Democrats not serious to stop US weapons sales to the Saudis: Former US diplomat
Press TV – September 18, 2020
The Democrats are not serious to put down the US sales of weapons to the Saudis and to Israel and other countries, says J. Michael Springmann, a former US diplomat in Saudi Arabia.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s top aides have been questioned by Congress over President Donald Trump’s dismissal of a top administration official while he was investigating billions of dollars of arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
Top aides to Pompeo went before a congressional panel on Wednesday to defend Trump’s decision to fire former Department of State Inspector General Steve Linick.
Springmann said, “There are two points to keep in mind when considering the House of Representatives’ investigation of the firing of Steve Linick, the former State Department Inspector General, back in May of this year.”
“The first, of course, is that Linick was probing the sale of huge amounts of weapons to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen, and other issues. Apparently, it was alleged that Secretary of State Pompeo and his wife used government officials to do personal things for them. I’m not sure what that is and there are no specifics. Linick claimed he had been bullied when he was asking questions, and wanted answers and not getting them. And I think there’s something to that,” he told Press TV in an interview on Friday.
“The other issue, of course, is that this is an election year. In a bit more than a month and a half, we have general elections for president and a third of the Senate and all of the House of Representatives. So Elliot Engel, the Democrat, who’s been doing most of the questioning of Pompeo, was also one of the Democrats who led the impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives against Donald Trump. Eliot Engel of course has lost his seat in Congress. He lost in a primary, and he will be on his way out. And in the primary, the people running against him charged him with taking more money from defense contractors than 144 Republicans in the House of Representatives. So, I think that Engel is playing politics. He’s a strong supporter of Israel and he is trying to do his very best to get Donald Trump out of office,” said Springmann who is based in Washington.
“So I think it’s a nasty combination of events, with Trump trying to sell more weapons to the Saudis than they need, and also Engel playing politics for all he’s worth. The real issue is that the Democrats all have defense contractors in their districts, or most of them I guess, or they get money from defense contractors so that when push comes to shove, the Democrats don’t really fight against this. Yes, they passed a resolution in the House of Representatives and tried to get the same resolution through the Republican-controlled Senate, but they didn’t have the votes to overcome Donald Trump’s veto,” he added.
“So if the Democrats were really serious, they would reject the money from the defense contractors and unite to put down the sales of weapons to the Saudis and to Israel and other countries that don’t need them but use them to harm their neighbors. Unfortunately, the Democrats are not united enough because they’re too busy playing politics and too busy taking the money from defense contractors to produce results,” he stated.
“In sum, we need to look at all sides of the matter and not just listen to Elliot Engel,” he concluded.
In May, Trump abruptly fired Linick from his position as the State watchdog, while he was probing the administration’s last year’s decision to allow $8 billion in military sales to Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Jordan despite congressional opposition.
Congress had objected to the transactions, warning that providing the Saudis with more weapons could contribute to the human catastrophe in war-torn Yemen, where the Kingdom has been waging a devastating war for more than five years.
An estimated 100,000 people have lost their lives in the Saudi war.
Congress had also expressed concern that the military transaction would possibly leave US officials vulnerable to war crimes charges.
“The news of Inspector General Linick’s firing did come as a surprise… Any time one is terminated, it naturally will raise some questions,” said Representative Michael McCaul, the committee’s top Republican.
Linick, who was responsible for preventing government waste, fraud and abuse, was also investigating allegations that Pompeo and his wife misused government resources by having department staff handle personal matters.
Representative Eliot Engel, the Democratic chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee asked if Linick was fired “because he was getting closer and closer to matters that were embarrassing for Mr Pompeo and his family.”
South Africa says ‘surprised’ by ‘bizarre’ report of Iran plot to kill US envoy
Press TV – September 18, 2020
South African Minister of International Relations Naledi Pandor says her country is “as surprised as its Iranian friends” after learning about the American news website Politico’s report of a “plot” by Tehran to assassinate the US envoy to the African nation.
“It’s been a very strange public statement and of course our friends in Iran are as surprised as we were,” Pandor said in an interview with SABC News, the full version of which will be broadcasted on Friday.
“I find it surprising, why would Iran being a very good friend of South Africa come and commit a horrendous act in a country which has been a good friend to Iran, and of such a nature?” she added.
“I can only describe it as bizarre and let me stop there.”
Her comments came after Politico news website claimed Iran had sought to assassinate US Ambassador to South Africa Lana Marks in retaliation for the January assassination of top Iranian anti-terror commander, General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the IRGC Quds Force who was martyred in a US drone attack near the Baghdad International Airport along with his comrades.
The article claimed to be based on US intelligence reports, allegedly seen by a US government official and another official familiar with the documents, stating that Marks had likely been chosen due to her closeness to US President Donald Trump.
Iran vehemently dismissed the “biased and agenda-driven” report, and advised American officials to stop resorting to hackneyed and outworn methods to create Iranophobic atmosphere on the international arena.
In a Monday statement, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeid Khatibzadeh said, “The Islamic Republic of Iran, as a responsible member of the international community, has demonstrated its continued adherence to the principles and customs of international diplomacy.”
The spokesman said baseless allegations such as the one published in Politico are “part of the Trump administration’s counter-intelligence campaign against Iran.”
“The US regime’s resort to anti-Iranian accusations and lies in the run-up to the US presidential election, and at the same time its pressure to abuse UN Security Council mechanisms to increase pressure on the Iranian people, was predictable.”
“Nevertheless, such moves and news fabrications, probably to continue in the future, will certainly remain futile, adding to Washington’s long list of ongoing failures against the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Khatibzadeh added.
FBI director says Russia is engaged in ‘very active efforts’ to sink Biden & rehashes 2016 claims… but provides no evidence
RT | September 17, 2020
Russia is reprising its still-unproven 2016 election meddling efforts, this time targeting Democratic challenger Joe Biden, according to FBI Director Christopher Wray, who gave no evidence to support his crowd-pleasing claims.
Wray told the House of Representatives that Russia is taking a “very active” role in the 2020 US election, claiming Moscow “continues to try to influence our elections, primarily through what we call malign foreign influence” during a Thursday hearing on national security threats.
According to the FBI director, the Russians’ primary goal seems to be not only to “sow divisiveness and discord,” but to trash Democratic nominee Joe Biden – along with “what the Russians see as a kind of anti-Russian establishment” – through social media, “use of proxies,” state-run media, and “online journals.”
Wray contrasted 2020’s alleged meddling with that of 2016, which he claimed involved “an effort to target election infrastructure,” presenting no evidence to back up either current or past claims – other than that the FBI or other intelligence agencies had made the same claims in the past. There is no actual evidence that Russia interfered with election infrastructure in 2016.
While four years of similarly flavored conspiracy theories blaming Russia for Donald Trump’s 2016 win have come up empty-handed, the paucity of real-world evidence for ‘Russian meddling’ has not stopped Wray and other US intel officials from hyping it up as a major threat to the integrity of the democratic process.
The National Counterintelligence and Security Center suggested last month that, while Russia would interfere in the election in favor of Trump, China and Iran would meddle on behalf of Biden – implying Americans couldn’t vote at all without doing the bidding of a foreign nation.
Former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats even suggested Congress create another election integrity body to supervise the vote in November, apparently concerned the existing authorities – all 54 of them, one for each state plus four federal entities tasked with keeping meddlers, foreign and domestic, shut out – weren’t enough.
Wray insisted the FBI was not only working closely with its state and federal counterparts, but also interfacing on a daily basis with social media companies – though he did not go into detail regarding what information the tech giants were handing over to law enforcement (or vice versa).
During his testimony before Congress, Wray also broke with the Trump administration’s viewpoint on the subject of Antifa, insisting the often-violent leftist group was “more of an ideology than an organization.” However, he admitted “we have seen folks who subscribe or identify with the Antifa movement, who coalesce regionally into small groups or nodes, and they are certainly organized at that level.” Trump has called for Antifa to be declared a terrorist organization.
West cannot hide crimes against Syria with humanitarian allegations: Syrian envoy to UN
Press TV – September 17, 2020
Syrian Ambassador to the United Nations Bashar al-Ja’afari says the West’s crimes, including economic terrorism, against Syria cannot be hidden by humanitarian claims and allegations.
Speaking at a UN Security Council session on the humanitarian situation in Syria via a video link, Ja’afari said the Western states, which have introduced coercive economic measures against the Arab country, would not be able to cover up the repercussions of their economic terrorism against Syrians.
He also stressed that the humanitarian allegations against Syria made by the West would not be able to hide its horrible crimes in exerting more pressure on the Arab nation and hampering the reconstruction process in the war-ravaged country and the return of the displaced Syrians.
Ja’afari noted that some Western countries, which have slapped Syria with persisting illegal sanctions, are telling outright lies in claiming that they are not targeting Syrians and that they are trying to provide humanitarian and medical exemptions to assist the Syrians.
The Syrian envoy also lambasted claims by the Western states that Damascus had deprived COVID-19 Syrian patients of due treatment, stressing that Syrian citizens are in fact suffering greatly from the disastrous effects of Western coercive measures.
“Since 1978, the US successive administrations have imposed coercive measures on the Syrian economy and its vital sectors, such as civil aviation, petroleum, energy, telecommunications, technology, banking, import and the export, including the import and manufacturing of food, medicines and basic medical equipment, to dissuade Syria from its stances in rejection of the hegemony and occupation policies,” Ja’afari added.
Elsewhere in his remarks, the Syrian envoy demanded the withdrawal of all Turkish troops and their allied militant groups from northern and northwestern parts of the Arab country.
He also stressed the need for ending the US occupation of the areas northeast of the Arab country and holding Washington and its allies and separatist militias and terrorist groups affiliated to it responsible for prolonging the suffering of the displaced in al-Hawl and al-Rukban camps.
In conclusion, Ja’afari referred to a recent report by the Guardian, which cited US research centers and academics as saying that the US, since 2001, has displaced 37 million persons in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen and elsewhere under the slogan of the so-called “war on terrorism.”
Discrediting the Russian Vaccine: The Small Shady Deal of Big Politics
By Irina Alksnis – Sputnik – 17.09.2020
For the West, Russia’s leadership in the creation of a vaccine against the coronavirus has become not just an unpleasant surprise, but a shocking call-out, not only politically but financially as well.
On the one hand, ‘backward, deeply undemocratic Russia’ simply lacks the right to carry out such breakthroughs in complex scientific and technologically advanced fields. On the other, there is a jackpot at stake so astronomical in size that the mere idea that it might elude Western pharmaceutical giants is cause for heartburn. For example, think of what the news of an agreement between Moscow and Delhi on the supply of a hundred million doses of Sputnik-V to India alone is worth.
It’s not surprising that Russia has faced numerous attempts to discredit the results of the work of its scientists: big politics means big money.
However, next to the sharks one will always find sucker fish, who regularly get a snack from their masters’ dinner. That’s exactly what happened when the results of Sputnik-V testing were announced by The Lancet, one of the oldest and most prestigious medical journals in the world.
The article was torn apart by critics with lighting speed. The ‘loudest’ of these criticisms spread by world media was the open letter by Enrico Bucci, a biology professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, who expressed fears about the mistakes ‘possibly made by Russian researchers’. Bucci’s letter received the support of over two dozen other Western scientists.
The Lancet invited the developers of Sputnik-V to answer the questions they had, and this was done. The Gamaleya Center presented the publication with the full-length clinical protocol of its study of the Sputnik-V vaccine.
Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, published a column in which he commented in detail on the main claims made by critics, while at the same time urging them to look out for the ‘plank in their own eyes’, and dispelling any doubts inside Russia itself about the ongoing developments.
Meanwhile, the problem in this case is not only a purely scientific one, on which the Russian researchers have focused.
The fact is that Dr. Bucci is himself a rather remarkable person. The BBC’s Russian service calls him a “famous fighter against pseudoscience”. However, it would be more appropriate to describe him as a “businessman representing science.”
In 2016, Bucci founded Resis Srl, a company specialising in the verification, fact-checking and validation of scientific papers. This is a trendy topic in modern science. Too often in recent years, researchers have been caught making mistakes, including major ones, in articles they’ve published. And it’s not necessarily a matter of abuses or fraud. Often it’s a matter of honest mistakes, which, when exposed, nevertheless affect the reputation of scientists and even entire scientific institutions.
It is precisely to avoid such problems that authors and research institutions often turn to firms like Bucci’s to carry out an independent audit of their texts before publication. For example, Bucci’s company was hired for this purpose by Germany’s Fritz Lipmann Institute, which was impacted by a major scandal some time back due to crude mistakes in its published materials. A detailed article on that scandal appeared in Nature in late 2019.
The subtle point worth noting here is that businesses like Bucci’s are obliged to follow certain ethical restrictions, something the professor knows perfectly well. In an article appearing in Nature in December 2019 which he coauthored, which is dedicated to integrity and conscientiousness in published work, it was honestly pointed out that people like Bucci have a conflict of interest. Simply put, when an owner of a commercial company speaks publicly about the activity in which he specialises, it essentially becomes an advertisement for his firm.
Of course, when it comes to ‘discrediting’ the Russian vaccine, such trifles are no longer important. Western countries used Bucci’s open (and by definition self-promoting) letter to ‘strike another blow against’ Russian scientists in the hopes of undermining or at least temporarily weakening their leading position. Meanwhile, the professor himself has received free PR of a scale and magnitude that he could not have even dreamed about under any other circumstances. This is called “riding the wave of hype”, and is a principle according to which hundreds of thousands of media personalities operate.
There’s no doubt that doing so will pay off for Bucci in the form of very attractive new commercial contracts. Catching hype in the troubled waters of big politics can be very profitable. But this has nothing to do with science generally, or medicine in particular, or the saving of hundreds of thousands of lives around the world.
Why Bob Woodward’s ‘Rage’ is a lie built on a lie, and what Trump vs ‘Military Messiah Syndrome’ really is about
By Scott Ritter | RT | September 16, 2020
Bob Woodward’s new insider account of the Trump administration, ‘Rage’, details the multi-faceted controversies surrounding President Trump’s approach to governance – none more so than his relationship with the military.
Bob Woodward is a legendary reporter whose talent for getting insiders to speak about the most sensitive matters in government dates back to Watergate and the Nixon presidency. His most recent presidential expose, ‘Rage’, touches on a wide range of controversies, from the coronavirus pandemic to issues relating to war, and the promise of war.
It is Trump’s tortured relationship with the military that stands out the most, especially as told through the eyes of former Secretary of Defense Jim ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis, a retired marine general. It is clear that Bob Woodward spent hours speaking with Mattis – the insights, emotions and internal voice captured in the book show a level of intimacy that could only be reached through in-depth interviews, and Woodward has a well-earned reputation for getting people to speak to him.
The book makes it clear that Mattis viewed Trump as a threat to the US’ standing as the defender of a rules-based order – built on the back of decades-old alliances – that had been in place since the end of the Second World War.
It also makes it clear that Mattis and the military officers he oversaw placed defending this order above implementing the will of the American people, as expressed through the free and fair election that elevated Donald Trump to the position of commander-in-chief. In short, Mattis and his coterie of generals knew best, and when the president dared issue an order or instruction that conflicted with their vision of how the world should work, they would do their best to undermine this order, all the while confirming to the president that it was being followed.
The military is trapped in an inherited reality divorced from the present
This trend was on display in Woodward’s telling of Trump’s efforts to forge better relations with North Korea. At every turn, Mattis and his military commanders sought to isolate the president from the reality on the ground, briefing him only on what they thought he needed to know, and keeping him in the dark about what was really going on.
In a telling passage, Woodward takes us into the mind of Jim Mattis as he contemplates the horrors of a nuclear war with North Korea, and the responsibility he believed he shouldered when it came to making the hard decision as to whether nuclear weapons should be used or not. Constitutionally, the decision was the president’s alone to make, something Mattis begrudgingly acknowledges. But in Mattis’ world, he, as secretary of defense, would be the one who influenced that decision.
Mattis, along with the other general officers described by Woodward, is clearly gripped with what can only be described as the ‘Military Messiah Syndrome’.
What defines this ‘syndrome’ is perhaps best captured in the words of Emma Sky, the female peace activist-turned adviser to General Ray Odierno, the one-time commander of US forces in Iraq. In a frank give-and-take captured by Ms. Sky in her book ‘The Unravelling’, Odierno spoke of the value he placed on the military’s willingness to defend “freedom” anywhere in the world. “There is,” he said, “no one who understands more the importance of liberty and freedom in all its forms than those who travel the world to defend it.”
Ms. Sky responded in typically direct fashion: “One day, I will have you admit that the [Iraq] war was a bad idea, that the administration was led by a radical neocon program, that the US’s standing in the world has gone down greatly, and that we are far less safe than we were before 9/11.”
Odierno would have nothing of it. “It will never happen while I’m the commander of soldiers in Iraq.”
“To lead soldiers in battle,” Ms. Sky noted, “a commander had to believe in the cause.” Left unsaid was the obvious: even if the cause was morally and intellectually unsound.
This, more than anything, is the most dangerous thing about the ‘Military Messiah Syndrome’ as captured by Bob Woodward – the fact that the military is trapped in an inherited reality divorced from the present, driven by precepts which have nothing to with what is, but rather by what the military commanders believe should be. The unyielding notion that the US military is a force for good becomes little more than meaningless drivel when juxtaposed with the reality that the mission being executed is inherently wrong.
The ‘Military Messiah Syndrome’ lends itself to dishonesty and, worse, to self-delusion. It is one thing to lie; it is another altogether to believe the lie as truth.
No single general had the courage to tell Trump allegations against Syria were a hoax
The cruise missile attack on Syria in early April 2017 stands out as a case in point. The attack was ordered in response to allegations that Syria had dropped a bomb containing the sarin nerve agent on a town – Khan Shaykhun – that was controlled by Al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic militants.
Trump was led to believe that the 59 cruise missiles launched against Shayrat Airbase – where the Su-22 aircraft alleged to have dropped the bombs were based – destroyed Syria’s capability to carry out a similar attack in the future. When shown post-strike imagery in which the runways were clearly untouched, Trump was outraged, lashing out at Secretary of Defense Mattis in a conference call. “I can’t believe you didn’t destroy the runway!”, Woodward reports the president shouting.
“Mr. President,” Mattis responds in the text, “they would rebuild the runway in 24 hours, and it would have little effect on their ability to deploy weapons. We destroyed the capability to deploy weapons” for months, Mattis said.
“That was the mission the president had approved,” Woodward writes, clearly channeling Mattis, “and they had succeeded.”
The problem with this passage is that it is a lie. There is no doubt that Bob Woodward has the audio tape of Jim Mattis saying these things. But none of it is true. Mattis knew it when he spoke to Woodward, and Woodward knew it when he wrote the book.
There was no confirmed use of chemical weapons by Syria at Khan Shaykhun. Indeed, the forensic evidence available about the attack points to the incident being a false flag effort – a successful one, it turns out – on the part of the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamists to provoke a US military strike against Syria. No targets related to either the production, storage or handling of chemical weapons were hit by the US cruise missiles, if for no other reason than no such targets could exist if Syria did not possess and/or use a chemical weapon against Khan Shaykhun.
Moreover, the US failed to produce a narrative of causality which provided some underlying logic to the targets that were struck at Khan Shaykhun – “Here is where the chemical weapons were stored, here is where the chemical weapons were filled, here is where the chemical weapons were loaded onto the aircraft.” Instead, 59 cruise missiles struck empty aircraft hangars, destroying derelict aircraft, and killing at least four Syrian soldiers and up to nine civilians.
The next morning, the same Su-22 aircraft that were alleged to have bombed Khan Shaykhun were once again taking off from Shayrat Air Base – less than 24 hours after the US cruise missiles struck that facility. President Trump had every reason to be outraged by the results.
But the President should have been outraged by the processes behind the attack, where military commanders, fully afflicted by ‘Military Messiah Syndrome’, offered up solutions that solved nothing for problems that did not exist. Not a single general (or admiral) had the courage to tell the president that the allegations against Syria were a hoax, and that a military response was not only not needed, but would be singularly counterproductive.
But that’s not how generals and admirals – or colonels and lieutenant colonels – are wired. That kind of introspective honesty cannot happen while they are in command.
Misleading the American public
Bob Woodward knows this truth, but he chose not to give it a voice in his book, because to do so would disrupt the pre-scripted narrative that he had constructed, around which he bent and twisted the words of those he interviewed – including the president and Jim Mattis. As such, ‘Rage’ is, in effect, a lie built on a lie. It is one thing for politicians and those in power to manipulate the truth to their advantage. It’s something altogether different for journalists to report something as true that they know to be a lie.
On the back cover of ‘Rage’, the Pulitzer prize-winning historian Robert Caro is quoted from a speech he gave about Bob Woodward. “Bob Woodward,” Caro notes, “a great reporter. What is a great reporter? Someone who never stops trying to get as close to the truth as possible.”
After reading ‘Rage’, one cannot help but conclude the opposite – that Bob Woodward has written a volume which pointedly ignores the truth. Instead, he gives voice to a lie of his own construct, predicated on the flawed accounts of sources inflicted with ‘Military Messiah Syndrome’, whose words embrace a fantasy world populated by military members fulfilling missions far removed from the common good of their fellow citizens – and often at conflict with the stated intent and instruction of the civilian leadership they ostensibly serve. In doing so, Woodward is as complicit as the generals and former generals he quotes in misleading the American public about issues of fundamental importance.
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
Gavin Newsom’s Exceedingly Ignorant Climate Claim
By Jim Steele | Watts Up With That? | September 14, 2020
Scientific evidence reveals there has been no climate effect regards California’s wildfires! None! The data below proves it beyond all doubt. There is no denying that warmer temperatures can cause drier fuels and promote larger fires. But that fact is being misapplied to all wildfires. About 70% of California’s 2020 burnt areas have been in grasslands and dead grass is so dry by the end of California’s annual summer drought that dead grasses are totally insensitive to any added warmth from climate change. Dead grasses only require a few hours of warm dry conditions to become highly flammable. It’s fire weather not climate change that is critical. Furthermore, the century trends in local temperatures where California’s biggest fires have occurred reveal no connection to climate change. In most cases the local maximum temperatures have been cooler now than during the 1930s. Those cooler temperatures should reduce the fire danger. Newsom is either ignoring or distorting the scientific evidence, is totally stupid, or is a dishonest demagogue.
Maximum temperatures are typically used by fire indexes to issue red flag warnings because it is the heat of midday that has the greatest drying effect. Minimum temperatures are often low enough to drop below the dewpoint at which time fuel moisture increases. So averaging minimum and maximum temperatures is inappropriate. In addition, referencing a higher global average temperature is meaningless. Only local maximum temperatures determine the dryness of surface fuels during every fire. As in Park and Abatzoglou 2019, the months of March through October are averaged to determine maximum temperatures during California’s dry season.
Here are some relevant facts (from the Western Regional Climate Center). Trust the scientific evidence
1) The August 2013 Rim Fire centered around Yosemite National Park, was California’s 5th largest fire.
2) The November 2018 Camp Fire was California’s deadliest fire destroying the town of Paradise. It was also its 16th largest fire.
3) The 2018 Mendocino Complex Fire was California’s largest fire (since 1932 excluding 2020) .
4) In the October 2017 wine country fires, the Tubbs Fire was the 4th deadliest. It only burned 37,000 acres but high winds drove embers into the dwellings of the heavily populated outskirts of Santa Rosa.
Governor Newsom ignores the data to disgustingly hijacking the tragedy of California’s fires to push is climate change agenda. But he is not alone. There are climate scientists pushing catastrophes by ignoring the local maximum temperature trends. Bad analyses promote bad policies and obscure what needs to be done regards fuel management and creating defensible spaces in fire prone California. Newsom must focus on fuel management and fire suppression. As fire ecologist Thomas Swetnam echoed the experts’ growing consensus against fire suppression wrote, “The paradox of fire management in conifer forests is that, if in the short term we are effective at reducing fire occurrence below a certain level, then sooner or later catastrophically destructive wildfires will occur. Even the most efficient and technologically advanced firefighting efforts can only forestall this inevitable result.”
Further information about California’s wildfires are
Minimizing California Wildfires
Wildfires: Separating Demagoguery from the Science
How Bad Science & Horrific Journalism Misrepresent Wildfires and Climate
Jim Steele is Director emeritus of San Francisco State’s Sierra Nevada Field Campus and authored Landscapes and Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism
Berlin struggles to answer RT’s question on fate of Navalny’s mysterious associate who fled Russia for Germany
RT | September 15, 2020
When asked by RT, German government representatives failed to explain the mystery surrounding Alexey Navalny’s associate M. Pevchikh, who was with him at the time of the alleged poisoning and fled for Germany shortly.
German government spokespeople were grilled by RT Deutsch during a press conference on Monday. The officials, however, failed to provide any actual answer about the woman identified by Russian authorities as Marina Pevchikh.
“I can’t tell you anything about this. We must not forget that an attempt was made on the life of Mr. Navalny with the use of a poisonous substance. But I can’t tell you anything about the location of an individual,” Steffen Seibert stated.
The associate of the Kremlin critic was reportedly together with Navalny in Tomsk before his alleged poisoning. Unlike all other individuals who interacted with him on that day, she did not cooperate with Russian investigators and fled the country to Germany.
Pevchikh has spoken on the matter with Meduza, a Latvia-based Russian language news site, claiming she was never approached by the police. She also said her name is actually Maria, not ‘Marina’.
German officials have also failed to explain how a Russian citizen managed to obtain a permit for entering the country that fast. Still, little is actually known about Pevchikh, who is believed to hold a UK residence permit – or even citizenship. Moreover, only a few photos of her exist, despite her close association and repeated trips alongside Navalny, who is a very public figure.
The saga of the Navalny ‘poisoning’ kicked off on August 20, when he fell ill on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow. After an emergency landing in Omsk, a Siberian city 2,000 km east of the Russian capital, he was taken to a local hospital in an unresponsive condition.
The opposition figure was flown to Berlin’s Charite clinic two days later, where he is currently being treated. While Russian doctors have found no traces of toxic substances in samples collected from Navalny, their German counterparts have claimed he was poisoned with a variant of the infamous nerve agent family ‘Novichok’. Creators of that family of toxic substances have already said his symptoms did not correspond with the exposure to the agent, however.
Exhaustive Pentagon Review Finds No Evidence For NYTimes’ “Russian Bounties” Story
By Tyler Durden – Zero Hedge – 09/14/2020
There’s been huge efforts to validate The New York Times “bombshell” that wasn’t — concerning its summer reporting that Russia secretly offered bounties to the Taliban to kill US troops in Afghanistan.
Two months ago the Pentagon vowed to get to the bottom of it, launching a review of all intelligence and sources which might provide corroboration. And now at the end of that investigation Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of the U.S. Central Command overseeing the war in Afghanistan, says the detailed investigation found no corroboration of the story.
Recall that from the start the whole thing smelled like a dramatic and desperate last ditch effort to revive the failed Russiagate narrative but in a different form. Multiple intelligence agency heads voiced their immediate skepticism in the wake of the claims linked to unnamed intelligence sources in the CIA.
The new NBC report, published Monday, finds further:
A U.S. military official familiar with the intelligence added that after a review of the intelligence around each attack against Americans going back several years, none have been tied to any Russian incentive payments.
The suggestion of a Russian bounty program began, another source directly familiar with the matter said, with a raid by CIA paramilitary officers that captured Taliban documents describing Russian payments.
So there it is: the Pentagon did a detailed examination of each and every attack on American troops going back several years and found nothing.
Tehran slams as ‘baseless’ UN report of Iran’s arms shipments to Yemen
Press TV – September 11, 2020
Iran’s Foreign Ministry has slammed as “baseless” a report published by the United Nation’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) alleging Tehran has been sending arms to war-torn Yemen.
“Placing Iran’s name next to those supplying weapons to the Saudi coalition against Yemen is completely wrong,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said in a statement on Thursday.
The spokesperson said while Iran’s name has only been mentioned once in the report, “it also neglects Iran’s pivotal role and assistance in seeking to achieve a political solution to the conflict in Yemen”.
Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia has been waging a war on Yemen with the help of its regional allies and largely assisted by Western-supplied weapons which have been indiscriminately used against Yemeni civilians.
Despite numerous bids to stop arms sales, top Western arms suppliers such as the United States, Britain, Canada, France and Germany have pushed through with lethal weapons shipments to the oil-rich kingdom.
Khatibzadeh said that the OHCHR’s claim of Iran supplying weapons to Yemen amid the Saudi war comes as Western states are openly conducting their sales, “with related figures being published and available”.
“While some of these countries have periodically halted or limited arms to Riyadh due to pressure from human rights groups, the bitter reality is that the lucrative arms trade has persuaded them to ignore their international and moral obligations,” he said.
“They have forgotten that their weapons have been used to kill the Yemenis and destroy the country’s infrastructure. We are consequently seeing the largest humanitarian crisis due to the actions of the Saudi coalition and its arms suppliers,” the Foreign Ministry spokesman added.
Khatibzadeh stressed that while there is no clear evidence about Iranian arms shipments to Yemen, a Saudi-imposed blockade has even stopped Iranian humanitarian aid from reaching the country.
An estimated 100,000 people have so far lost their lives in the Saudi war.
The Saudi war has had a large impact on Yemen’s infrastructure, impairing the impoverished Arab country’s weak industrial, agricultural and medical sectors.
Iran rejects claim of meddling in US elections, blasts US’ own intl. election meddling
Press TV – September 11, 2020
Iran’s Foreign Ministry has rejected allegations by US technology company Microsoft that Tehran seeks to meddle in Washington’s 2020 presidential elections, blasting US’ own history of interfering in other countries’ affairs.
“The United States is leading active disinformation campaigns against other countries. The US is not in a position to make such a woeful claim,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said in a statement on Friday.
“The US has interfered for decades in the elections of other countries – including Iran – and orchestrated a coup d’état which overthrew Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minster Mohammad Mossadeq,” he said.
The remarks come a day after Microsoft claimed that it had detected Russian, Chinese and Iranian efforts to target “people and organizations involved in the upcoming presidential election”.
The statement claimed that the attempts had sought to attack campaigns associated with both US President Donald Trump and his rival Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden.
It claimed that most of the attacks had been “detected and stopped by security tools built into our products”.
Speaking on Friday, Khatibzadeh said that Tehran has no interest in the outcome of US elections.
“As we have reiterated over and over, it does not matter who is the president in the White House for Tehran. What matters is that Washington abides by international law, regulations and norms and stops interfering in other countries and honors its commitments,” he said.
Washington, which has sought to impose an overt campaign of “maximum pressure” against Iran ever since withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, has also sought to stifle Iranian media operating across different social media platforms in recent years.
Facebook, Twitter and Youtube have consequently cracked down on pages belonging to credible Iranian figures and media outlets, closing them or limiting their access to international audiences.
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Villains of Judea
Samuel Zemurray
The ruthless businessman who financed coups in Central America and shaped Israeli statehood
José Niño Unfiltered | May 7, 2026
Leftist commentators consistently push a shallow and economically reductive narrative that frames American foreign policy as the sole domain of greedy White capitalists while choosing to ignore the obvious Jewish power structure directing these events. When the veneer of this supposed corporate imperialism is stripped away, it becomes clear that the United States has often served as a vehicle for the specific goals of organized Jewry. The life of Samuel Zemurray stands as prime evidence of this hidden mechanism.
Few figures in American business history wielded power as ruthlessly or as secretly as Zemurray. Born Schmiel Zmurri on January 18, 1877, to a poor Jewish family in Imperial Russia, this teenage immigrant would rise from peddling rotting bananas off railroad cars in Alabama to become the controlling force behind the United Fruit Company, the most powerful agricultural corporation on earth. Along the way he overthrew governments, bribed presidents, hired mercenaries, and played a pivotal behind-the-scenes role in the creation of the State of Israel. … continue
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