don’t already know: your family chart, your ancestry, what you look like, your health history, your inclination to follow orders or chart your own course, etc.

Of course, none of these technologies are foolproof.

Nor are they immune from tampering, hacking or user bias.

Nevertheless, they have become a convenient tool in the hands of government agents to render null and void the Constitution’s requirements of privacy and its prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Consequently, no longer are we “innocent until proven guilty” in the face of DNA evidence that places us at the scene of a crime, behavior sensing technology that interprets our body temperature and facial tics as suspicious, and government surveillance devices that cross-check our biometrics, license plates and DNA against a growing database of unsolved crimes and potential criminals.

For a long time, the government was required to at least observe some basic restrictions on when, where and how it could access someone’s biometrics and DNA and use it against them.

That is no longer the case.

The information is being amassed through a variety of routine procedures, with the police leading the way as prime collectors of biometrics for something as non-threatening as a simple moving violation. The nation’s courts are also doing their part to “build” the database, requiring biometric information as a precursor to more lenient sentences. And of course Corporate America has made it so easy to use one’s biometrics to access everything from bank accounts to cell phones.

This doesn’t even touch on the many ways in which the government is using our DNA against us, the Constitution be damned.

DNA technology, what police like to refer to as a “modern fingerprint,” reveals everything about “who we are, where we come from, and who we will be.”

With such a powerful tool at their disposal, it was inevitable that the government’s collection of DNA would become a slippery slope toward government intrusion.

Now, Americans are vulnerable to the government accessing, analyzing and storing their DNA without their knowledge or permission.

Even hospitals have gotten in on the game by taking and storing newborn babies’ DNA, often without their parents’ knowledge or consent. It’s part of the government’s mandatory genetic screening of newborns. However, in many states, the DNA is stored indefinitely.

What this means for those being born today is inclusion in a government database that contains intimate information about who they are, their ancestry, and what awaits them in the future, including their inclinations to be followers, leaders or troublemakers.

For the rest of us, it’s just a matter of time before the government gets hold of our DNA, either through mandatory programs carried out in connection with law enforcement and corporate America.

If you haven’t yet connected the dots, let me point the way.

Having already used surveillance technology to render the entire American populace potential suspects, DNA technology in the hands of government will complete our transition to a suspect society in which we are all merely waiting to be matched up with a crime.

No longer can we consider ourselves innocent until proven guilty.

Now we are all suspects in a DNA lineup until circumstances and science say otherwise.

It’s not just yourself you have to worry about, either.

It’s also anyone related to you who can be connected by DNA.

Unfortunately, we now find ourselves in the unenviable position of being monitored, managed, convicted and controlled by our technology, which answers not to us but to our government and corporate rulers.

This is the fact-is-stranger-than-fiction lesson that is being pounded into us on a daily basis.

While the Fourth Amendment was created to prevent government officials from searching an individual’s person or property without a warrant and probable cause—evidence that some kind of criminal activity was afoot—the founders could scarcely have imagined a world in which we needed protection against widespread government breaches of our privacy on a cellular level.

Yet that’s exactly what we are lacking.

Once again, technology has outdistanced both our understanding of it and our ability to adequately manage the consequences of unleashing it on an unsuspecting populace.

In the end, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, what all of this amounts to is a carefully crafted campaign designed to give the government access to and control over what it really wants: you.

October 2, 2018 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

IAEA dismisses Israel’s call to inspect Iran facility

Press TV – October 2, 2018

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has declined to “take at face value” a recent Israeli claim that Iran has a secret atomic warehouse.

“The Agency uses all safeguards relevant information available to it but it does not take any information at face value,” IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano said in a statement released on Tuesday.

Although Amano did not make an explicit reference to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim against Iran, it is his first public pronouncement since the premier’s speech.

“It should be noted that under the existing verification framework, the Agency sends inspectors to sites and locations only when needed,” he added.

During his speech on Thursday at the 73rd annual session of the UN General Assembly in New York, Netanyahu once again took the stage to bring out fresh theatrics against Iran, repeating his threadbare allegation that the country is working to develop nuclear weapons at a “secret” site and urged the IAEA to inspect it.

“In May, we exposed the site of Iran’s secret atomic archive. Today, I’m revealing the site of a second facility; Iran’s secret atomic warehouse,” claimed the Israeli PM, who added, “Iran has not abandoned its goal to develop nuclear weapons.”

Amano further emphasized that the IAEA’s work related to nuclear verification “must always be impartial, factual, and professional,” saying, “In order to maintain credibility, the Agency’s independence in relation to the implementation of verification activities is of paramount importance.”

The IAEA chief added that the agency is conducting verification and monitoring of Iran’s nuclear-related commitments under the 2015 nuclear agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran signed with major world powers.

“These activities will continue to be carried out within the parameters of the relevant decisions and resolutions of the IAEA Board of Governors and the UN Security Council as appropriate,” he pointed out.

Pointing to his reports to the IAEA Board of Governors, Amano noted that the agency would continue its evaluations regarding the absence of “undeclared nuclear material and activities for Iran.”

“The Agency continues to evaluate Iran’s declarations under the Additional Protocol, and has conducted complementary accesses under the Additional Protocol to all the sites and locations in Iran which it needed to visit,” the head of the UN nuclear agency said.

In his introductory statement to the Board of Governors in Vienna on September 10, Amano said Iran is living up to all its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal.

He added that the IAEA would continue to verify the non-diversion of nuclear material declared by Iran under its Safeguards Agreement.

Later in his opening address to the IAEA’s 62nd General Conference in Vienna on September 17, the IAEA director general reaffirmed that Iran is in compliance with the nuclear agreement.

October 2, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | 1 Comment

Colonialist Settlers Flood Al-Khan Al-Ahmar With Sewage

Ma’an – October 2, 2018

JERUSALEM – As Israel threatened to raid and demolish the Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar at any moment since the evacuation period ended, Israeli settlers stormed the village and flooded the area with wastewater, on Tuesday afternoon.

Locals said that Israeli settlers from the nearby illegal Israeli settlement of Kfar Adummim stormed the village, and were confronted by international and local activists along with residents of Khan al-Ahmar.

Israeli settlers managed to flood the area with wastewater before activists and residents were able to stop them.

Following the Israeli High Court’s approval for the demolition, it had granted a deadline for the residents of Khan al-Ahmar to evacuate the village until October 1st.

Since the deadline has ended, the village is in danger of being demolished by Israeli forces at any moment, which would displace 181 people, half of whom are children.

Critics and human rights organizations argue that the demolition is part of an Israeli plan to expand the nearby illegal Israeli settlement of Kfar Adummim and to create a region of contiguous Israeli control from Jerusalem almost to the Dead Sea, which would make a contiguous Palestinian state impossible.

Israel has been constantly trying to uproot Bedouin communities from the east of Jerusalem area to allow settlement expansion in the area, which would later turn the entire eastern part of the West Bank into a settlement zone.

Although international humanitarian law prohibits the demolition of the village and illegal confiscation of private property, Israeli forces continue their planned expansion by forcing evictions and violating basic human rights of the people.

October 2, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | 2 Comments

Elderly man killed by Israeli gunfire east of Gaza

Palestine Information Center | October 2, 2018

AL-MAGHAZI – An elderly Palestinian man was killed on Tuesday evening by Israeli tank fire east of al-Maghazi refugee camp in the middle area of the Gaza Strip.

The PIC reporter said that Ibrahim al-Arrouqi, 78, was hit with a 250-mm bullet fired by an Israeli tank stationed on the Israeli side of the border fence east of Gaza.

He added that al-Arrouqi was shot while sitting in front of his house which is relatively far from the border fence.

October 2, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | 2 Comments

As Saudis Defend Against War Crimes Allegations, Saudi Airstrike in Yemen Kills Entire Family

Locals walks among the rubble of Hussein al-Hajouri`s brick and mud home which was destroyed by a Saudi airstrike on October 3, 2018. Photo | Ahmed AbdulKareem
By Ahmed Abdulkareem | MintPress News | October 2, 2018

HAJJAH, YEMEN – Saudi Arabia, backed by the United States, carried out an airstrike targeting a displaced family in the Mustaba district in the province of Hajjah, southwestern Yemen early Tuesday morning. A man, his wife, and their nine-year old only-daughter were killed in the strike, along with 10 others.

A 30-year-old witness told MintPress News :

Two airstrikes targeted Hussein al-Hajouri`s house at 2 a.m., killing Hussein and his wife and daughter. We found some parts of their bodies 100 meters from the house that was bombed; some of it is still under the rubble.”

Rescue efforts were complicated by fear of additional strikes, as Saudi warplanes continued to circle the area after the initial strikes. Saudi Arabia has been known to use double-tap strikes in Yemen, carrying out an initial airstrike and then circling back to target rescuers.

The latest attack comes just hours after Saudi Arabia admitted that its forces have committed what it called “certain mistakes” in Yemen, after increasing pressure from international bodies and human-rights groups that accuse the kingdom of carrying out war crimes in the country.

Saudi Defense Ministry spokesman Osaiker Alotaibi told a panel of 18 independent experts on Monday that a coalition investigation had uncovered “the existence of certain unintentional mistakes in a number of these operations,” adding that “the task force recommended that perpetrators should be held to account and victims should enjoy redress.”

In her response to the Saudi Defense Ministry, the panel’s chairwoman, Renate Winter, wondered why schools and hospitals had been targeted repeatedly:

You say it’s an accident. How many such accidents can you bear and how many such accidents can people in Yemen bear?”

Last month, investigators launched an international inquiry into war crimes in Yemen and found evidence of such crimes committed in the country. Their August 28 report said Saudi airstrikes had caused most of the documented civilian casualties.

Since the war began in 2015, the U.S.-backed, Saudi-led coalition has repeatedly targeted displaced civilians. In the most recent such attack before today, airstrikes targeted displaced families near the port city of Hodeida on August 24, killing or wounding 31 people, 24 of whom were children. Many of the victims of the strike belonged to a single family.

More recently, at least two Yemeni civilians were killed and three others wounded when Saudi warplanes struck a vehicle in the city of Abs in Hajjah, on Tuesday.

This week, one person was killed and a number of others sustained injuries after Saudi fighter jets conducted an airstrike on Munirah city in Hodeida, western Yemen. Saudi jets also conducted an airstrike on the residential area of Ghaferah in the Dhahir district in the northern province of Saada, killing a child and wounding several others.

Over 600,000 civilians have been killed or injured in Yemen since the Saudi-led coalition began its attacks in 2015, according to Yemen’s Ministry of Human Rights based in Sana’a. The U.S.-backed coalition’s blockade on Yemen has also triggered an epidemic of disease and famine across the country.

Ahmed AbdulKareem is a Yemeni journalist. He covers the war in Yemen for MintPress News as well as local Yemeni media.

October 2, 2018 Posted by | War Crimes | , | 3 Comments

‘We’d take out Russia’s nukes,’ US NATO envoy says, claiming ‘banned’ missiles are being developed

RT | October 2, 2018

The US would look into ways of “taking out” new Russian missiles if they become operational, the US envoy to NATO said, accusing Moscow of developing a weapon that “violates” the Soviet-US nuclear arms treaty.

US Ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison didn’t miss an opportunity to fire a warning shot in the direction of Russia when accusing it of building new nuclear missiles that would allegedly be pointed at Europe. Should such missiles be completed, she said at the Tuesday briefing, “at that point, we would be looking at the capability to take out a [Russian] missile that could hit any of our countries.”

Hutchison then doubled down on the threat, saying: “Counter measures [by the United States] would be to take out the missiles that are in development by Russia in violation of the treaty.” She added: “They are on notice.”

Hutchison was referring to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), which bans the use of all nuclear and conventional missiles, as well as their launchers, that have ranges of between 500km and 5,500km. The US has claimed that Moscow is not complying with the INF treaty, an accusation that Russia has repeatedly rejected.

“We have been trying to send a message to Russia for several years that we know they are violating the treaty, we have shown Russia the evidence that we have that they are violating the treaty,” Hutchison maintained.

The Russian Foreign Ministry blasted the statements made by the US envoy as “aggressive and destructive,” adding that they will get a detailed response from Russian military experts. NATO doesn’t understand the degree of its responsibility and the danger posed by such aggressive rhetoric, the ministry said.

Hutchison’s comment came several weeks after President Donald Trump signed the US National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2019. The document contains, among other things, allegations that Moscow violated the INF Treaty.

Moscow, in turn, accuses the US and “some of its allies” of knowingly violating the INF by deploying Mk-41 launching systems close to Russian borders. These can be easily repurposed for firing banned ground-based cruise missiles, it says, while Washington denies the accusations.

Under the 2019 NDAA, US legislators allocated $58 million to counter Russia’s alleged non-compliance with the INF Treaty. The measures to counter the alleged activities include a “research and development program on a ground-launched intermediate-range missile,” which, somehow, should not itself violate the treaty.

Russian lawmakers have also promised countermeasures. “If the missile announced by Congress indeed makes it into the American arsenal, we will have to develop and adopt the same thing. Russia has the military and technical capacities for that,” Viktor Bondarev, the head of the defense committee of Russia’s Federal Council, has said.

October 2, 2018 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | , , , , | 2 Comments

7 years after US got its way in South Sudan & death toll approaches 400,000, study shows

RT | October 2, 2018

The US pushed hard to split South Sudan from its northern neighbor. But instead of ending violence, the move led to a civil war, which caused nearly 400,000 deaths, according to a new study.

South Sudan is the world’s youngest internationally recognized nation, which got its independence from Sudan in 2011 after decades of bloodshed and two major civil wars. The bid for independence was pushed hard by the US under several administrations. But the euphoria from the birth of a new nation didn’t last long.

In late 2013, President Salva Kiir Mayardit – best known in the US for receiving a Stetson hat as a gift from George W Bush and making it a permanent part of his image – accused his former deputy Riek Machar and other opponents of attempting a coup. Violence broke out in the capital and spread all over the country. After four years and several failed attempts at a peace deal, South Sudan remains just as divided as the unified Sudan was before 2011.

The death toll from the civil war is hard to count. The UN tally in 2016 stated it at about 50,000. A new study by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, which was partially funded by the US State Department, estimated that the conflict resulted in 382,000 deaths, roughly half directly from violence and the rest from causes like malnutrition and diseases, which were exacerbated by the ongoing conflict. Some 2 million were displaced while about 2.5 million fled to neighboring nations, the study said.

RT’s Caleb Maupin reports how the US-backed nation-building project in South Sudan turned out to be yet another failure.

October 2, 2018 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Video, Wars for Israel | , | 2 Comments

France Raids Anti-Zionist Islamic Center in North

Al-Manar | October 2, 2018

A so-called “counter-terror” operation, involving around 200 policemen, is underway on Tuesday in France, with the police forces raiding the headquarters of Islamic organization Centre Zahra France in the country’s north, France Info radio station reported, citing the prefecture of the department.

Centre Zahra France is a Shiite organization, known for its anti-Zionist rhetoric, namely, in social media.

Eleven people were detained in the raid in the commune of Grande-Synthe, a suburb of the port city of Dunkirk, local media reported on Tuesday.

“This morning, starting from 6 a.m. [local time, 04:00 GMT], the national police has been carrying out an operation in the Grande-Synthe commune, Nord department. The operation is being conducted within counter-terrorism efforts… Centre Zahra France’s activity has been followed up closely due to the fact that its leaders grant support to a number of terror organizations,” France Info radio station reported, citing the Nord prefecture’s statement.

The police have also raided 12 homes of the Centre Zahra France’s major leaders.

October 2, 2018 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

One Click Closer to Annihilation

Last week Washington threatened Iran, Syria, China, Venezuela and Russia

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • October 2, 2018

The nuclear war doomsday clock maintained on the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists website has advanced to two minutes before midnight, the closest point to possible atomic apocalypse since the end of the Cold War. In 1995 the clock was at fourteen minutes to midnight, but the opportunity to set it back even further was lost as the United States and its European allies took advantage of a weakened Russia to advance NATO into Eastern Europe, setting the stage for a new cold war, which is now underway.

It is difficult to imagine how the United States might avoid a new war in the Middle East given the recent statements that have come out of Washington, and, given that the Russians are also active in the region, a rapid and massive escalation of something that starts out as a minor incident should not be ruled out.

President Donald Trump set the tone when he harangued the United Nations last Tuesday, warning that the United States would go it alone in defense of its perceived interests, with no regard for international bodies that exist to limit armed conflict and punish those who commit war crimes.

Trump’s 35-minute speech featured an anticipated long section targeting Iran. He commented that:

“Iran’s leaders sow chaos, death, and destruction. They do not respect their neighbors or borders, or the sovereign rights of nations. Instead, Iran’s leaders plunder the nation’s resources to enrich themselves and to spread mayhem across the Middle East and far beyond… We cannot allow the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism to possess the planet’s most dangerous weapons. We cannot allow a regime that chants ‘Death to America,’ and that threatens Israel with annihilation, to possess the means to deliver a nuclear warhead to any city on Earth.”

There are a number of things exaggerated or incorrect in Trump’s description of Iran as well as in the conclusions he draws. The Middle East and other adjacent Muslim countries are in chaos because the United States has destabilized the region starting with the empowering of the Islamist Mujadeddin in the war against Soviet Afghanistan in the 1980s. It then invaded Afghanistan in 2001 followed by Iraq in 2003, enabling the rise of ISIS and giving local al-Qaeda affiliates a new lease on life, before turning on Damascus with the Syria Accountability Act later in the same year and then destroying the Libyan government under Barack Obama. These were, not coincidentally, policies promoted by Israel that received, as a result, bipartisan support in Congress.

The emotional description of disrespecting “neighbors, borders and sovereign rights” fits the U.S. and Israel to a “T” rather than Iran. The U.S. has soldiers stationed illegally in Syria while Israel bombs the country on an almost daily basis, so who is doing the disrespecting? Washington and Tel Aviv are also the principal supporters of terrorists in the Middle East, not Iran, – arming them, training them, hospitalizing them when they are injured, and making sure that they continue their work in attacking Syria’s legitimate government.

And as for “most dangerous weapons,” Iran doesn’t have any and is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Israel and the U.S. have not signed. Nor would Iran have any such weapons in the future but for the fact that Trump has backed out of the agreement to monitor and inspect Iranian nuclear research and development, which will, if anything, motivate Tehran to develop weapons to protect itself.

Trump also elaborated on the following day regarding Iran’s alleged but demonstrably non-existent nuclear program when he indicated to the Security Council that Washington would go after countries that violate the rules on nuclear proliferation. He clearly meant Iran but the comment was ironic in the extreme, as Israel is the world’s leading nuclear rogue nation with an arsenal of two hundred nuclear devices, having stolen the uranium and key elements of the technology from the United States in the 1960s.

Trump’s new appraisal of the state of the Middle East is somewhat a turnaround. Five months ago he said that he wanted to “get out” of Syria and bring the soldiers home. But in early September, the secretary of state’s special representative for Syria engagement, James Jeffrey, indicated that the U.S. would stay to counter Iranian activities.

And John Bolton has also recently had a lot to say about Iran, Syria and Russia. Last Monday he confirmed that Washington intends to keep a military presence in Syria until Iran withdraws all its forces from the country. “We’re not going to leave as long as Iranian troops are outside Iranian borders, and that includes Iranian proxies and militias.” On the following day, speaking at a Sheldon Adelson funded United Against Nuclear Iran Summit, he said the “murderous regime” of “mullahs in Tehran” would face serious consequences if they persist in their willingness to “lie, cheat and deceive. If you cross us, our allies, or our partners; if you harm our citizens there will indeed be hell to pay. Let my message today be clear: We are watching, and we will come after you.”

John Bolton also warned the Russians about their decision to upgrade the air defenses in Syria in the wake of the recent Israeli bombing raid that led to the shooting down of a Russian intelligence plane. He said absurdly and inaccurately “The Israelis have a legitimate right to self-defense against this Iranian aggressive behavior, and what we’re all trying to do is reduce tensions, reduce the possibility of major new hostilities. That’s why the president has spoken to this issue and why we would regard introducing the S-300 as a major mistake.”

Bolton then elaborated that “We think introducing the S-300s to the Syrian government would be a significant escalation by the Russians and something that we hope, if these press reports are accurate, they would reconsider.” And regarding who was responsible for the deaths of the Russian airmen, Bolton also has a suitable explanation “There shouldn’t be any misunderstanding here… The party responsible for the attacks in Syria and Lebanon and really the party responsible for the shooting down of the Russian plane is Iran.”

Bolton’s desire to exonerate Israel and always blame Iran is inevitably on display. He is curiously objecting to the placement of missiles that are defensive in nature, presumably because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has asked him to do so. The only way one can be threatened by the S-300 is if you are attacking Syria, but that might be a fine point that Bolton fails to grasp as he was a draft dodger during the Vietnam War and has since that time not placed himself personally at risk in support of any of the wars he has been promoting.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis also spoke on Monday, at the Pentagon. His spin on Iran was slightly different but his message was the same. “As part of this overarching problem, we have to address Iran. Everywhere you go in the Middle East where there’s instability you will find Iran. So in terms of getting to the end state of the Geneva [negotiations] process, Iran, too, has a role to play, which is to stop fomenting trouble.”

To complete the onslaught, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, speaking at the same United Against Nuclear Iran Summit as Bolton, accused European nations seeking to avoid U.S. sanctions over the purchase of Iranian oil as “solidifying Iran’s ranking as the number-one state sponsor of terrorism. I imagine the corrupt ayatollahs and IGRC [Revolutionary Guards] were laughing this morning.”

Even the U.S. Congress has figured out that something is afoot. A bipartisan group of U.S. senators, who were carefully briefed on what to think by the Israeli government, warned after a trip to the Middle East that war between the United States and Iranian proxies is “imminent.”

Iran is fun to kick around but China has also been on the receiving end of late. Last Wednesday the U.N. Security Council meeting was presided over by Donald Trump, who warned that Beijing is “meddling” in U.S. elections against him personally. It is a bizarre claim, particularly as the only country up until now demonstrated as having actually interfered in American politics in any serious way is Israel. The accusation comes on top of Washington’s latest foray into the world of sanctions, directed against the Chinese government-run Equipment Development Department of the Chinese Central Military Commission and its director Li Shangfu for “engaging in significant transactions” with a Russian weapons manufacturer that is on a list of U.S. sanctioned companies.

The Chinese sanctions are serious business as they forbid conducting any transactions that go through the U.S. financial system. It is the most powerful weapon Washington has at its disposal. As most international transactions are conducted in dollars and pass through American banks that means that it will be impossible for the Chinese government to make weapons purchases from many foreign sources. If foreign banks attempt to collaborate with China to evade the restrictions, they too will be sanctioned.

So if you’re paying attention to Trump, Bolton, Mattis, Pompeo and Haley you are probably digging a new bomb shelter right now. We have told Iran that it cannot send its soldiers and “proxies” outside its own borders while Syria cannot have advanced missiles to defend its airspace, which Russia is “on notice” for providing. China also cannot buy weapons from Russia while Venezuela is also being threatened because it has what is generally believed to be a terrible government. Meanwhile, America is in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan to stay while nearly all agree a war with Iran is coming soon. Everyone is the enemy and everyone hates the United States, mostly for good reasons. If this is Making America Great Again, I think I would settle for just making America “good” so we could possibly have that doomsday clock go back a couple of minutes.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is http://www.councilforthenationalinterest.org .

October 2, 2018 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , | 3 Comments