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Hamas condemns PA announcement on restoration of ties with Israel

Palestine Information Center – November 18, 2020

GAZA – The Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, has strongly condemned the decision of the Palestinian Authority (PA) to resume its relations with the “criminal Zionist occupation”.

Hamas said in a statement on Tuesday evening that the PA is flouting all the national values and principles and the outcomes of the historic meeting of the Secretaries-General of the Palestinian factions.

The Movement added that this decision represents a betrayal of the national efforts towards building a national partnership and a struggle strategy to confront the occupation, annexation, normalization and the deal of the century. It highlighted that this decision was made after the announcement of thousands of Israeli housing units in Occupied Jerusalem.

The PA by this decision justifies the Arab normalization with Israel which it has consistently condemned and rejected, Hamas noted.

It demanded the PA to immediately reverse its decision.

“A real national unity based on a comprehensive national program that stems from the strategy of confrontation with the criminal occupation will only liberate the land, protect rights and expel the occupation”, Hamas stressed.

November 18, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

Surprise: The “Smartest” People Are Actually Painfully Stupid

By Francis Menton – Manhattan Contrarian – November 18, 2020

If you were lucky enough to attend America’s premier academic institution, Harvard University, you would receive most days, as I do, the Harvard Gazette. The Gazette generally cloaks its pieces in the mantle of “news”; but really its principal function is to find ways for us Harvard people to congratulate ourselves on how brilliant we are, while at the same time heaping scorn and derision on the the ignorant deplorables who are always getting in the way of our plans to perfect the world.

You only need to read a few of these things before you start to realize that what might seem like the very “smartest” people — the ones with the fanciest degrees and the fanciest professorships at the fanciest universities — are actually painfully stupid.

Anyway, today’s Harvard Gazette arrives with some joyful news: Science is back! After four dreadful years of the “anti-science” Trump, we are now going to see, with Biden, the restoration of “science” to its rightful place in the formulation of public policy. This news is right there in the lead story, headline and sub-headline: “Is science back? Harvard’s Holdren says ‘yes’/Ex-Obama adviser says, unlike Trump, Biden and Harris will embrace factual analysis.” From the first paragraph:

[T]he incoming Biden-Harris administration has moved quickly to reinstall science as a foundation for government policy after four years of a president who disdained accepted scientific wisdom on subjects from wildfires to hurricane tracks, climate change to COVID-19.

The Gazette has learned that “science is back” by their usual method, which is by interviewing the leading Harvard professor on the subject. In this case that is John Holdren. Do you remember him? Holdren’s current title is “Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and professor of environmental science and policy in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.” But before that he was “[A]ssistant to the [P]resident for science and technology and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy,” a position in which he served for the entire eight years of the Obama presidency. You may remember that Holdren was confirmed unanimously by the Senate in March 2009, after minimal scrutiny of his background.

So give us an example, John, of how a Biden administration will prove to be more “pro-science” than that deplorable Trump:

GAZETTE : What is an example of a classic, successful government policy backed by good science? . . . .

HOLDREN: I would point to the Paris Agreement, which was an immense step forward in which 195 countries all across the world committed to take constructive steps toward reducing their climate-altering emissions going forward. . . .

Now, as anyone who has read the Paris Agreement knows, the entire developing world — home to about 90% of the world’s people — made no commitments whatsoever in that document, nor did they even agree to any non-binding goals, toward “reducing their climate-altering emissions going forward.” Emissions from the developing world are rapidly increasing, and will continue to do so, Paris Agreement or no Paris Agreement, thus rendering any U.S. efforts to limit emissions completely futile. Holdren is either completely ignorant on this subject, or he is intentionally trying to mislead the readership. Or it could be some of both. You be the judge.

And by the way, might Holdren have some conflict of interest here that may be relevant? None is disclosed as such in the article. But you might happen to recognize that the funder of Holdren’s Harvard professorship, Teresa Heinz, is the wife of John Kerry. Kerry, of course, is the former Secretary of State who was in charge of negotiating the Paris Agreement, and who more recently co-chaired the panel that drafted the Biden energy program, and who undoubtedly is expecting some big position in an incoming Biden administration. But don’t worry, conflicts only apply to Republicans, so there is no need to mention any of this.

Anyway, if you think that John Holdren might be an appropriate person to weigh in on issues of the role of “science” in public policy, you may want to consider some of the man’s previous writings on the subject.

For example, in 1977 Holdren co-authored with Paul and Anne Ehrlich a textbook titled “Ecoscience.” We know that “Ecoscience” was about “science,” because it’s right there in the title; therefore we can be secure in understanding that this is a good place to look for Holdren’s views as to what using “science as a foundation for public policy” will entail. A principal theme of the book is that overpopulation is about to engulf the world (“science” has shown it!) and therefore governments are justified, and indeed required, to take the most extreme possible measures to prevent the impending disaster. In 2009, shortly after Holdren’s confirmation as Obama’s “science” advisor, a website called Zombietime collected a top-ten list of quotations from “Ecoscience.” Here are a few of my favorites:

  • Involuntary fertility control. . . . A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men. The development of a long-term sterilizing capsule that could be implanted under the skin and removed when pregnancy is desired opens additional possibilities for coercive fertility control. The capsule could be implanted at puberty and might be removable, with official permission, for a limited number of births.
  • If some individuals contribute to general social deterioration by overproducing children, and if the need is compelling, they can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility—just as they can be required to exercise responsibility in their resource-consumption patterns—providing they are not denied equal protection.
  • In today’s world, however, the number of children in a family is a matter of profound public concern. The law regulates other highly personal matters. For example, no one may lawfully have more than one spouse at a time. Why should the law not be able to prevent a person from having more than two children?
  • Toward a Planetary Regime. . . . Perhaps those agencies, combined with UNEP and the United Nations population agencies, might eventually be developed into a Planetary Regime—sort of an international superagency for population, resources, and environment. Such a comprehensive Planetary Regime could control the development, administration, conservation, and distribution of all natural resources, renewable or nonrenewable, at least insofar as international implications exist. . . . The Regime might also be a logical central agency for regulating all international trade, perhaps including assistance from DCs to LDCs, and including all food on the international market. The Planetary Regime might be given responsibility for determining the optimum population for the world and for each region and for arbitrating various countries’ shares within their regional limits.

Now that I think of it, “painfully stupid” barely begins to describe the opinions of this man. Maybe we should go with “moral monster.”

Or you could try another book that Holdren co-authored with the Ehrlichs — “Human Ecology,” from 1973. In 2014 the website CFACT compiled a collection of choice quotes from this one. Again, I’ll give you just a few of my favorites:

  • There is good reason to believe that population growth increases the probability of a lethal worldwide plague and of a thermonuclear war.  Either could provide a catastrophic “death-rate solution” to the population problem; each is potentially capable of destroying civilization and even of driving Homo sapiens to extinction. . . . Perhaps more likely than extinction is the possibility that man will sur­vive only to endure an existence barely recognizable as human-malnourished, beset by chronic disease, physically and emotionally impoverished, sur­rounded by the devastation wrought by an industrial civilization that could not cope with the results of its own biological and social folly.
  • Political pressure must be applied immediately to induce the United States government to assume its responsibility to halt the growth of the Ameri­can population. Once growth is halted, the government should undertake to influence the birth rate so that the population is reduced to an optimum size and maintained there.
  • A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environ­ment in North America and to de-develop the United States. De-development means bringing our economic system (especially patterns of consumption) into line with the realities of ecology and the global resource situation.

In another post, this one from 2009, CFACT noted that Holdren had also managed to take alarmist positions on climate change both in warning about global warming and also about global cooling — and that he had managed to take both positions simultaneously. CFACT concluded:

Holdren is a “doom peddler” who latches onto the nightmare-scenario-du-jour — overpopulation, nuclear holocaust, global cooling, global warming (all of which he’s trumpeted at various points in his career) — and then wildly exaggerates it in order to scare the public into adopting his politicized “solutions.”

Or, to put it another way, “science is back”! De-develop the United States? Forced population control? A “planetary regime” to control all “resources”? The “science” requires it! All the “smart” people from Harvard know that. You can understand why Holdren is excited about a Biden presidency. Are you?

November 18, 2020 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | 1 Comment

Boris’s “Green Industrial Revolution” is Economic Lockdown, for ever…

The Global Warming Policy Forum | November 18, 2020

GWPF today described the Prime Minister’s 10 Point Plan for a ‘Green Industrial Revolution’ as shallow gesture politics, but a gesture with severely negative economic implications from day one into the foreseeable future.

And we know that this will happen because all previous attempts to create a viable green economy have failed.

In March 2009, the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced his Labour government’s ‘industrial strategy,’ a term the Conservatives have also adopted, promising to create 400,000 jobs. Brown’s words are strangely reminiscent of today’s announcement:

“I want to create a global ‘green new deal’ that will pave the way for a low carbon recovery and to help us build tomorrow’s green economy today.”

Twelve years later Britain has green industries that are still dependent on huge handouts, now totalling £10 billion a year — and building nearly all their green equipment overseas. The recent Seagreen offshore wind farm, for example, has awarded its contracts to two countries with cheap energy, the UAE and China, bitterly disappointing BiFab and other Scottish manufacturers. Green miracles just don’t happen.

Chairman Boris’s Great Leap Forward will also fail to deliver the goods because, like all “economic planning”, it is an incoherent utopian dream unconstrained by economic and physical realities and a mess of unaffordable and incompatible goals.

For example, meeting the absurd offshore wind target of an additional 30 GW of capacity (giving a total of 40 GW in 2030), will have a total capital cost of £120bn–£130 billion for wind farms and offshore transmission grid, nearly all that expenditure going to overseas companies, just as it did with Seagreen.

Paying for that investment and all ancillary costs related to it will put something £27 billion a year on the UK electricity bill, roughly double the wholesale market value of the entire UK electricity sector at present, with horrific implications for electricity prices by the end of the decade.

Those high electricity prices will render utterly unaffordable the Prime Minister’s proposals for heat pumps and electric vehicles. This will cause anger, not only because UK consumers will be confined to their freezing homes, but because many will have spent a fortune on realising the PM’s green utopia.

Heat pumps cost between £10,000 and £20,000 each to install, so the Prime Minister’s aim of installing 600,000 Ground Source Heat Pumps a year by 2028 implies an annual cost of between £60 billion and £100 billion a year.

Dr John Constable, GWPF energy editor, said:

“These over-reaching proposals are technically absurd, economically deluded and politically disastrous. Does the Prime Minister have any competent advisors? One wonders?”

November 18, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Biden’s Deep State

By Steve Brown | Ron Paul Institute | November 18, 2020

Philosopher Hannah Arendt once wrote about the banality of evil, and there’s never been a more banal bunch than the foreign policy and security state crew Barak Obama surrounded himself with for eight years beside the possible exception of Bush’s own Neocons.

Now after three years screaming about “Russian collusion” it appears the Evil Empire is about to regain its lost ground, championing new wars and more interventionist expansionism with a much greater role for the US military in the world.

Let’s name names.

Pentagon

For the defense chief post, the Washington Post has portrayed the banal face of Michele Flournoy as the pick to ‘restore stability’ to the Pentagon, an entirely false assertion. Recall that Fluornoy promotes unilateral global US military intervention, and advocated the destruction of Libya in 2011. By the military-industrial revolving door, Flournoy enabled many Corporate weaponry contracts amounting to tens of millions. Likewise Fluornoy is on the Booz-Hamilton board, where the swamp cannot get any deeper. As if this wretched example of an agent-provocateur for war and destruction were not bad enough, Biden is reportedly considering Lockheed-Martin banal kingpin Jeh Johnson for the DoD position, too.

Lockheed director Johnson was employed by Rob Reiner and Atlantic editor arch-Neocon David Frum to run the Committee to Investigate Russia which mysteriously blew up as soon as the Mueller Report was released. Jeh Johnson has continued to warn of “Russian interference” in the US presidential election until now. Biden’s anointing as president-elect has ended that. As Homeland Security head, Johnson authorized cages for holding immigrant children. He also supported the assassination of General Suleimani, and has voiced support for US wars in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

State

From Libya to Syria, Yemen, Ukraine and beyond, the banality of evil is perhaps best personified by Susan Rice – apparently Biden’s premiere pick for Secretary. Rice was an abject failure at the United Nations, but all seems forgiven, probably at the behest of Biden’s donors. After her failure at the UN, Obama kicked Rice upstairs to be his National Security Advisor, a position that does not require Senate approval.

An obvious war hawk in the mold of the Democrat’s donor class, a Rice appointment could reinforce the liberal mantra that women can be just as good at interventionism as men, and ensure full re-establishment of the Neoliberal agenda in Washington. John Kerry has been flagged as a potential for State (again) too, but at age 77 and subsequent to the failure of the JCPOA Kerry is an unlikely pick.

Another potential pick among the banal Daughters of Darkness is Victoria Kagan-Nuland, architect of the 2014 debacle in Ukraine (among other things). Outed at State in an embarrassing act of what she called impressive statecraft and other embarrassing incidents, Nuland seems an unlikely choice. But Kagan-Nuland is as banal as banal can be, and Biden may somehow wish to reinforce his solidarity with the JTF and his donor class, on Israel.

National Security Advisor

Banality is certainly the mark of the beast here, in the form of Tony Blinken. Well in with Michele Flournoy (above) Blinken typifies the type of banality the Deep State engages in to promote its evil, with Blinken as successful as any other Deep State actor. A major hawk on Russia and war hawk in general, Blinken is an apologist for Israel. Blinken is a war hawk on Afghanistan and Syria too, and Blinken was directly involved in CIA operation Timber Sycamore. Oh, the banality.

Another model of banality is Leon CIA Panetta who so far claims that cruising the Monterey peninsula is more fun that being in Washington. But we know that’s false and Panetta would be a logical pick. Besides being a hawk on everything, and laughing about the fact he has no idea how many wars Obama’s America was fighting – because he lost count – Panetta is simply another sycophant for evil like Hannah Arendt portrayed in her study of Adolf Eichmann.

CIA

Banal of the banal is of course Mike Morell. This incredibly vacuous excuse for a human being has been hate-mongering for years. Beside his blatant pandering support for another banal and brutal warmonger – Hillary Clinton – Mike Morell is one Neoliberal who still maintains that Saddam Hussein actively aided and abetted al Qaeda with regard to the 911 attacks. But Morell simply and ultimately represents the banality of evil, just as Arendt depicted Adolf Eichmann, but in Morell’s case succinctly summarized here by Ray McGovern.

United Nations

Outing the banality of the banal would be incomplete without mentioning Jen Psaki. Although a potential pick for White House Communications Director, why not promote an accomplished liar to a venue where accomplished lying really matters?

Conclusion

There is no indication that the United States as an entrenched warfare state will ever change its course until forced to. Mr Trump was incapable of enforcing that change. Sidelined by Russiagate psychosis, as a Beltway Neophyte and his own worst enemy at times, that sank Trump’s agenda.* The actions of Mr Trump now – to end the wars in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen — should have been undertaken in earnest and without compromise years ago. Point being that Mr Trump’s new appointments to the Pentagon – and let’s hope CIA – will hopefully blunt the efficacy of Biden’s bad actors going forward.

Regardless, characters the same or similar to the ones listed above will definitely infest Washington’s infernal Beltway cesspool once again via Joe Biden … make no mistake. …And they will be meaner and nastier than ever before! Guaranteed.

*Beside his appointment of dreadful characters like John Bolton, Mike Pompeo and Elliott Abrams, apparently at the behest of his own donor class!

Follow Steve Brown on twitter @newsypaperz

Copyright © 2020 by RonPaul Institute.

November 18, 2020 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia, Wars for Israel | , , , | 9 Comments

Trump won, regardless of the election outcome… because Trumpism is here to stay

By Samantha Chang | RT | November 18, 2020

No matter the eventual election result, President Donald Trump’s legacy is intact. He has reignited an enthusiasm for nationalism the world over, but his true impact has been obscured by ridiculous accusations of racism.

As the fate of the US presidential election hangs in the balance pending resolution of multiple voter-fraud lawsuits, President Donald Trump has already won – no matter who takes the White House.

Trump’s enduring legacy is the populist, nationalist movement he ignited in 2016. This coalition is growing by the day – both in the US and abroad – and will continue to expand, long after he leaves office.

Why? Because “nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come,” as French author Victor Hugo eloquently noted.

That idea is populist nationalism. The mainstream media (which is predominantly left-wing) has rabidly attacked nationalism and populism as “racist.” In reality, there is nothing racist about being proud of who you are and where you come from. This is why Trump supporters enthusiastically wave American flags at their gatherings, which are celebrations of their country.

Similarly, countless patriots in other countries support Trump because as the US president, he boldly declared that it’s OK to be proud of your nation.

Being a patriot does not mean you don’t like other countries. It means you respect the sovereignty of each nation and acknowledge that they have as much right to be proud of who they are as you do for who you are.

For decades, Western nations were taught to be ashamed of their histories, claiming they were “racist.” In contrast, such self-hatred was not espoused in the Middle East, Asia or Africa, even though those regions arguably have more blatant histories of overt racism.

President Trump was voted into office in 2016 by a movement that championed everyday Americans – not the snobby, elitist groupthink embraced by the Washington swamp and Hollywood celebrities.

Trump supporters were disgusted at America’s decades-long submission to a globalist agenda that taught that all white people are racist, all people of color are helpless victims and everyone should depend on the government to solve their problems.

This flawed, race-hustling mindset stoked widespread racial animus, leading to the rise of the militant, anti-white, anti-police Black Lives Matter movement.

The media breathlessly blamed Trump for the BLM race riots that erupted across the US this summer, as if they happened because he was president. In reality, this racial division was brewing for decades; Trump was merely the catalyst that exposed the volcanic fury bubbling below the surface.

The media have championed Black Lives Matter’s destructive riots while deriding white people as racists if they dared to question BLM’s Marxist agenda.

But numerous black commentators say the racial resentment goes both ways. Just ask attorney and political scientist Dr. Carol Swain. Swain says the nationalist movement in America started gaining momentum 15 years before Trump became president.

She predicted the rise of nationalism in her 2002 book, ‘The New White Nationalism in America’.

“The rise of the new white nationalism occurred long before the election of President Donald Trump,” Swain told Judge Jeanine Pirro.

Swain noted that “white nationalism” is different from “white supremacy,” even though the left and their media lapdogs intentionally conflate the two movements.

“I distinguish it from white supremacy because the people who were involved [in the white nationalism movement] were more intellectual,” said Swain, a graduate of Yale Law School.

She continued, “They were not espousing racial violence or using epithets, but they had grievances. They felt that white people’s rights were being trampled on and no one was speaking up or listening to their grievances.”

Swain said the white nationalism movement mushroomed, because whites were being marginalized and disenfranchised after decades of affirmative action and other government programs designed to benefit minorities.

The media and academia exacerbated the situation by constantly browbeating all white people as racist and claiming they have no right to complain about anything because they have ‘white privilege.’ But look around you: There are plenty of poor, underprivileged whites.

White nationalism is becoming heightened since whites will soon no longer be the majority race in the US. It makes you wonder: Once whites become a minority, will society allow them to constantly whine and demand preferential treatment?

But this is a narrative you’ll struggle to hear amid the cacophony of anti-Trump noise we are constantly subjected to. It’s also why these very real changes in America’s political landscape, all influenced by Trump, will be underplayed.

  • The media’s bias has been exposed and its credibility decimated. According to a recent Gallup poll, a whopping 94 percent of Americans do not trust the press.
  • Americans’ belief in the integrity of US elections has been reduced amid mounting evidence of alarming irregularities and lack of transparency in vote-counting.
  • The Democrat Party is splintered and a civil war is brewing. For example, Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), whose district voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, said she will not support Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the House.

Bearing these in mind, it’s hard to argue that Trump truly lost – even though the election may eventually say otherwise.

Samantha Chang is a politics writer and financial editor based in New York City. Follow her on Twitter @Samantha_Chang

November 18, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , | 3 Comments

Solutions: The Thick Red Line

Corbett • 11/17/2020

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Howard Lichtman joins us today to introduce ThickRedLine.org, an effort to restore respect for law enforcement by abolishing victimless crime. ThickRedLine seeks to upend the narrative that keeps the public afraid of breaking the unlawful orders of the politicians and prevents officers from following their own conscience.

Watch on Archive / BitChute / LBRY / Minds / YouTube or Download the mp4

SHOW NOTES:
ThickRedLine.org

David Rodriguez and Howard Lichtman at Dominican Hospital

Howard Lichtman at Santa Clara Medical Center

November 18, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

Trump Fires CISA Director Chris Krebs Over ‘Highly Inaccurate’ Election Statement

By Daria Bedenko – Sputnik – 18.11.2020

US President Donald Trump announced in his Twitter on Tuesday that he fired Chris Krebs from the position of the Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency of the DHS.

According to the President, Krebs was fired because of his “highly inaccurate” statement on the security of 2020 US presidential election.

“The recent statement by Chris Krebs on the security of the 2020 Election was highly inaccurate, in that there were massive improprieties and fraud – including dead people voting, Poll Watchers not allowed into polling locations, “glitches” in the voting machines which changed votes from Trump to Biden, late voting, and many more”, Trump tweeted. “Therefore, effective immediately, Chris Krebs has been terminated as Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency”.

In a follow-up tweet, Trump said that “the only thing secure about our 2020 Election was that it was virtually impenetrable by foreign powers”.

“On that, the Trump Administration takes great credit”, he continued. “Unfortunately, the Radical Left Democrats, Dominion, and others, were perhaps more successful!”.

​Reacting to Trump’s decision to fire Krebs, Homeland Security Committee released a statement later on Tuesday.

“In firing Director Krebs for refusing to lend credibility to his baseless claims and conspiracy theories about voter fraud, the President is telling officials throghout (sic) the Administration to put his political interests ahead of their responsibilites to the American people. That is not only disturbing, it is antidemocratic”, the statement said.

Reports suggesting that Krebs was soon to be removed from his position emerged earlier in November, with Politico alleging that it could be “in part because of a website he created to debunk election-related misinformation” – webpage on CISA website named “Rumor Control”.

Krebs was reportedly expected to be fired since just after the election day.

Earlier on Tuesday, Krebs tweeted: “ICYMI [In case you missed it]: On allegations that election systems were manipulated, 59 election security experts all agree, ‘in every case of which we are aware, these claims either have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent'”.

Post-Election Disputes

Shortly after the election day, DHS and CISA released a joint statement regarding the election, calling it “the most secure in American history” – something that is contradictory to Trump’s opinion on the 2020 electoral process.

“There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised”, the joint statement said.

While the mainstream US media have projected the Democratic candidate Joe Biden to win the presidency in the 2020 race, Trump has been vehemently refusing to concede or accept the preliminary results, claiming that the election was “rigged”.

Falling in line with Trump’s assertions regarding the election, reports emerged saying that dead people took part in voting and postal workers were instructed to backdate mail ballots that arrived after the election day.

Recently, two men were charged with massively submitting thousands of fake voter registration applications on behalf of the homeless in California.

November 18, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties | | 6 Comments

US security agency accused of spying on European private companies

By Lucas Leiroz | November 18, 2020

A new cyber espionage scandal involving American intelligence agencies is being revealed – this time in Europe. Government ministries and Danish private companies were targets of US espionage, according to a recent report by an anonymous informer. The US National Security Agency (NSA) appears to have used top-secret schemes to allegedly spy Danish and other Scandinavian ministries and private companies. Details of such activities were revealed in a recent Danish Radio’s article, in which the alleged anonymous informer is referred to as an agent of the Danish Defense Intelligence Service (Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste, FE). Operations would have started around 2015.

Among many points, the report denounced illegal activities promoted by American intelligence in collaboration with various sectors of Danish intelligence itself, which were conspiring against the interests of their own country by extracting information from Danish internet cables and passing it on to external agents. Among several other illegal operations, the report also revealed the espionage against the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Economy of Denmark, as well as neighboring and allied countries, such as Norway and Sweden, indicating that the limit of such activities is much higher than mere surveillance over Denmark, expanding across a major part of the European continent. According to information contained in the report, the NSA obtained access to fiber optic cables and a data center on the island of Amager, south of Copenhagen. From then on, data traffic from the Netherlands, Norway, France and Germany, and political institutions in Denmark were constantly monitored, remaining under full surveillance by US agents.

In addition, it was mentioned that the NSA wanted to obtain more information about the activities of private companies in the defense and military industry, especially Terma, a major Danish company based in Aarhus that stands out internationally in the aerospace industry. According to information in the report, the US interest would have arisen from the moment that the Danish State decided to buy multibillion-dollar fighters to replace its F-16 fleet. At the beginning of the negotiations, Terma and the Swedish company Saab were competing for a prominent position before the Danish government, but after many debates and long controversies the government’s choice was to purchase a new fleet of dozens of American F-35 fighters. Apparently, constant surveillance and data stealing were key points for Washington to take advantage of European companies during the negotiations.

The anonymous informant said he had tried to warn of the dangers of espionage on several previous occasions, but was only successful when he turned to the Danish Defense Intelligence Service supervisor, whom he accused of having failed to follow or investigate the various espionage reports. On a later occasion, the current Danish defense minister, Trine Bramsen, announced the resignation of five high-ranking agents of the national secret service. So far, the information is not clear due to all the precautions that encompass such issues, but everything indicates that the dismissals occurred due to the spying allegations – however, these were carried out at a late time, indicating a long delay in acting against the internal sabotage.

In fact, espionage against European private companies is absolutely harmful to the interests of these nations, being an activity as dangerous as the espionage of official government agencies – which has also been occurring frequently. The authorities that were supposed to guarantee the security of Danish companies helped to undermine the country’s interests as they were ineffective in combating data theft schemes and enabled, among other things, commercial advantages for Washington in negotiations that prioritized the Danish private market. Still, it is necessary to take into account that during the leak of confidential information by anonymous informants it is very common that only a portion of the real information is revealed, exposing an “outer layer” of the content, but preserving the silence about more compromising data. This leads us to speculate to what extent American espionage is actually at work in Europe – certainly, the information contained in the anonymous informant’s report is only a small part of what is actually known on the subject.

The case has already begun to generate outrage in neighboring countries. Norwegian lawmaker Freddy Ovstegard said he believes Norway is also being spied on by the US, considering that this is a common practice of Washington with its own allied countries. The tendency is for these reactions to spread more and more and for a wave of aversion to Washington and its surveillance and espionage policies to grow across the European continent. A possible scenario is the gradual separation between the US and the EU, considering that the issue directly affects the interests of multibillionaire private companies, going far beyond the relations between states. If such companies fail to cooperate with the governments of their own countries and start selling military equipment to enemy nations, the result will be absolutely catastrophic – Europeans will certainly try to avoid this.

Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

November 18, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , , | Leave a comment

US’ successful ICBM intercept test brings us closer to a nuclear war and proves Moscow’s concerns were well grounded

By Scott Ritter | RT | November 17, 2020

The US has long dismissed Russian concerns over the deployment of the Aegis Ashore missile defense system on European soil. This week’s test of the SM-3 Block IIA interceptor against an ICBM has proven Russian concerns correct.

On Tuesday, the US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) announced it conducted a test of an Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) System-equipped Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, the USS John Finn, against what was termed a “threat-representative Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) target” using a Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block IIA interceptor. The test object was launched from Kwajalein Atoll, in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, toward an area of the Pacific Ocean northeast of Hawaii. According to the MDA, the SM-3 Block IIA missile successfully intercepted its target.

The successful test is but the latest in a series intended to prepare the SM-3 Block IIA missile and its associated systems–the Aegis Baseline-9 Weapons System and Command and Control Battle Management Communications (C2BMC) network–for operational duty as America’s frontline missile defense capability.

Previously, the Aegis weapons system had been advertised by the US as being limited against short- and intermediate-range missile threats. This reasoning was cited by both US and NATO officials as a counter to long-standing Russian concerns that the Aegis Ashore missile defense systems installed in Romania and Poland represented a threat to Russian strategic missile capabilities. The shooting down of an ICBM-like target by the Aegis BMD System has shown that Russia’s concerns were, in fact, well grounded.

The Aegis system tested off the coast of Hawaii is identical to those recently made operational in Romania and under construction in Poland, having been specifically designed to use the Aegis Baseline 9 Weapons System, and are interoperable with the US C2BMC European network. As such, there is no reason the European Aegis Ashore sites cannot be used to intercept ICBMs. Indeed, while the Romanian Aegis Ashore is currently equipped with the less-capable SM-3 Block IB interceptor, the Polish Aegis Ashore site will use the SM-3 Block IIA interceptor, providing an ICBM-killing capability for the European continent.

Russia has long held that the deployment of anti-ballistic missile systems in Europe represented a major alteration of the strategic balance of power, insofar as it empowered a potential US/NATO nuclear first strike scenario, in which US nuclear-armed missiles would be launched against Russian strategic nuclear forces in an effort to preemptively destroy them. Europe would then avoid the certainty of mutually assured destruction by hiding behind the US missile defense shield, which in theory would be capable of shooting down the handful of Russian missiles that might survive such an attack.

In response to the initial deployment of Aegis Ashore in Europe, Russia forward-deployed short-range nuclear missiles into Kaliningrad as a deterrent.

The SM-3 Block IIA interceptor represents a great threat to Russia. When deployed from aboard Baseline-9 equipped Arleigh Burke-class destroyers integrated into the C2BMC network, the SM-3 Block IIA interceptor becomes the anchor of a potentially global missile defense shield capable of nullifying the ICBM strike potential of all would-be adversaries–including Russia.

The US Navy currently bases four Arleigh Burke-class destroyers at its Naval Base in Rota, Spain, and has plans to increase this number to six in the near future. These destroyers have begun patrolling the Barents Sea, above the Arctic Circle, putting them in a position to shoot down Russian ICBMs trying to reach the US by overflying the Arctic.

The threat posed to Russia by the SM-3 Block IIA is real. Russia has long linked further progress in arms control to the need for the US to agree to limitations on its ballistic missile defense capabilities to prevent the very situation that is unfolding today.

By putting the SM-3 Black IIA interceptor to the test as an anti-ICBM weapon, the US has made the New START treaty irrelevant overnight, testing the willingness of Russia to agree to an extension. Even if Russia does allow the New START treaty to be extended, there is little doubt that it will insist on meaningful and verifiable limits to US ballistic missile defense capabilities, including the SM-3 Block IIA interceptor, before Russia could sign on to a new follow-on strategic arms reduction treaty.

More critically is what the new SM-3 Block IIA does to the current Russian nuclear posture, which is already being re-evaluated in light of the decision by the US to deploy low-yield nuclear warheads onboard US missile-carrying submarines.

The combination of low-yield nuclear weapons on board US submarines lurking off Russia’s coast with US destroyers equipped to shoot down Russian ICBMs is the stuff of any Russian nuclear planner’s worst nightmare. Russia will most likely be compelled to reexamine its alert posture to account for the increased possibility that the US may seek to launch a preemptive decapitation attack using low-yield nuclear weapons.

This means that Russia will be compelled to react quickly to any detection event suggestive of such a strike, reducing the time for leaders to consider the possibility of error before giving the order to launch. In short, while the US may claim that the SM-3 Block IIA is a defensive weapon that creates stability in regional and global security, the exact opposite is the case–the SM-3 Block IIA increases the chance for inadvertent nuclear war between the US and Russia. This is never a good outcome.

Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of ‘SCORPION KING: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.’ He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter

November 17, 2020 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Beyond crucial update on viral issue

Ivor Cummins | November 11, 2020

View full screen at Bitchute.

November 17, 2020 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | | 3 Comments

Acting US Def Sec Miller Formally Announces Plans to Cut Troops in Afghanistan, Iraq to 2,500 Each

By Daria Bedenko – Sputnik – 17.11.2020

Earlier on Monday, CNN reported, citing two US officials, that Pentagon anticipated President Donald Trump to issue an order this week regarding troop withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan by 15 January.

Acting Defence Secretary Christopher Miller announced on Tuesday that President Trump will cut the number of American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to 2,500 each by 15 January 2021.

“By 15 January, 2021, our forces, their size in Afghanistan will be 2,500 troops. Our force size in Iraq will also be 2,500 by that same day,” Miller told reporters during a Defence Department briefing.

The decision falls in line with Trump’s intention to finish “endless wars”, as Miller said the moves were announced to “bring the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to a successful and responsible conclusion and to bring our brave service members home”.

“This is consistent with our established plans and strategic objectives, supported by the American people, and does not equate to a change in US policy or objectives”, Miller outlined.

Reaction to Troop Reduction Announcement

Shortly after the decision was announced, White House national security adviser Robert O’Brien said Trump hopes to bring all US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan home “safely and in their entirety” by May.

Republican Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnel, reacted to the announcement moments later, warning against any major changes in the US foreign or defence policy, including the troops drawdowns, in the coming months.

“It is extremely important here in the next couple of months not to have any earthshaking changes in regard to defense or for policy”, McConnell said.

Reports about the order to reduce troops in Afghanistan and Iraq emerged earlier on Monday, saying that a “warning order” to start planning the troops reduction was already released by Pentagon, despite warnings by then-Defence Secretary Esper against rapid withdrawal of the US forces from the countries.

Esper was replaced with Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Christopher Miller by Trump earlier this month.

Trump vs ‘Endless Wars’

It has been one of the key Trump’s pledges in his campaign to put an end to American “endless wars” in foreign countries, as he vowed to reduce the number of the US military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In October, Trump tweeted that all US troops should be home by Christmas, with US National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien later saying that thousands of American servicemen were “on path” to, on the contrary, remain there.

In Iraq, there are estimated 3,000 US troops, and roughly 4,500 American military forces are stationed in Afghanistan.

After Washington reached a deal with the Taliban* in February, Trump began to withdraw troops from the country, with further withdrawal coinciding with September peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government in Qatar.

November 17, 2020 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | 1 Comment

Pentagon fails another audit but comptroller insists they’ll pass soon… like in 2027

RT | November 17, 2020

The Pentagon has failed its third-ever audit as its budget grows to record size – but the Defense Department comptroller wants taxpayers to know the agency will almost certainly have its books in order by 2027.

Interim Pentagon comptroller Thomas Harker defended the Pentagon’s third failure in a row since the agency began conducting audits in 2018 during a briefing on Monday, explaining “this is something that’s never been done for an entity of the size and complexity of the Department of Defense.”

“We’ve been clear that this is a journey that will require a sustained effort over several years,” Harker continued, predicting the Pentagon might be able to pass an audit in 2027 and deeming that a “reasonable” target for an entity with $2.9 trillion in assets.

However, the Pentagon isn’t being audited as a whole – a ‘Pentagon audit’ actually comprises 24 smaller audits of the individual agencies that make up the Defense Department. Just seven of those agencies are expected to pass, Harker said – the same number as passed last year.

Harker had plenty of excuses handy for why the bloated agency failed its third audit, noting that the Department of Homeland Security – which has only existed since 2002 – took 10 years to pass an audit and complaining that “coronavirus-related travel restrictions” made things difficult for the auditors this year. He pinned the blame for the Marine Corps failing its audit despite making “a ton of progress” squarely on the pandemic, while praising the Defense Information Security Agency’s “working capital fund” for making improvements, expressing hope that the unit might even pass when its audit is completed in December.

While Harker is officially the top budget official at the Navy, he has been working double duty as Defense Department comptroller since July 2019 in the absence of a Senate-confirmed replacement for Elaine McCusker, who resigned after 18 months as acting comptroller when the White House withdrew her nomination for a permanent appointment.

Adding insult to injury, the failed Pentagon audit cost taxpayers $203 million in fees, paid out to public accounting firms. Harker insisted the changes inspired by the findings – “process improvements that we’re making around accountability for property accountability [sic], for inventory, that type of thing” – will save the Pentagon over $700 million.

Despite failing every audit since they began in 2017, Congress has continued to shovel money into the Pentagon at an unprecedented pace. Fiscal year 2020 saw the agency receive a record $738 billion, including allotments for cash-burning programs like the notoriously failure-prone F-35 jet that exceeded even President Donald Trump’s requests.

While federal law has required government agencies to be audited since 1990, no attempt was ever made to audit the Pentagon until 2017, despite the agency eating up more than half of every discretionary budget dollar. In 2016, it emerged that the department had tried to memory-hole an internal study exposing $125 billion in “administrative waste in its business operations” lest Congress use its fiscal ineptitude as an excuse to slash the budget. That the most expensive military in the world would spend a quarter of its gargantuan budget on administrative overhead was a national embarrassment.

Worse, a 2017 investigation found $21 trillion in “unsupported adjustments” for the Pentagon and the Department of Housing and Urban Development over the years 1998 to 2015 – a truly shocking sum of money. The finding implies the Pentagon has misplaced hundreds of times more taxpayer dollars than it has ever been legitimately allotted by Congress.

Despite this pattern of eye-popping fiscal malfeasance, the Pentagon quietly asked Congress earlier this year if it could both classify its future spending plans going forward and be relieved of the responsibility of certifying their accuracy. The department has been legally required since 1989 to submit publicly-viewable estimates of the next five years’ defense spending annually, called a “Future Years Defense Program.”

November 17, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | | 7 Comments

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