Trump Vows to Quit Nuclear Arms Treaty With Russia
Sputnik – 20.10.2018
US President Donald Trump said that he will pull out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia, media reported.
Donald Trump claimed that Russia violates the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with the United States, and that he will pull out of it.
The treaty signed in 1987 by the USSR and the US, stipulated the elimination of nuclear and conventional missiles and their launchers with ranges of 500–1,000 km (310–620 mi) and 1,000–5,500 km (620–3,420 mi).
Commenting on his decision, Donald Trump said that the United States needs to develop this type of military equipment.
“We’ll have to develop those weapons,” the US president said commenting on his announcement.
On Friday, The New York Times reported that the Trump administration was preparing to exit the three-decade-old Cold War-era treaty next week.
Moscow and Washington have repeatedly accused each other of violating the treaty. The previous administration of Former US President Barack Obama however, decided not to leave the treaty.
The previous year, a senior Russian senator warned that Russia may prepare an adequate response to ensure the country’s protection If the United States decides to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
Meanwhile, Europe stands for the extension of the Russia-US 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START). German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel stated in the previous year that European security could encounter a significant threat should it not be resumed by 2021.
Iran rejects US ‘unknown delusion’ of foreign interference in elections
Press TV – October 20, 2018
Iran has dismissed the “false and baseless” claim made by the United States about Tehran’s efforts to undermine US elections, including next month’s midterms, saying such allegations are rooted in an “unknown delusion.”
“The principled policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran is based on non-interference in the domestic affairs of other countries,” Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi said on Saturday.
US intelligence and law enforcement agencies on Friday claimed that foreign governments continued to try to influence US elections, including the upcoming midterm congressional vote in November.
“We are concerned about ongoing campaigns by Russia, China and other foreign actors, including Iran, to undermine confidence in democratic institutions and influence public sentiment and government policies,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Justice Department, FBI and Department of Homeland Security said in a joint statement.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said bids by American officials to accuse Iran of seeking to meddle in and influence the US congressional elections are basically false, stressing such allegations are politically-motivated.
Qassemi added that the White House tries to level accusations against other countries with “specific domestic political purposes and everyday adds the name of a country to its delusional list in this regard.”
The allegation comes as US government agencies have said they have no evidence of a compromise or disruption of election equipment yet.
As Bolton heads to Moscow, US charges another Russian with ‘election meddling’
RT | October 20, 2018
The Department of Justice has charged a Russian national with conspiring to interfere in the 2016 and upcoming 2018 elections, in an indictment released just one day before crucial meetings between US and Russian officials.
Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova of St. Petersburg, allegedly served as the chief accountant for ‘Project Lakhta’, a strategic effort to “sow discord in the US political system and to undermine faith in our democratic institutions,” according to US Attorney Zachary Terwilliger.
The Department named Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin and two of his companies, Concord Catering and Concord Management and Consulting LLC, as the source of the project’s funding.
Khusyaynova, 44, was allegedly responsible for distributing the project’s $35 million budget, which the Department says went towards buying domain names, paying trolls to post as American activists, and posting inflammatory content on a whole spectrum of issues, including “immigration, gun control and the Second Amendment, the Confederate flag, race relations, LGBT issues, the Women’s March, and the NFL national anthem debate.”
Concord will be a familiar name to anyone watching Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing ‘Russiagate’ probe. The company was one of three indicted by Mueller in February, for allegedly interfering with the 2016 election. Concord responded with a court filing saying that the charges amounted to a “make-believe crime” and that Mueller was trying to “justify his own existence” and “indict a Russian ‒ any Russian” for political reasons.
Friday’s indictment comes one day before US national security adviser John Bolton flies to Moscow for a series of meetings with Russian officials, aimed at continuing the dialog started by President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki this summer. A meeting between Putin and Bolton is reportedly on the table.
Curiously, Mueller’s last indictment against ‘Russian hackers’ was issued a few days before Trump’s head-to-head summit with Putin. A host of top Democrats, and some Republicans – such the late Russia-hawk John McCain – called on Trump to cancel the summit in the wake of the indictment. The Russian Foreign Ministry said that the timing was intended to “spoil the atmosphere prior to the Russian-American summit.”
“The influential political forces in the US, that are opposed to the normalization of relations between our countries and have spread open slander for the past two years, are desperately trying to make the best use of yet another fake,” the Foreign Ministry added.
The DOJ’s latest indictment, as well as Mueller’s previous two, all have two things in common: First, the accused parties will likely never be extradited to the US to answer the charges. Secondly, all the indictments caution that they don’t allege the ‘interference’ actually “had any effect on the outcome of an election,” or involved “collusion” by any Americans.
Notably, in Friday’s indictment the Justice Department praised the “exceptional cooperation” of Facebook and Twitter in turning over evidence of troll and bot activity. On Wednesday, Twitter released a database of tweets and media it claims “resulted from potentially state-backed information operations” in Russia and Iran.
It would not, however, say how it came to believe the offending tweets came from Russia, and the company has been accused before of roping in genuine accounts in its wide-net bot hunts, which consider an account “Russian-linked” if the user has Cyrillic characters anywhere on their profile, and if they ever logged in from a Russian IP address, even once, to list only two criteria.
In a familiar twist, Twitter’s bot-hunting partner organization – the NATO-sponsored Digital Forensics Lab – concluded that there was “no evidence to suggest” that the tweets “triggered large-scale changes in political behavior.”
There is No “Proxy War” in Yemen
By Rannie Amiri | CounterPunch | October 19, 2018
Those in the Western media too busy to be bothered trying to understand the complexities, intricacies and nuances of the Middle East often resort to concluding nearly all conflicts there are some kind of “proxy war” between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
This is usually out of ignorance, reducing disputes to the lowest common dominator of Sunnis versus Shiites or to that between their two most prominent patron states. Often though there is deliberate obfuscation; there must be justification for a US ally to cause regional mayhem on the pretext of containing an enemy. The easiest and most convenient scapegoat has been Iran and efforts to contain its alleged expansionism by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and of course, Israel, go unchecked.
One of the most devastating and tragic episodes occurring in the Middle East today is in Yemen. But this is not a de facto proxy war its bankrollers hope we have all grown too weary of hearing to investigate further.
Despite the constant disclaimers by a lazy media, there is no proxy war in Yemen.
The war which has ravaged the Arab world’s poorest country since March 2015 is a Saudi-led, unilateral onslaught which has so devasted the nation, its economy, infrastructure and social services that malnutrition has become widespread and cholera epidemic.
Ostensibly, the Saudi-UAE military campaign was to oust Houthi-led rebels who unseated the deeply unpopular Saudi-backed puppet-president Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi in January 2015 (elected on a ballot in which he was the only candidate and who remained in power even after the expiration of a one-year mandate that had extended his term). The Houthis, a politico-religious group officially known as Ansarullah and named after their founder, Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, initially formed in opposition to late Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh.
The Houthis generally belong to the Zaidi school in Islam, a branch of the larger Shiite sect. Branding the Houthis as “Iranian-backed Shiite rebels” as is now routine, makes for easy and convenient categorization of who the “bad guys” are in Western and Gulf media. But this is disingenuous. The inconvenient fact is Zaidis are generally closer to Sunni Islam than Shiite (and the longtime military, Saudi-backed dictator Saleh was Zaidi). More significantly, other than voicing solidarity with the Houthis, there has been no substantive evidence of Iranian military intervention or that of affiliated parties in Yemen. On the contrary, and starkly so, it has been the Saudi and Emirati governments’ inhumane bombing campaign which has been the most glaring example of foreign interference in the internal affairs of another country.
When a school-bus was struck during an air raid that killed 40 children, it was initially justified as a “legitimate military target” by the Saudi coalition before international outrage finally led to the conclusion it was otherwise. On the other hand, intermittent Houthi missiles launched at Saudi military installations and considered evidence of foreign military supply belie the Houthis as a legitimate, capable, battle-hardened fighting force. Apparently, the regime cannot fathom that despite daily attack, they have had the muster to retaliate and demonstrate offensive, rather than strictly defensive, capabilities.
Yemen is not a sectarian conflict or one of proxies, but a war stemming from the fallout of removing yet another Saudi-backed ruler from power.
Since 2015, at least 10,000 Yemenis have been killed, 22 million are now in need some form of relief (out of a total population of approximately 29 million) and eight million are malnourished. These numbers can only be expected to climb after evidence has shown Saudi Arabia is targeting food supplies.
The war waged in Yemen by Saudi Arabia and its allies and their wanton use of US and UK-supplied arms is everything short of a formal invasion. It is a one-sided, vicious military adventure which has rendered millions destitute and to date, has proven completely unsuccessful in fulfilling its stated objectives. The only proxies in this struggle are the victims of its war crimes; innocent men, women and children starved or killed, stand-ins for an apparition of a foreign power waiting to be found.
Amid Mainstream Hysteria, Twitter Troll Trove Shows Little Evidence of Meddling
By Kit Klarenberg | Sputnik | October 19, 2018
On October 17, Twitter released an archive of over ten million tweets posted by 3,841 accounts affiliated with the Internet Research Agency, the Russian ‘troll farm’ that has been relentlessly accused by Western journalists and politicians of waging an ‘influence campaign’ during the 2016 US Presidential election in support of Donald Trump.
In an official statement accompanying the data dump, the social media giant said it was disclosing the “full, comprehensive archive” of tweets and media “connected with previously disclosed, potentially state-backed operations” on its platform.
Prior releases provoked much comment and analysis, but also controversy — several accounts widely described as ‘bots’ turned out to be real people, their baffled and scandalized owners taking to the airwaves to make their authenticity, and the authenticity of their opinions, clear. This time, Twitter has “high confidence” the named accounts are bots or ‘trolls’ — fake personas concocted and managed by real people.
An example of some of the media shared by an alleged Russian troll account
Whether Twitter’s certainty is apt this time round remains yet unclear, given several accounts provided published little in the way of political content, instead favoring comedic memes, tweets about preparing for a night out on the town, or screenshots of their favorite US sitcoms, such as Friends. Quite what impact such activities could’ve had — or could’ve been intended to have — on the US political process is unclear, but perhaps further analysis will unfurl a hidden agenda.
Who’s Influencing Who?
Moreover, if the accounts were involved in an attempt to influence US politics, their tweets are somewhat baffling — the vast bulk posted by the offending accounts were in Russian, and as less than a million US citizens speak the language, it’s fair to say no Americans were influenced by these activities, and indeed that wasn’t the intention of the tweeters in question.
This leaves open the question of what the posters were trying to achieve — although on the basis of the tweets Sputnik has seen so far, it may well have simply been a cynical attempt to drive traffic to certain websites, in order to reap advertising revenue.
The Atlantic Council’s Analysis of Troll Tweet Language © Atlantic Council 2018
There is much elsewhere to support the notion these accounts’ activities amounted to opportunistic ‘clickbait’ efforts — their tweeting seemingly spiked during and after major events, with trending hashtags bookending often unrelated posts, or politically charged messages accompanied by a shortened link to a third-party website. By piggybacking off anti-Islam or Euroskeptic hashtags, account owners presumably sought to drive traffic elsewhere.
An example of some of the media shared by an alleged Russian troll account
Irreducible Complacency
This lack of apparent overriding objective is palpably divorced from initial claims of a concerted effort to achieve specific results — such as the election of Donald Trump — but the mainstream media seemingly remains undeterred, as the flurry of alarmist articles that have circulated in the wake of the data dump surely attests. Look past the headlines, however, and accompanying articles are scant on information and discussion, leaving readers in search of said proof wanting. For this glaring deficit, major news outlets can perhaps be forgiven — the data amounts to several hundred gigabytes, and it will surely take a vast army of journalists considerable time to wade through and analyze the full cache.
Nonetheless, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Lab was given a headstart, with Twitter providing the organization’s data scientists an advance look at the trove “in an effort to promote shared understanding of the vulnerabilities exploited by various types on online influence operations, as well as social media’s role in democracy”.
Many articles cite the Council’s analysis, authored by Ben Nimmo, in justification of their paranoid headlines — but while the Lab’s superficial updated conclusion is that troll accounts were intended to divide online communities and exploit polarization and division in society proper, a review of the organization’s detective work suggests journalists haven’t taken the time to actually read that article either. After all, the piece concludes the “troll operations do not appear to have had significant influence on public debate”, “there is no evidence to suggest they triggered large-scale changes in political behavior”, and the accounts’ activities “had little to no discernible impact on the target populations’ political behavior”.
Nimmo concludes the article by despairing of the difficulty of identifying future foreign influence operations, given trolls “use exactly the techniques which drive genuine online activism and engagement”, making it “much harder to separate them out from genuine users”. Nonetheless, Twitter avowedly remains committed to “proactively combat[ing] nefarious attempts to undermine” its integrity, and neutralizing such efforts as “quickly and robustly as technically possible”.
Given Nimmo himself concedes the activities of alleged troll accounts had “little or no impact” whatsoever, with their ‘operations’ “washed away in the firehose of Twitter”, it’s highly questionable if it’s worth undertaking any effort at all.
Despite the paltry yield of information so far, Sputnik journalists will continue analyzing the released data, and report in weeks to come on their findings — if indeed findings are actually forthcoming.
Twitter Data Release Aimed to Discredit Trump Ahead of Midterms – Commentator
Sputnik – October 19, 2018
Twitter has shared an archive of material that could be linked to alleged information campaigns by Russia and Iran. This comes after Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey testified before Congress about foreign interference in US elections. Sputnik has discussed the issue with UK-based political commentator and activist Alan Bailey.
Sputnik: What’s your take on the timing of Twitter’s release of data dating back years? Why now?
Alan Bailey: This is all related to the upcoming US mid-term elections, and further back to the campaign to discredit current US President Trump. There has been a long-running process of undermining Trump’s validity by blaming his victory on external actors. Mainly Russia. According to the US authorities, social media was the main weapon of choice in swinging the public opinion towards Trump and we are now seeing a process of neutering social media so that any dissenting voices outside the mainstream will struggle to be heard.
In its blog post Twitter mentioned some 3,800 accounts it says were affiliated with Russia and some 770 accounts associated with Iran, so over 4,500 accounts overall. How big of a role could these 4,500 accounts have played in the so-called disinformation campaign?
The thing to remember about Twitter is that the vast majority of people only see posts from members they subscribe to. In other words, anyone reading these posts has subscribed to these members’ posts or to someone re-tweeting the posts. It’s not TV. You don’t sit there and watch anything Twitter broadcasts. If the tweets from these members had any effect, then it was because those reading them had sympathy with the content of the tweets anyway.Sputnik: The company also revealed that these accounts have sent over 10 million tweets over the years. Meanwhile, according to Google, some 500 million tweets are sent on Twitter every day. Again, how big of a role could this have played in shaping public opinion?
Alan Bailey: Same as above really. If people were influenced by these tweets, then it is because the mainstream media is not supplying the quality of info they require and this is being fulfilled by the “Russian tweets.” What on earth is wrong with reading a Russian point of view on social media? Nothing. It’s up to the Mainstream to disprove the content and at this, they fail regularly.
Sputnik: In your view, how much of a role do Twitter’s and Facebook’s identification policies play when it comes to setting up new accounts with these networks?
Alan Bailey: Twitter made it official policy that impersonation of another person is a violation of their terms of use and can delete an account upon finding out that this has occurred. Yet many parody accounts exist, mocking celebrities and the like. So this policy, in particular, has been leveraged as a means of deleting accounts producing content that is not in line with US policy and/or representing movements seen in a bad light by the US authorities.
Sputnik: What measures should Twitter take to improve its performance as a safe and unbiased platform, in your opinion?
Alan Bailey: Twitter needs to resist outside pressure to censor its content. Beyond ensuring that only people of a certain age are allowed to sign up for the network, it’s my view that everything else should be open and uncensored. It’s very easy to block or mute a user who is annoying to a user.
Leaked Google Secret Memo Admits Abandonment of Free Speech for ‘Safety And Civility’
Russia Insider | October 18, 2018
Despite leaked video footage showing top executives declaring their intention to ensure that the rise of Trump and the populist movement is just a “blip” in history, Google has repeatedly denied that the political bias of its employees filter into its products.
But the 85-page briefing, titled “The Good Censor,” admits that Google and other tech platforms now “control the majority of online conversations” and have undertaken a “shift towards censorship” in response to unwelcome political events around the world.
Talk about Russian, er, Jewish, meddling in our ‘democracy’ … Sergey Brin, Billionaire founder of Google
Examples cited in the document include the 2016 election and the rise of Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) in Germany.
Responding to the leak, an official Google source said the document should be considered internal research, and not an official company position.
The briefing labels the ideal of unfettered free speech on the internet a “utopian narrative” that has been “undermined” by recent global events as well as “bad behavior” on the part of users. It can be read in full below.
It acknowledges that major tech platforms, including Google, Facebook and Twitter initially promised free speech to consumers. “This free speech ideal was instilled in the DNA of the Silicon Valley startups that now control the majority of our online conversations,” says the document.
The briefing argues that Google, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are caught between two incompatible positions, the “unmediated marketplace of ideas” vs. “well-ordered spaces for safety and civility.”
The first approach is described as a product of the “American tradition” which “prioritizes free speech for democracy, not civility.” The second is described as a product of the “European tradition,” which “favors dignity over liberty and civility over freedom.” The briefing claims that all tech platforms are now moving toward the European tradition.
The briefing associates Google’s new role as the guarantor of “civility” with the categories of “editor” and “publisher.” This is significant, given that Google, YouTube, and other tech giants publicly claim they are not publishers but rather neutral platforms — a categorization that grants them special legal immunities under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Elsewhere in the document, Google admits that Section 230 was designed to ensure they can remain neutral platforms for free expression.
Trump, Conspiracy Theorist
One of the reasons Google identifies for allegedly widespread public disillusionment with internet free speech is that it “breeds conspiracy theories.” The example Google uses? A 2016 tweet from then-candidate Donald Trump, alleging that Google search suppressed negative results about Hillary Clinton.
At the time, Google said that it suppressed negative autocomplete suggestions about everybody, not just Clinton. But it was comparatively easy to find such autocomplete results when searching for Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump. Independent research from psychologist Dr. Robert Epstein also shows that Google search results (if not autocomplete results) did indeed favor Clinton in 2016.
Twice in the document, Google juxtaposes a factoid about “Russian interference” in American elections with pictures of Donald Trump. At one point, the document admits that tech platforms are changing their policies to pre-empt congressional action on foreign interference.
The document did not address the fact that, according to leading psychologists, the impact of foreign “bots” and propaganda on social media has a negligible impact on voters.
From Suggestions to Company Policy
It is unclear for whom the “Good Censor” was intended. What is clear, however, is that Google spent (or paid someone to spend) significant time and effort to produce it.
According to the briefing itself, it was the product of an extensive process involving “several layers of research,” including expert interviews with MIT Tech Review editor-in-chief Jason Pontin, Atlantic staff writer Franklin Foer, and academic Kalev Leetaru. 35 cultural observers and 7 cultural leaders from seven countries on five continents were also consulted to produce it.
What is also clear is that many of the briefing’s recommendations are now reflected in the policy of Google and its sibling companies.
For example, the briefing argues that tech companies will have to censor their platforms if they want to “expand globally.” Google is now constructing a censored search engine to gain access to the Chinese market.
The document also bemoans that the internet allows “have a go commenters” (in other words, ordinary people) to compete on a level playing field with “authoritative sources” like the New York Times. Google-owned YouTube now promotes so-called “authoritative sources” in its algorithm. The company did not specifically name which sources it would promote.
Key points in the briefing can be found at the following page numbers:
- P2 – The briefing states that “users are asking if the openness of the internet should be celebrated after all” and that “free speech has become a social, economic, and political weapon.”
- P11 – The briefing identifies Breitbart News as the media publication most interested in the topic of free speech.
- P12 – The briefing says the early free-speech ideals of the internet were “utopian.”
- P14 – The briefing admits that Google, along with Twitter and Facebook, now “control the majority of online conversations.”
- P15 – Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is linked to Google’s position as a platform for free expression. Elsewhere in the document (p68), Google and other platforms’ move towards moderation and censorship is associated with the role of “publisher” – which would not be subject to Section 230’s legal protections.
- PP19-21 – The briefing identifies several factors that allegedly eroded faith in free speech. The election of Donald Trump and alleged Russian involvement is identified as one such factor. The rise of the populist Alternative fur Deutschland (Alternative for Germany) party in Germany – which the briefing falsely smears as “alt-right” – is another.
- PP26-34 – The briefing explains how “users behaving badly” undermines free speech on the internet and allows “crummy politicians to expand their influence.” The briefing bemoans that “racists, misogynists, and oppressors” are allowed a voice alongside “revolutionaries, whistleblowers, and campaigners.” It warns that users are “keener to transgress moral norms” behind the protection of anonymity.
- P37 – The briefing acknowledges that China – for which Google has developed a censored search engine – has the worst track record on internet freedom.
- P45 – After warning about the rise of online hate speech, the briefing approvingly cites Sarah Jeong, infamous for her hate speech against white males (Google is currently facing a lawsuit alleging it discriminates against white males, among other categories).
- P45 – The briefing bemoans the fact that the internet has until recently been a level playing field, warning that “rational debate is damaged when authoritative voices and ‘have a go’ commentators receive equal weighting.”
- P49 – The document accuses President Trump of spreading the “conspiracy theory” that Google autocomplete suggestions unfairly favored Hillary Clinton in 2016. (Trump’s suspicions were actually correct – independent research has shown that Google did favor Clinton in 2016).
- P53 – Free speech platform Gab is identified as a major destination for users who are dissatisfied with censorship on other platforms.
- P54 – After warning about “harassment” earlier in the document, the briefing approvingly describes a 27,000-strong left-wing social media campaign as a “digital flash mob” engaged in “friendly counter-commenting.”
- P57 – The document juxtaposes a factoid about Russian election interference with a picture of Donald Trump.
- P63 – The briefing admits that when Google, GoDaddy and CloudFlare simultaneously withdrew service from website The Daily Stormer, they were “effectively booting it off the internet,” a point also made by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the FCC in their subsequent warnings about online censorship.
- P66-68 – The briefing argues that Google, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are caught between two incompatible positions, the “unmediated marketplace of ideas” vs. “well-ordered spaces for safety and civility.” The first is described as a product of the “American tradition” which “prioritizes free speech for democracy, not civility.” The second is described as a product of the “European tradition,” which “favors dignity over liberty and civility over freedom.” The briefing claims that all tech platforms are now moving toward the European tradition.
- P70 – The briefing sums up the reasons for big tech’s “shift towards censorship,” including the need to respond to regulatory demands and “expand globally,” to “monetize content through its organization,” and to “protect advertisers from controversial content, [and] increase revenues.”
- P74-76 – The briefing warns that concerns about censorship from major tech platforms have spread beyond the right-wing media into the mainstream.
Read The Good Censor in full below. Alternative download option available here.
The Good Censor – GOOGLE LEAK by on Scribd.
Russian S-300s Supplied to Syria Were ‘Modernized’ – Reports
Sputnik – 19.10.2018
Moscow has delivered advanced S-300 air defense missiles to Syria to protect the country’s troops deployed in the war-torn Arab country in the wake of last month’s downing of a Russian reconnaissance plane during an Israeli airstrike in Latakia.
The three battalion sets of S-300PM-2 air defense missile handed over to Syria by Russia are more advanced compared to their conventional counterparts, the newspaper Izvestiya wrote, citing Defense Ministry sources in Moscow.
The S-300PM-2 system is equipped with a more advanced radar station, an improved target illumination and guidance station (firing radar) and a mobile command post.
Launchers have also been upgraded enabling the use of more advanced, powerful and long-range missiles, compared to the “classic” S-300.
Unlike conventional S-300s, the modernized air defense system can fire medium-range tactical ballistic missiles, while retaining its ability to destroy aerial targets up to 250 kilometers (155 miles) away.
The S-300PM-2 also boasts improved anti-jamming capability allowing it to operate in conditions of electronic warfare.
Contrary to media reports, the S-300PM-2 currently deployed in Syria will not be operated by Iranians because the only specialists who can operate this system are in Russia, the source told the newspaper.
Iranians have never operated such systems because the S-300PMU-2 supplied to Iran is an export version with a simplified circuit and control modes compared to the S-300PM-2.
The source noted that the automatic control system on the export PMU-2 version does not allow it to interact with Russian air defense systems that have been transferred to the Syrian armed forces.
Earlier this month, debka.com cited US and Israeli intelligence sources as claiming that the S-300PM-2 batteries deployed in Syria would be operated by Iranian teams. They also insisted that Russia had originally planned to entrust the system’s operation to Iranians, that’s why it had allegedly given the Syrians a version of the S-300PMU-2 it had supplied to Iran in 2016.
In early October, Russia donated to Syria three battalion sets of S-300 missile systems of eight launchers each of which had been repaired in Russia where they had been used before being replaced by the more advanced S-400 system.
The Russian Defense Ministry then said that it would take three months to train Syrian specialists to operate the missile system.
Russia announced the supply of S-300 air defense missiles to Syria after a Russian Il-20 reconnaissance plane was mistakenly shot down by Syrian air defenses during an Israeli air raid on September 17.
The S-300PM-2 system entered service with the Russian army in the 2010s.
In December 2015, the first regiment S-300PM-2 took over combat duty to protect the airspace of the country’s central industrial region.
The regiment was later re-equipped with the most modern domestic anti-aircraft system, the S-400 Triumph, and, according to the source, some of the S-300PM-2s were sent to Syria.
New York Gala Raises $32m for Israeli Army
A New York City gala held by the Friends of the Israel Defence Forces (FIDF) on 27 March 2016 [Avi Mayer/Twitter]
Palestine Chronicle | October 18, 2018
A New York City gala held by the Friends of the Israel Defence Forces (FIDF) yesterday evening raised $32 million for members of Israel’s occupation forces.
The event was attended by 1,200 US business people, as well as key figures from the Israeli establishment, including Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon and Israel’s Consul General in New York Dani Dayan. Army Chief of the General Staff, Gadi Eisenkot, was also slated to attend but was called back to Israel amid an escalation of Israeli air strikes on the besieged Gaza Strip yesterday.
Among the biggest donors to the gala were Or Lachayal – an organization which works to “strengthen the Jewish identity of the Israeli army” – which pledged $2.5 million and Nefesh B’Nefesh – which promotes Jewish immigration to Israel – which pledged $1.3 million, Arutz Sheva reported.
FIDF has a long history of fundraising for Israel’s occupation forces, the proceeds of which it then spends on “educational, cultural, recreational, and social services” for Israeli soldiers. It operates 20 offices across the United States and Panama, according to its own website.
Support for the army from US organizations and the US government has been a cornerstone of Israel’s ability to continue its now 50-year-old occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Earlier this month the largest ever US military aid package to Israel – worth $38 billion over a ten year period – entered into force.
Treasury official charged with leaking classified info to feed ‘Russia meddling’ narrative
RT | October 18, 2018
A US Treasury official was arrested and charged with conspiracy for leaking secret banking documents to the press, feeding a everlasting stream of often bogus ‘bombshell’ reports about Mueller’s notorious ‘Russian meddling’ probe.
Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards, 40, was named in the criminal complaint filed in the federal court in New York on Wednesday. Edwards was a senior advisor at the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, also known as FinCEN. In that capacity, the government says, she illegally copied and sent to the media Suspicious Activity Reports (SAR), starting in October 2017.
The complaint described a “pattern of unauthorized disclosures” concerning the investigations by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the Department of Justice related to Russia, including “among other things, Paul Manafort, Richard Gates, the Russian Embassy, Mariia [sic] Butina, and Prevezon Alexander.” Manafort and Gates were indicted by Mueller as part of the “Russian meddling” probe – on charges that had nothing to do with Russia or the 2016 US election – and Butina was accused of being a Russian agent. Prevezon Alexander is a Russian-owned real-estate company.
At the time of her arrest, Edwards had a flash drive that contained some 24,000 files, including “thousands” of SARs. Other documents found on the drive contained “highly sensitive material relating to Russia, Iran” and Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), the complaint said.
The FBI also searched her cell phone, and found “numerous communications over an encrypted application in which she transmitted SARs and other sensitive government information” to the reporter. They reportedly exchanged at least 300 messages.
Though the complaint does not name the reporters or the organization Edwards leaked to, it does mention several of the dozen articles in which her information was used, which carry the bylines of Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier of BuzzFeed News.
One of these articles, titled “Secret Finding: 60 Russian Payments ‘To Finance Election Campaign of 2016’,” was presented as bombshell proof of Russian “meddling” in US elections, until it emerged that the transactions were about the Russian parliamentary election that year.
SARs are confidential documents filed by banks and financial institutions to alert law enforcement of potentially illegal transactions. They are not public documents and it is a federal crime to disclose them.
To the disappointment of those who expected the Mueller probe to overturn the 2016 US presidential election, former Trump campaign manager Manafort and his business partner Gates were charged for the entirely unrelated crime of tax evasion, related to their lobbying work for the government of Ukraine. Gates took a plea deal in February 2018, while Manafort was found guilty on several charges in August. He later made a plea deal to lesser charges in a second case, also unrelated to the 2016 election.
Butina, a Russian gun rights activist and recent American University graduate, was arrested in July and charged with failing to register as a foreign agent. The Russian government says she is a political prisoner. Media reports falsely insinuated that prosecutors had accused Butina of trading sex for favors, eventually admitting they were “mistaken” in interpreting her text messages.
Edwards was released on a $100,000 bond. If convicted, she faces up to 10 years in prison. It is unclear what impact, if any, her indictment will have on the charges against Butina, Manafort or Gates.
US to Impose Sanctions on Russia ‘Every Month or Two’ – Volker
Sputnik – 18.10.2018
Russia has faced several rounds of sanctions from the United States and the European Union over its alleged meddling in the 2016 US presidential elections, and alleged involvement in the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the UK city of Salisbury in early March.
US Special Representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker has stated that the Trump administration will impose sanctions on Russia “every month or two.”
“The second thing we’ve done is we’ve tried to increase the pressure we are putting on Russia in order to get them to negotiate toward a solution. That includes keeping sanctions in place in the United States and increasing those sanctions periodically over time, and that’s the track that we have been on during the course of the Trump administration, and we’ll continue to be on,” Volker said. “You’ll see additional sanctions come into play every month or two months or so as we’ve seen.”
Volker noted that the United States is “working very closely with European allies” on the issue of anti-Russian sanctions.
In August, a group of US senators introduced a bill envisaging the imposition of new sanctions against Moscow, including those targeting the country’s oil industry and transactions with Russian sovereign debt.
In recent years, Russia has repeatedly been accused of carrying out cyberattacks against other countries, including the United States, France, the United Kingdom and Germany, and attempting, in particular, to influence the results of elections.
Moscow has repeatedly denied all the accusations also emphasizing its desire to see convincing evidence of Russian nationals’ involvement in the incidents.
Ukraine Military Sales
US officials will meet with their Ukrainian counterparts to discuss potential foreign military sales since Washington has already approved a new package of security assistance for Ukraine, US Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations Kurt Volker announced.
“We have, working through the Congress, a new package of foreign military financing, and we’ll be sitting down with Ukrainians to talk possibly about foreign military sales and what would make sense for them,” Volker said.
In September, President Donald Trump and the Congress boosted US military aid to Ukraine, allocating $250 million in security assistance to the country under the 2019 Department of Defense Appropriations Act.
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New Book
The Garlic Book — 2026
Lies are Unbekoming | November 5, 2026
What The Garlic Book shows
The book is in four parts.
Part One, The Record, treats the history of garlic as evidence. From the clay garlic bulb placed in an Egyptian grave nearly six thousand years ago, through the Ebers Papyrus, through Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Pliny and Galen, the Arab physicians under Avicenna, the medieval herbals, Culpeper, and the plague years, to the last era in which Western physicians prescribed garlic as a matter of course, which ran from 1850 to 1945. It closes with the living traditions that never stopped using it, and with the folklore of charms, vampires and the evil eye.
Part Two, The Chemistry and the Evidence, sets out what is known about why a clove has no smell until it is cut, and why the order of crush, rest and heat changes the medicine. It then reads the clinical evidence against the historical record — bacteria, blood and vessels, cancer epidemiology, metals and fatigue — and names the trials that went against garlic as directly as the trials that went for it, including the 2007 Stanford trial funded by the US National Institutes of Health which found that raw garlic, garlic powder and aged garlic extract moved LDL cholesterol no more than placebo did. It then turns to onion, garlic’s closest relative, and reads the newer evidence published since 2015, before closing with the whole of the record through the terrain lens.
Part Three, Why Medicine Set It Aside, asks the question directly. One chapter contrasts the pharmaceutical model of isolating a single active compound with the folk model of combining whole plants, and reports what the garlic evidence says about which model works better. One chapter examines the economics of research on a plant that cannot be patented. One chapter — Fire Cider — tells the story of a folk preparation whose name was taken into a United States trademark by a Massachusetts company in 2012, and won back by three herbalists in 2014 who documented forty years of prior use through Rosemary Gladstar and her students into the older tradition.
Part Four, Garlic in Practice, is the working manual — the kitchen pharmacy, traditional uses by body system, a full chapter on safety and interactions, and a complaint-by-complaint practical guide. The book closes with The Trial That Was Never Run — a one-chapter reading of the whole evidential architecture.
At the back: two appendices (a traditional list of uses, and a preparation quick-reference), a full bibliography, and a live index.
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