Magic Novichok
By Craig Murray | October 23, 2020
The security services put an extraordinary amount of media priming effort into explaining why the alleged novichok attack on the Skripals had a delayed effect of several hours, and then failed to kill them. Excuses included that it was a cold day which slowed their metabolisms, that the chemical took a long time to penetrate their skins, that the gel containing the novichok inhibited its operation, that it was a deliberately non-fatal dose, that rain had diluted the novichok on the doorknob, that the Skripals were protected by gloves and possibly only came into contact in taking the gloves off, or that nerve agents are not very deadly and easily treated.
You can take your pick as to which of those convincingly explains why the Skripals apparently swanned round Salisbury for four hours after coming into contact with the novichok coated doorknob, well enough to both drink in a pub and eat a good Italian lunch, before both being instantaneously struck down and disabled at precisely the same time so neither could call for help, despite being different sexes, ages and weights. Just as the chief nurse of the British army happened to walk past.
So now let us fast forward to Alexei Navalny. Traces of “novichok” were allegedly found on a water bottle in his hotel room in Tomsk. That appears to eliminate the cold and the gloves. It also makes it possible he ingested some of the “novichok”. I can find no suggestion anywhere it was contained in a gel. So why was this deadly substance not deadly?
There seems no plain allegation of where Navalny came into contact with the “novichok”. Assuming he spent the night in his hotel room, then the very latest he can have come into contact with the deadly nerve agent would be shortly before he left the room, assuming he then subsequently touched the bottle before leaving. This is true whether the bottle was the source or he just touched it with novichok on his hands. After poisoning with this very deadly nerve agent – which Germany claims is “harder” than other examples, he then checked out of the hotel, went to the airport, checked in for his flight, had a cup of tea and boarded the flight, all before being taken ill. This after contact with a chemical weapon allegedly deadlier than this:
Which of course is aside from all the questions as to why the Russians would use again the poison that was ineffective against the Skripals, and why exactly the FSB would not have swept and cleaned up the hotel room after he had left. All that is even before we get to some of the questions I had already asked:
Further we are expected to believe that, the Russian state having poisoned Navalny, the Russian state then allowed the airplane he was traveling in, on a domestic flight, to divert to another airport, and make an emergency landing, so he could be rushed to hospital. If the Russian secret services had poisoned Navalny at the airport before takeoff as alleged, why would they not insist the plane stick to its original flight plan and let him die on the plane? They would have foreseen what would happen to the plane he was on.
Next, we are supposed to believe that the Russian state, having poisoned Navalny, was not able to contrive his death in the intensive care unit of a Russian state hospital. We are supposed to believe that the evil Russian state was able to falsify all his toxicology tests and prevent doctors telling the truth about his poisoning, but the evil Russian state lacked the power to switch off the ventilator for a few minutes or slip something into his drip. In a Russian state hospital.
Next we are supposed to believe that Putin, having poisoned Navalny with novichok, allowed him to be flown to Germany to be saved, making it certain the novichok would be discovered. And that Putin did this because he was worried Merkel was angry, not realising she might be still more angry when she discovered Putin had poisoned him with novichok
There are a whole stream of utterly unbelievable points there, every single one of which you have to believe to go along with the western narrative. Personally I do not buy a single one of them, but then I am a notorious Russophile traitor.
The eagerness of the Western political establishment to accept and amplify nonsensical Russophobia is very worrying. Fear is a powerful political tool, politicians need an enemy, and still more does the military-industrial complex that so successfully siphons off state money. Many fat livings depend on the notion that Russia poses a serious threat to us. The nonsense people are prepared to believe to maintain that fiction give a most unpleasant glimpse into the human psyche.
US elections: with two weeks to go who’s winning
By William Stroock | October 23, 2020
2016 was a bad year for political pollsters and predictors. At his website, FiveThirtyEight, data guru Nate Silver gave Hillary Clinton a 65% Chance of defeating Donald Trump. Silver’s prediction model was on the low end. The New York Times said Hillary had an 85% chance of winning. The Princeton Election Consortium put Hillary’s chances at 99%. Hillary Clinton was heavily favored in 2016.
But she shouldn’t have been. At the end of the Obama presidency much of the nation was in a malaise. The Obama economic recovery never achieved an annual growth rate of 3% and wasn’t felt throughout large swaths of the country. While Obamacare enabled some Americans to buy health insurance, it didn’t lead to universal coverage and was passed by the Democrats via parliamentary muscle and maneuver. The president’s Iran nuclear deal was never ratified by the senate and did not have the force of law. Under Obama the Democrat Party didn’t grow, it shrank. Obama lost nearly a thousand elected Democrat seats throughout the nation. Obama’s presidency simply wasn’t transformative as he and the Democrats promised.
After eight years of Obama, Hillary had a tough task before her. Replacing a two-term president from your party, while not impossible, is hard to do. Just ask Vice Presidents Richard Nixon and Al Gore. In 2016 had Hillary Clinton been in the White House for eight years, a brilliant Democrat candidate like Barrack Obama would’ve been hard pressed to defeat Donald Trump.
Hillary was not a brilliant candidate. From her first senate run in 2000 she was stiff on the stump and had trouble connecting with voters. One got the sense that everything Hillary said had been presented to a focus group and written into a talking point. Overtime she should have become a better campaigner. But bizarrely, from 2000 through 2016 Hillary only became more awkward, ‘Why aren’t I fifty points ahead!?’ she shouted in a weird televised message during the 2016 campaign. She couldn’t defeat Obama in the 2008 Democrat primary and barely defeated socialist Bernie in 2016
Hillary could have learned a thing or two from her husband. In 1992 Bill Clinton jumped into the Democrat primary. Clinton cast himself as an old fashioned democrat in the model of JFK and FDR, an alternative to the ‘bleeding heart’ liberals that lost five of the last six presidential elections to the GOP. Clinton reinvented campaigning, appearing on talk shows and attending townhalls where he took questions from voters. Clinton had an uncanny knack for connecting with people in these venues. After twelve years of Republicans in the White House and a recession, the circumstances for Clinton were fantastic and he won a three-way race. With a good economy at his back in 1996, Clinton easily defeated Republican dinosaur Bob Dole.
In 2000 Vice President Al Gore won the Democrat nomination. But despite eight years of peace and prosperity, Gore lost the 2000 election by a razor thin margin. The Vice President looked uncomfortable before the cameras as he tried to overcome his reputation for being ‘wooden’. His ideas like a social security ‘lock box’ were the butt of jokes. His three debates with GOP nominee George W. Bush were the turning point of the campaign. Bush was amiable while Gore looked like a smug, know it all bully lacking self-awareness. Gore thought he won the debates. Exasperated staffers showed him clips of Saturday Night Live’s brutal parodies of his performance.
So at this point readers are probably wondering where Trump and Biden fit into this matrix of circumstances, ideas and candidates. Let’s ask ourselves who’s the better candidate. Joe Biden has spent most of the campaign in his Wilmington home. When Biden does come out, he reads cues from a comically large teleprompter, very often losing his place and the context of what he is saying. Biden looks tired and old. On most days he ends press availability before noon. The size of the Trump crowd protesting outside a Biden campaign event usually outnumbers the people attending. Biden just isn’t a big campaign draw. At this point Biden’s best argument is that he’s not Trump. His TV ads are sentimental calls for unity and change but offer no specifics. In essence Biden tells voters nothing about what he would do in the Oval Office.
Despite being 73 years old and having just recovered from the Corona Virus, Trump is campaigning across the country. He often holds two rallies a day; thousands attend. These rallies are visual masterpieces, usually held in local airports with Air Force One in the background. On the trail, Trump is relentlessly on message, touting his record on China, trade war, Corona Virus and the economy. He hammers Biden on his 47 years in Washington and son Hunter’s corruption. As far as circumstances go, who would you rather be right now, Trump or Biden?
Iran Seeks to Confuse the United States?
Another story that is more fiction than fact
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe. Credit: The Hill/ YouTube
By Philip Giraldi | American Herald Tribune | October 23, 2020
Those who have been waiting for the elusive October Surprise that will upset the apple cart on election day are admittedly running out of time. The media’s unwillingness to even consider that the antics of Hunter Biden just might constitute an embarrassment of major proportions or even something worse has done much to kill that story. And the old tried and true expedient of starting a little war somewhere is also proving to be a false hope as no one appears ready to provoke the righteously wrathful Secretary of State Mike Pompeo by ponying up a casus belli. Maybe there is still time for a false flag operation, but even that would require more prior planning than the White House appears capable of.
There is, however, one area that might just be exploitable to create a crisis, though it much depends on whether a tired public is willing to go one more round over the issue of “foreign election interference.” And yes, the Russians are presumed to be involved, on this occasion, as they always are, joined by the ever-vengeful Iranians.
On Wednesday Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe held a news conference at which he laid out details of the most recent dastardly plot against American democracy. He described how Iran and Russia both obtained American voter registration data, apparently through publicly accessible databases and through purchases of email lists. Though no actual votes have been altered, they are using that information “to influence the presidential election as it enters its final two weeks.” Ratcliffe elaborated how “This data can be used by foreign actors to attempt to communicate false information to registered voters that they hope will cause confusion, sow chaos and undermine… confidence in American democracy.”
Ratcliffe focused mostly on Iran, saying that it had been identified as the source of what he described as a claimed 1,500 “spoofed emails” routed through Estonia that “seek to intimidate voters, incite social unrest, and damage President Trump.” Iran was also blamed for other material, to include a video encouraging the casting of illegal ballots both domestically and overseas. Additional intelligence suggests that Iran is planning to take more steps to influence the election in the coming days, though what those measures could possibly be was not revealed.
Other government sources elaborated, indicating that Iranian intelligence has been credited with the sending of the email messages going out to Democratic voters in four states, including hotly disputed Pennsylvania and Florida. The emails falsely claimed to be from the alleged far-right group Proud Boys which has been much in the news. Their message was that “we will come after you” if the recipients fail to vote for Donald Trump.
It doesn’t take much to realize that threatening messages relating to voting for Trump allegedly coming from a source described as “racist” would undoubtedly motivate most registered Democratic voters to do the opposite, but that seems to have escaped the analysts of the Directorate of National Intelligence. And one must also ask why Tehran would want the re-election of a president who has been unremittingly hostile, including imposing crippling sanctions, withdrawing from a beneficial nuclear agreement, and assassinating a leading Revolutionary Guards general. Even U.S. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer appears to have figured that one out, saying “It was clear to me that the intent of Iran in this case and Russia in many more cases is to basically undermine confidence in our elections. This action I do not believe was aimed… at discrediting President Trump.”
The anti-Trump New York Times has, of course, another, more sinister interpretation, suggesting that “… it may also play into President Trump’s hands. For weeks, he has argued, without evidence, that the vote on Nov. 3 will be ‘rigged,’ that mail-in ballots will lead to widespread fraud and that the only way he can be defeated is if his opponents cheat. Now, on the eve of the final debate, he has evidence of foreign influence campaigns designed to hurt his re-election chances, even if they did not affect the voting infrastructure.”
The Times also notes a broader conspiracy by the dreadful Persians, explaining how “Iran has tinkered at the edges of American election interference since 2012, but always as a minor actor. Last year, it stepped up its game, private cybersecurity firms have warned. They have caught Iranian operatives occasionally impersonating politicians and journalists around the world, often to spread narratives that are aimed at denigrating Israel or Saudi Arabia, its two major adversaries in the Middle East.” Again, however, the article provides no explanation of what Iran could possibly hope to gain from the minimal “tinkering” it might be able to engage in an American election in which billions of dollars will be spent by Democrats and Republicans who are viciously attacking each other without any outside help.
Ratcliffe had less to say about Russia but U.S. media coverage of the story included a referral to a recent account of how the U.S. military’s Cyber Command helped take down a network developed by Russian hackers called TrickBot that had been used in ransomware attacks directed against companies as well as cities and towns across the United States. It also reported how “In recent days, another Russian hacking group called Energetic Bear, often linked to the F.S.B. — one of the successors to the Soviet Union’s K.G.B. — appears to have focused its attention on gaining access to state and local government networks. That has caught the attention of federal investigators because, until now, the group had largely targeted energy firms, including public utilities.”
There was, however, no evidence that either hacking group was being directed against voter systems, so Russia’s inclusion in the front-page Times story headlined “Iran and Russia Seek to Influence Election in Final Days, U.S. Officials Warn” has to be considered questionable editorial judgment. Perhaps scaremongering would be a better description. In any event, the story itself is much ado about nothing. Iran’s sending out 1,500 emails if that actually occurred, would have zero impact. Likewise, the claimed existence of alleged Russian hacking groups that have done nothing directed against voters or balloting systems with only a few days left until the election would appear to be an electoral tactic rather than exposure of any genuine threat. One might even describe it as a bit of deliberate disinformation.
‘Big Guy’ Joe Biden was PERSONALLY involved in China venture, Hunter Biden’s business partner says
RT | October 23, 2020
Investor Tony Bobulinski says he personally met with Joe Biden to discuss a joint venture with a Chinese company, accusing his son Hunter and the Biden family of using the endeavor as a “personal piggy bank.”
In a statement to the press on Thursday night, shortly before the presidential debate in which Democratic nominee Biden and President Donald Trump will face off, Bobulinski affirmed media reports that the emails between him and Hunter Biden are authentic.
Bobulinski said he was approached in 2015 about a joint venture with CEFC China Energy and “one of the most prominent families in the US.” This led to a May 2, 2017 meeting with Joe Biden, his brother James, and his son Hunter, at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles.
At the hour-long meeting, Bobulinski said, they discussed the Biden family’s business plans with the Chinese, with which Joe Biden “was plainly familiar, at least at a high level.”
The venture was to be named “SinoHawk,” Bobulinski explained, combining China and the favorite animal of Biden’s late son Beau, who died of a brain tumor in 2015.
Bobulinski further said he received an email from Hunter on May 13, 2017 in which 10 percent of the equity in the company would be reserved for “the Big Guy,” which he said stood for Joe Biden. He later objected to Hunter’s request that the company should wire $5 million to entities controlled by the Biden family, saying SinoHawk “could not be Hunter’s personal piggy bank.”
According to Bobulinski, he found out that the money had indeed been wired from last month’s Senate report.
Responding to Bobulinski’s announcement, Biden’s campaign said that Barack Obama’s former vice-president and current Democrat presidential candidate “has never even considered being involved in business with his family nor in any overseas business whatsoever.”
The campaign also called the accusations a “smear” and claimed it was a “desperate, pathetic farce.”
Bobulinski told reporters he had never been political and had previously donated to Democrats, but decided to go public so “the American people can decide for themselves.” At the event, he held up three cell phones he said contained messages from the 2015-2018 time period, which he was going to turn over to the FBI as evidence. He left without taking questions.
Then they came for the LEFT: Facebook deletes account of biologist & Big Tech critic Bret Weinstein without explanation
RT | October 22, 2020
Facebook has deleted the account of biology professor Bret Weinstein without explanation, apparently expanding its crackdown on politically incorrect thought to include leftists who defend speech rights and criticize Big Tech.
Weinstein, who rose to national prominence when he opposed a 2017 event at Washington’s Evergreen State College banning white people from campus for one day, said Thursday on Twitter that he had been “evicted” from Facebook. “No explanation, no appeal.”
Weinstein’s tweet included a screenshot of a Facebook notice indicating that his account hadn’t followed “community standards” and therefore had been disabled. The notice said the decision had already been reviewed and wouldn’t be reversed.
“We are governed now in private, by entities that make their own rules and are answerable to no process,” the professor and podcaster added. “Disaster is inevitable. We are living in it.”
Weinstein is a full-fledged progressive, having supported self-described Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders for president. He also participated in the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2009. But he’s also a classical liberal and participant in the so-called ‘Intellectual Dark Web’, where commentators speak out against cancel culture and defend free-speech rights.
The biologist appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast in June, warning about the consequences of woke authoritarianism spreading from college campuses into the real world. As if that wasn’t controversial enough, he spoke out against YouTube’s demonetization of conservative commentator Steven Crowder in 2019.
Responding to Weinstein’s banishment from Facebook, Dave Rubin, another liberal who has faced backlash for his positions on free speech and libertarianism, said social-media censorship was inevitably going to spread from the political right to left. “They weren’t going to stop with Alex Jones,” Rubin tweeted.
Another Twitter commenter said, “We tried to warn liberals, when they tested this out on easy fringe targets like Milo (Yiannopoulos) or Alex Jones, that they were just the first but by no means the last. Can’t say conservatives did not warn them.”
Columnist Amy Alkon said that by terminating Weinstein’s account without explanation, Facebook leaves no way to “assess whether you indeed violated some standard or whether somebody there high up enough to ax you just wanted you gone.” Writer Terry Wayne Carpenter Jr. added that “in the attention economy, social-media companies are de facto First Amendment enforcers.”
Big Tech has notoriously put its thumb on the scale for Democrat interests, as evidenced in the past week when Facebook and Twitter tried to squelch the New York Post’s scoops on alleged influence-peddling by Joe Biden’s family. But other voices that oppose more mainstream liberal and neocon dogmas have increasingly been quieted. For instance, Google has slashed search traffic to anti-war and socialist websites, while Twitter has suspended anti-war and Occupy-linked accounts.
Weapons of Mass Distraction
By Eric Striker • National Justice • October 22, 2020
The most remarkable thing about the Iraq war debacle isn’t the trillions of dollars wasted or hundreds of thousands of innocent people and US servicemen killed, but the fact that all of the journalists who promoted the lie to the American people were never held to account.
During the 2000s, a bipartisan cabal of overwhelmingly Jewish media personalities coordinated with American intelligence services to concoct the lie that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction to use against the United States.
The role of neoconservatives in this endeavor, primarily as Bush administration officials coordinating the war, is well known. What has been forgotten is the integral role “liberal” publications like the New York Times, Washington Post and others played in selling the WMD hoax.
The Times’ Judith Miller is credited with being one of the first to plant unsubstantiated WMD tales in popular consciousness, but other Jews — many of them also seen as unambiguously “liberal” — also played an active role in lying to drum up support for Bush’s war for Israel: Ezra Klein (currently of Vox ), Jeffrey Goldberg (now editor of The Atlantic), and Jonathan Chait (star columnist at the New Yorker). That’s just a shortlist.
Amazingly, every one of these individuals has only grown in prestige and influence in the press in the aftermath. Even Iraq war sin chicken Judith Miller remained unapologetic in her 2015 rehabilitation tours. She has since 2016 been hired by conservative outlets like Fox News and City Journal, now dedicating her columns to promoting foreign election meddling claims.
The gravest problem now with our Jewish controlled media is that all of the Iraq war disinformation agents, not just Miller, are now amongst the loudest amplifiers of the US intelligence community’s latest baseless hysterics alleging that every act of low-level trolling, dissenting political opinion, or news report (including initially the Hunter Biden story) that they find inconvenient is an inorganic product of Russian, Chinese or Iranian “election meddling” or “disinformation.”
To what ends? To lower public confidence in liberal institutions? To cause division and polarization? To make people afraid to vote and even more afraid of the outcome? The intelligence community’s Chicken Littles are doing this on a much wider scale than any supposed foreign agent.
Earlier today, the Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe held an “important” national security conference besides American NKVD leader Christopher Wray claiming that crudely written emails sent by someone impersonating the pro-Trump group, Proud Boys, telling registered Democrats in Florida not to vote was in fact an act of “election interference” by Iran. Intelligence operatives at the announcement also mentioned that Russia was conspiring with them by harvesting US political registrations for ill-intended reasons. No evidence was provided for either allegation.
The claim is ridiculous because, first of all, Florida political registrations are publicly available and easily found online. Anyone can obtain them without engaging in cyber crime or hacking.
Secondly, unflinching hostility towards Iran and over the top loyalty to Israel first is an issue Joe Biden and Donald Trump both enthusiastically agree on.
Trump and Biden are equally bad for Iran in distinct ways. Biden supports escalating Washington’s military presence in Syria and placing pressure on Iraq to cut ties with Iran.
Trump on the other hand has for the last few years attempted to starve the Iranian people into submission with “maximum pressure” sanctions, but this has been paired with military retreats in geostrategic zones of the Middle East that Israel believes are important to maintain a foothold in.
The Iranians and Russians don’t have a dog in America’s 2020 election fight between Oreo and Hydrox. Seeing how only 67% of Democrats are excited to vote for Joe Biden, it looks like Biden’s uninspired and mailed-in candidacy is the foremost act of interference in his campaign.
Meanwhile, Iran has responded with fury typical of a falsely accused man. The nation’s diplomats have lodged an official complaint at the United Nations demanding the FBI and DNI stop making frivolous accusations of trying to intimidate voters in America. President Hassan Rouhani’s counter is that both candidates — who are just spokesmen for Washington’s permanent bureaucracy — are enemies of the Iranian nation.
Today’s press conference by Wray and Ratcliffe was more akin to the despots in 1984 switching back and forth between blaming Eurasia (Russia) and Eastasia (China and Iran) during Hate Week. It’s a moronic distraction from their moronic failures, corruption and the artificially induced climate of fear they have created in our homeland.
It’s an attempt to shoehorn into tonight’s debate the non-issues of “election interference” and “disinformation” that most of the American public, which is suffering from problems like hunger and unemployment, has tuned out.
From weapons of mass destruction to weapons of mass distraction, both personify the Jewish post-truth order.
Montenegro’s farmers & environmental protesters ruin army’s plans for mortar shelling exercises
Activists and farmers camp in protest on the mountain Sinjajevina where the army planned a live-fire exercise on October 18, 2020 in Krnja Jela, Montenegro. © Getty Images / Filip Filipovic
RT | October 21, 2020
Montenegro’s Defense Ministry has postponed military training exercises after local shepherds and activists staged a protest over environmental concerns.
The mountain region of Sinjajevina was selected to host military drills including mortar shelling by the Montenegro army. However, the plan didn’t sit well with local farmers and environmental activists, who set up camps in the area and staged non-stop protests to oppose the drills.
The exercise was scheduled for this week, but the army had to retreat. Colonel Aleksandar Pantović, the Chief of Staff of the General Staff, announced that the drills have to be delayed. “We conducted a reconnaissance… the conditions for shooting were not met and that this is not possible,” Pantović told local media. “When all the conditions are met, we will continue with the realization of the exercise.”
A local MP from the URA party supporting the protest, Dritan Abazovic, called the decision a “significant victory” for Montenegro’s citizens and ecology.
The region in question, Mount Sinjajevina, consists of the largest stretch of grassland in the Balkans and makes up part of a location designated a UNESCO biosphere reserve. It was chosen as a place for a military polygon last year – something that triggered public discontent. Farmers and activists argued that explosives risk damaging the delicate environment and would contaminate the water supply.
“We will certainly not clash with the citizens,” the country’s Defense Minister Predrag Boskovic said in an interview. However, he noted that it is impossible to have an army unable to train on its own territory.
Montenegro is a NATO member state currently possessing an armed force of 2,400 active duty soldiers.
Google Promotes Maine Shellfish Scare – As Production Sets Record
By James Taylor | ClimateRealism | October 20, 2020
Google News is promoting claims that global warming is killing off Maine’s shellfish. However, objective data show that Maine is producing a record aquaculture harvest and Maine’s lobster catch is also setting records.
At the top of search results today for “climate change,” Google News is promoting a Sci Tech Daily article titled, “Iconic Food Web Threatened by Climate Change.” The article cites a dubious new study asserting a decline in Maine shellfish during the past 20 years.
“A dataset collected over two decades, including numbers of five species of mussels, barnacles, and snails, shows that all have been experiencing declines,” claims the article.
As the title of the article makes clear, the article blames the decline on climate change. Nevertheless, the authors speculate many factors may be causing the asserted decline, including invasive crabs that feed on shellfish, pollution, and overharvesting.
Data from the Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) throws cold water on the assertion that global warming is killing off Maine’s shellfish. The Maine DMR reports that Maine’s total aquaculture harvest value set a new record last year. The same is true for blue mussels, which were featured in the Sci Tech Daily article. The same is true for Maine oysters.
Some people may argue that aquaculture harvests are not necessarily an apples-to-apples comparison with the number of wild marine animals. However, if global warming were imposing stress on wild marine-life populations, that same temperature stress should show up in marine aquaculture production. Instead, Maine aquaculture production is setting records. Indeed, Maine mussel production is currently double what it was just a decade ago. Maine oyster production is quadruple what it was a decade ago. That is not what one would expect in increasingly temperature-stressed conditions.
Also, while the study promoted by Google News and Sci Tech Daily relies on a speculative assessment of shellfish numbers, Maine’s wild lobster catch is also setting records. The Maine DMR reports that each of the 10 highest annual lobster catches occurred during the past 10 years. Lobster catches in Maine are presently double what they were just 20 years ago.
If global warming is decimating Maine’s shellfish and other marine life, Mother Nature sure has a strange way of showing it.
James Taylor is Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute.
Tehran Summons Swiss Envoy over US’ Anti-Iran Claims
Al-Manar | October 22, 2020
Iranian Foreign Ministry summoned Swiss Ambassador to Tehran, representing US Interest Section in Iran, over remarks of US officials against Iran.
Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said that Islamic Republic of Iran advises the United States to “refrain from useless projections,” as quoted by Mehr news agency.
“Swiss envoy to Iran was summoned by Assistant and Director General of Iranian Foreign Ministry for American Affairs on Thursday following some baseless allegations raised by US officials about interference of other countries in the upcoming 2020 Presidential Election in the United States,” the spokesman said.
While rejecting the repeated claims and “false, clumsy and fraudulent reports of the US officials,” Khatibzadeh emphasized once that it does not matter for Tehran which of the two current candidates will run for the White House.
“The US regime and its intelligence and security services, which have a long history of interfering and creating chaos in the elections of other countries, make baseless claims on the eve of the US elections to advance their undemocratic project and predefined scenario with some projections,” he said.
“It is not far-fetched that the designers of such childish scenarios seek to divert public attention and suspicious provocations in the run-up to the elections.”
Khatibzadeh, meanwhile, advised the United States to refrain from “useless projections, baseless accusations and suspicious scenarios, and try to act like a normal country in the field of international relations and in relation to other countries.”
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe claimed late Wednesday that voter registration information had been obtained by Iran and Russia in an attempt to undermine confidence in the 2020 election.
Ratcliffe claimed Iran sought to sow unrest in the US in an attempt to damage the candidacy of President Donald Trump.
Star ‘disinformation’ reporter brags about doxxing Trump supporters & NBC defends it as journalism
RT | October 22, 2020
An NBC reporter has bragged about doxxing Trump supporters, “anti-vaxxers,” and other societal rejects, one self-described victim has revealed, suggesting the aim is to turn the US’ national security apparatus against her targets.
Brandy Zadrozny, an NBC feature reporter who specializes in ‘disinformation’ and ‘extremism’ on the internet, is teaching the world how she digs up data on her targets – from phone numbers and home addresses to property records and even Amazon wishlists – to expose their real-life identities. She recently shared her doxxing methods in an online textbook hosted by DataJournalism.com.
But while this might sound like standard journalism practice, Zadrozny’s targets – who have recently included anonymous Trump supporters on Twitter – are private citizens who have committed no crimes, and exposing their real-life identities for allegedly posting “disinformation” is a not-so-subtle effort to turn them into enemies of the state, one such recent target, Revolver News reporter Darren Beattie, told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson on Wednesday.
“She uses state-of-the art-proprietary technical tools to dig up personal information about anonymous Trump supporters online,” Beattie told the Fox News host. “She’ll do anything she can to unearth anonymous Trump supporters – basically so she can ruin their lives.”
Beattie revealed that Zadrozny’s “doxxing handbook” is sponsored in part by Bellingcat, the notoriously partisan ‘open-source intelligence’ outfit that, in turn, is backed by the US’ National Endowment for Democracy. It’s also funded by Google, a military contractor in its own right, and the European Journalism Centre, which counts such oligarchic bogeymen as George Soros and Bill Gates among its financial backers. So much muscle behind the doyenne of doxxing would be enough to give anyone who’s ever tweeted “wrongthink” pause, especially when her how-to guide describes how she has “identified people by connecting photos of things like cars, homes, or pets” in addition to profile photos.
Calling the institutionally sanctioned outing “disgusting and disgraceful, even by modern journalism standards,” Beattie described the work of Zadrozny and her ilk as that of “a neo-Stasi” attempting to “crush the rebellion of the American people against their corrupt ruling class,” suggesting her repeated description of anonymous conservatives’ social media posts as “disinformation” was meant to bring down the force of the national security state “to silence Trump supporters domestically.”
The former White House staffer shared screenshots from the textbook on Twitter, revealing the extensive lengths to which Zadrozny went to “out” the Columbia Bugle, which she refers to as a “popular far-right anonymous Twitter account that boasts that it was retweeted twice by Donald Trump’s account.”
Such dogged detective work is one thing when an investigator is hunting a criminal, but quite another when the quarry’s only “crime” is posting political material on social media. And Zadrozny’s targets have been subjected to death threats and suffered real-world harm because of her work.
While Beattie and Carlson both called on NBC to denounce Zadrozny’s abusive tactics, the network responded by defending its employee, calling her an “incredible and meticulous reporter” whom they were “proud to call … our colleague.” Other colleagues stepped up to defend her and attack her accusers, painting the Fox News segment as a preemptive strike against an article Zadrozny was working on about Beattie’s site.
Trained by oligarch-funded journalism outfit the Poynter Institute, Zadrozny shot to journalistic stardom in the past few years, making her name hyping Russiagate, denouncing pedophile hunters, and shutting down Facebook communities in which parents of autistic children swap tips about healing what they believe are vaccine injuries. The unifying thread running through her work, other than a fanatical devotion to pro-establishment narratives, has been reliance on social media deep-dives to learn more about her subjects without having to actually, well, interview them.
Moldova could be the next target of Western-backed color revolution to pressurize Russia
By Paul Antonopoulos | October 22, 2020
Washington could be organizing a color revolution and mass protests in Moldova like the ones that have already gripped Belarus and Kyrgyzstan. The Moldovan elections are scheduled for November 1 and have eight presidential candidates participating. The main rivals however are current President Igor Dodon, considered “pro-Russian,” and former Prime Minister Maia Sandu, considered “pro-European.”
There is a combination of internal and external factors at play in Moldova, something that has come to typically define the post-Soviet space. There is constant internal instability when considering the breakaway region of Transnistria, weak statehood, many conflicting ideological interest groups, and active attempts to get Moldova into the NATO and EU sphere of influence. This is what makes Moldova at high risk of experiencing a color revolution after the upcoming presidential elections if Dodon is re-elected.
According to polls and local experts, the first round of the presidential election may not determine the winner. Dodon, who aims to bring Moldova closer to Russia via the Eurasian Economic Union, and Sandu, who is considered the country’s main pro-Western politician, will likely compete against each other in the second round of voting. Polls show that Dodon has greater support from citizens, but not enough to win in the first round.
The director of the Russian Intelligence Service, Sergei Naryshkin, warned that the U.S. was preparing a color revolution in Moldova and highlighted that Washington would continue to interfere in the internal affairs of states friendly to Moscow, especially those along Russia’s borders. According to him, a color revolution could occur after the Moldovan presidential elections. The reason is Washington’s dissatisfaction with Dodon as he supports constructive relations with members of the Commonwealth of Independent States, particularly Russia.
The U.S. State Department ordered its embassy in the Moldovan capital of Chisinau to encourage the opposition to organize mass protests to demand an annulment if Dodon is re-elected. According to Russian secret services, U.S. diplomats are also trying to persuade Moldovan security forces not to interfere in possible street protests and to immediately “side with the people.”
Many Moldovan experts also warn of a possible coup attempt. Sandu, who sees the country as part of the EU family and supports the idea of uniting Moldova with Romania, has already accused local authorities of preparing to falsify the election results and called on her supporters to prepare for protests. However, if Dodon is re-elected, it is likely his supporters will not allow the opposition to question the election results. As recently as last week, Dodon talked about preparing for a potential color revolution attempt.
The destabilization of the post-Soviet space has all the signs of a planned and coordinated campaign to pressurize Russia by creating hotspots on or near its borders. The U.S. is the only country in the world that has enough resources and motivation to organize persistent and constant campaigns and has been actively indifferent or encouraging destabilization in countries on or near Russia’s frontiers, whether it be Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia-Azerbaijan or elsewhere.
This has been a consistent policy since the collapse of the Soviet Union when we consider how the 1990’s was dominated by manufactured coups, rebellions and revolutions in many former Soviet Republics, including Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Armenia and other neighbors or near neighbors of Russia.
Now that the U.S. is on the verge of a presidential election, the State Department and U.S. special services are attempting to weaken Russia and other geopolitical opponents. In other words, destabilization along Russia’s borders is part of a campaign to curb and undermine the country’s economic, political and technological capabilities. Because of Russia’s independent foreign and economic policies, size and resources, the Eurasian country poses a threat to U.S. global domination. It is for this reason that tensions, wars, riots and revolutions are constantly erupting near Russia’s borders, but at the same time Washington persistently points out that its national interest is to ensure peace, democracy and stability in countries that border Russia.
Although Moldova does not directly border Russia, it is a former Soviet Republic that still maintains cordial relations with Moscow. Moldova is a gateway that connects Eastern Europe to the Balkans. A potential Dodon re-election will once again prohibit any EU and NATO advancement towards the border of Russia.
This makes a color revolution against his re-election all the more necessary so that Moldova can potentially be the next country that borders Ukraine to become an EU and/or NATO member state. With another neighbor of Ukraine becoming an EU and/or NATO member, the eventual path of Kiev’s accession into those two organizations will become easier to navigate. This means the largest European country to border Russia, Ukraine, will be even more integrated into a system to pressurize Moscow.
Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
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70 Neocons Petition Congress To Effectively Allow Israel To Say When The US Should Attack Iran
By Damian Lataan | January 10, 2014
Seventy senior Israeli-centric neoconservatives have written an open letter to Congress imploring them to do more to ensure Iran complies with the conditions of any agreement finally reached with the P5+1 over Iran’s nuclear program.
While the neocons are ostensibly asking Congress to ensure compliance, it is clear that their real aim is to convince members of Congress to support the bill currently passing through the Senate which calls for tighter sanctions against Iran in the event of any waywardness on Iran’s part.
The neocons are eager to see the bill currently passing through the Senate with enough support to make it veto-proof, not so much because they are concerned about Iran’s so-called nuclear weapons program – there’s still not a skerrick of hard evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program – but, rather, because embedded within the bill is this clause:
… if the Government of Israel is compelled to take military action in legitimate self-defense against Iran’s nuclear weapon program, the United States Government should stand with Israel and provide, in accordance with the law of the United States and the constitutional responsibility of Congress to authorize the use of military force, diplomatic, military, and economic support to the Government of Israel in its defense of its territory, people, and existence…
Essentially, the clause is an automatic trigger for the US to attack Iran at any time the Israelis choose to launch a first strike – regardless of whether President Obama is in favour or not.
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