Andrew McCabe FIRED, a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI - A great day for Democracy. Sanctimonious James Comey was his boss and made McCabe look like a choirboy. He knew all about the lies and corruption going on at the highest levels of the FBI!
theconservativetreehouse | Don’t be so blinded by the tripwire flares you fail to see the
obvious. Within the statement from Attorney General Sessions hopefully
you’ll note: “Including Under Oath”
The
IG doesn’t place the internal investigative target “under oath”. An
outside prosecutor who is assisting the IG does. Hence Attorney General
Jeff Sessions is telling us what is going on –SEE HERE– Just like he did before:
… I have appointed a person outside of Washington, many years in the
Department of Justice to look at all the allegations that the House
Judiciary Committee members sent to us; and we’re conducting that
investigation. (read more)
AG’s office confirms this is NOT the IG, but a separate “senior federal prosecutor” outside DC. https://t.co/x7OFhZB30s
hollywoodreporter | If superhero stories, as many have argued, offer a contemporary mythology, then the Fourth World Saga at the center of New Gods, ups that ante considerably. The DC Entertainment property is getting its highest profile yet, with the news that director Ava DuVernay will be tackling a film adaptation of the project for Warner Bros.
So, who are the New Gods?
Since its creation in the early 1970s, when Jack Kirby abandoned the
Marvel Universe to create something altogether new at competitors DC,
the Fourth World Saga has endeavored to tell stories on a scope that
make even the most cosmic of superhero epics seem unambitious by
comparison. Not for nothing did the first issue of 1971’s New Gods open with the gloriously melodramatic narration,
“There came a time when the old Gods died!”
Told, initially, across four separate comic book series running in
parallel — and then, in subsequent years, through even more revivals,
guest shots and graphic novels — the Fourth World Saga is a sprawling
storyline with a truly vast cast of characters that would take a long
time to fully introduce. In order to get a quick handle
on DuVernay’s film project, however, here is a brief primer on some of
the primary players.
thesaker | Assuming mankind finds a way not to destroy itself in the near future
and assuming that there will still be historians in the 22nd or 23rd
centuries, I bet you that they will look at the AngloZionist Empire and
see the four following characteristics as some of its core features:
lies, willful ignorance, hypocrisy, and hysterics. To illustrate my
point I will use the recent “Skripal nerve-gas assassination” story as it really encompasses all of these characteristics.
I won’t even bother debunking the official nonsense here as others
have done a very good job of pointing out the idiocy of the official
narrative. If you are truly capable of believing that “Putin” (that is
the current collective designator for the Evil Empire of Mordor
currently threatening all of western civilization) would order the
murder of a man whom a Russian military court sentenced to only 13 years
in jail (as opposed to life or death) and who was subsequently released
as part of a swap with the USA, you can stop reading right now and go
back to watching TV. I personally have neither the energy nor the
inclination to even discuss such a self-evidently absurd theory. No,
what I do want to do is use this story as a perfect illustration of the
kind of society we now all live in looked at from a moral point of view.
I realize that we live in a largely value-free society where moral
norms have been replaced by ideological orthodoxy, but that is just one
more reason for me to write about what is taking place precisely
focusing on the moral dimensions of current events.
I see a direct cause and effect relationship between
the denial of moral reality and the denial of physical reality. I can’t
prove that, of course, but here is my thesis: Almost from day one, the
early western civilization began by, shall we say, taking liberties with
the truth, which it could bend, adapt, massage and repackage to serve
the ideological agenda of the day. It was not quite the full-blown and
unapologetic relativism of the 19th century yet, but it was an important
first step. With “principles” such as the end justifies the means and
the wholesale violation of the Ten Commandants all “for the greater
glory of God” the western civilization got cozy with the idea that there
was no real, objective truth, only the subjective perception or even
representation each person might have thereof. Fast forward another 10
centuries or so and we end up with the modern “Gayropa” (as Europe is
now often referred to in Russia): not only has God been declared ‘dead’
and all notions of right and wrong dismissed as “cultural”, but even
objective reality has now been rendered contingent upon political
expediency and ideological imperatives.
I went on to quote George Orwell by reminding how he defined “doublethink” in his book 1984:
“To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete
truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold
simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be
contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it
(…) To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to
forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes
necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just as long as it is
needed, to deny the existenceof objective reality“
and I concluded by saying that “The necessary corollary from this state of mind is that only appearances matter, not reality”.
This is exactly what we are observing; not only in the silly Skripal
nerve-gas assassination story but also in all the rest of the
Russophobic nonsense produced by the AngloZionist propaganda machine
including the “Litvinenko polonium murder” and the “Yushchenko dioxin poisoning“.
The fact that neither nerve-gas, nor polonium nor dioxin are in any way
effective murder weapons does not matter in the least: a simple
drive-by shooting, street-stabbing or, better, any “accident” is both
easier to arrange and impossible to trace. Fancy assassination methods
are used when access to the target is very hard or impossible (as was
the case with Ibn al-Khattab, whose assassination the Russians were more than happy to take credit for; this might also have been the case with the death of Yasser Arafat).
But the best way of murdering somebody is to simply make the body
disappear, making any subsequent investigation almost impossible.
Finally, you can always subcontract the assassination to somebody else
like, for example, when the CIA tried and failed, to murderGrand Ayatollah Mohammad Hussain Fadlallah
by subcontracting his bombing to its local “Christian” allies, killing
over 80 innocent people in the process. There is plenty of common crime
in the UK and to get somebody to rob and stab Skripal would have
probably been the easiest version. That’s assuming that the Russians had
any reason to want him dead, which they self-evidently didn’t.
But here is the important thing: every single criminal or
intelligence specialist in the West understands all of the above. But
that does not stop the Ziomedia from publishing articles like this one “A Brief History of Attempted Russian Assassinations by Poison” which also lists people poisoned by Russians
paulcraigroberts | By now one would think that Russians, both government, media, and
public, would understand that all the West is capable of is to lie. The
purpose of the lies is to demonize Russia and to set up Russia for
military attack.
But somehow Russians can’t get the message. Russians think it is all
some kind of mistake that facts and legal processes and diplomacy can
clear up. “Please just listen to us, we can clear up all the
misconceptions!” As if the West cares. Washington wants “the
misconceptions.” That is why Washington creates them.
The inability of Russians to understand the West, which Russia
stupidly wants to join, is the reason that World War 3 is near at hand.
What if, instead of reciting the legal process and the law governing
it that the UK PM refused to follow before publicly accusing Russia
without the presentation of any evidence, the Russian UN Ambassador had
simply said: “If the UK exists tomorrow, it will be due entirely to the
forbearance of the Russian government.”
By relying on law, about which no Western country gives a hoot, the
Russian UN ambassador permitted Washington’s French puppet and other of
Washington’s European puppet states to say that they supported the
British charges against Russia despite the absence of evidence. Perhaps
the Russians noticed that none of those European governments required
any evidence that Russia was responsible. All that was required was the
accusation.
In the exceptional, indispensable Western World ruled by Washington,
accusation alone is proof of Russian mendacity. When British Labour
Party leader Jeremy Corbyn asked PM May if she actually had any real
evidence that Russia had tried to kill the former British double-agent,
Corbyn was shouted down not only by the corrupt Conservatives but also
by members of the Labour Party that he heads. How much more evidence
does Russia need that facts are not important to the West?
Will Russia wake up? Or will its demented desire to be part of the
West leave Russians unprepared for Washington’s nuclear strike, which is
coming.
NYMag | We now live in a world where the attorney general going out to dinner
with two top Justice Department officials is not only news, but a sign
that he’s rebelling against the president. As a senator, Jeff Sessions
was one of Donald Trump’s earliest supporters, and he served as one of
his campaign’s top foreign-policy advisers. But the seeds of the
attorney general’s rift with the president were planted during his
confirmation hearing, when he offered up some thoughts about Russia
collusion that turned out to be not entirely accurate. Here’s how the
Trump-Sessions relationship devolved to the point that two 71-year-old
lawmakers are barely speaking, lobbing insults on Twitter, and sending
passive-aggressive messages with their choice of dinner companion.
Sessions’s Russia Contacts Are Revealed
Exactly one year ago, President Trump was basking
in the unusually positive reviews from his first address to Congress.
The very next day, we learned that Sessions met with Russian
ambassador Sergey Kislyak at least twice while working with the Trump campaign — yet during his confirmation hearing he denied, under oath, having any such contacts.
“I’m
not aware of any of those activities,” Sessions said of Trump
officials’ Russia contacts, “I have been called a surrogate at a time or
two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the
Russians.”
NYTimes | Attorney General Jeff Sessions is reviewing a recommendation to fire the former F.B.I. deputy director, Andrew G. McCabe, just days before he is scheduled to retire on Sunday, people briefed on the matter said. Mr. McCabe was a frequent target of attack from President Trump, who taunted him both publicly and privately.
Mr. McCabe is ensnared in an internal review that includes an examination of his decision in 2016 to allow F.B.I. officials to speak with reporters about an investigation into the Clinton Foundation. The Justice Department’s inspector general concluded that Mr. McCabe was not forthcoming during the review, according to the people briefed on the matter. That yet-to-be-released report triggered an F.B.I. disciplinary process that recommended his termination — leaving Mr. Sessions to either accept or reverse that decision.
Lack of candor is a fireable offense, but like so much at the F.B.I., Mr. McCabe’s fate is also entangled in presidential politics and the special counsel investigation. He was involved from the beginning in the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. He is also a potential witness in the inquiry into whether Mr. Trump tried to obstruct justice.
Mr. Trump’s supporters have tried to cast Mr. McCabe as part of a “deep state” that operates in secret to undermine the administration. Mr. Trump has goaded Mr. Sessions into taking action against him.
libertyblitzkrieg |When the director of the CIA, an unelected public
servant, publicly demonizes a publisher such as WikiLeaks as a “fraud,”
“coward” and “enemy,” it puts all journalists on notice, or should.
Pompeo’s next talking point, unsupported by fact, that WikiLeaks is a
“non-state hostile intelligence service,” is a dagger aimed at
Americans’ constitutional right to receive honest information about
their government. This accusation mirrors attempts throughout history by
bureaucrats seeking, and failing, to criminalize speech that reveals their own failings…
Words matter, and I assume that Pompeo meant his when he
said, “Julian Assange has no First Amendment freedoms. He’s sitting in
an embassy in London. He’s not a U.S. citizen.” As a legal matter, this
statement is simply false. It underscores just how dangerous it is for
an unelected official whose agency’s work is rooted in lying and
misdirection to be the sole arbiter of the truth and the interpreter of
the Constitution.
What’s most unique about Mike Pompeo isn’t the fact he’s a terrible
human being, it’s the fact he’s so transparent and shameless about it.
This became crystal clear last April when I read the transcript of a
speech he gave at UAE-funded think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
timesofisrael | Moscow rejects accusation of responsibility for
attack on Sergei Skripal, likening it to previous attacks against
Russians on UK soil.
Moscow on Monday rejected British Prime Minister Theresa May’s statement
to parliament that it was “highly likely” Russia was responsible for
the poisoning of a former spy in Britain.
The statement was part of an “information and political campaign based
on provocation,” said Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria
Zakharova, in comments carried by news agencies.
“This is a circus show in the British parliament,” she added.
“Rather than think up new fairy tales, maybe someone in the kingdom
could explain how the previous ones ended up — about Litvinenko,
Berezovsky, Perepilichny and many others who have mysteriously died on
British soil,” Zakharova said.
timesofisrael | The White House on Monday condemned the chemical attack on a former
Russian spy in Britain as “an outrage,” breaking a week-long silence.
“The use of a highly lethal nerve agent against UK citizens on UK
soil is an outrage,” said press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. “The
attack was reckless, indiscriminate and irresponsible.”
Sanders stopped short of pointing the finger of blame at Moscow, as
British Prime Minister Theresa May did earlier in parliament.
The United States and Britain have a long-standing intelligence-sharing agreement.
When asked whether Russia was to blame, Sanders demurred: “We stand by our ally and fully support them.”
For a week, the White House had refused to comment on the attempt to
kill Sergei Skripal, who sold secrets to Britain and later moved there
in a 2010 spy swap with Russia.
wsws | An extraordinary number of former intelligence and military
operatives from the CIA, Pentagon, National Security Council and State
Department are seeking nomination as Democratic candidates for Congress
in the 2018 midterm elections. The potential influx of
military-intelligence personnel into the legislature has no precedent in
US political history.
If the Democrats capture a majority in the House of Representatives
on November 6, as widely predicted, candidates drawn from the
military-intelligence apparatus will comprise as many as half of the new
Democratic members of Congress. They will hold the balance of power in
the lower chamber of Congress.
Both push and pull are at work here. Democratic Party leaders are
actively recruiting candidates with a military or intelligence
background for competitive seats where there is the best chance of
ousting an incumbent Republican or filling a vacancy, frequently
clearing the field for a favored “star” recruit.
A case in point is Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA operative with three
tours in Iraq, who worked as Iraq director for the National Security
Council in the Obama White House and as a top aide to John Negroponte,
the first director of national intelligence. After her deep involvement
in US war crimes in Iraq, Slotkin moved to the Pentagon, where, as a
principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for international
security affairs, her areas of responsibility included drone warfare,
“homeland defense” and cyber warfare.
thesaker | Russia and the USA have been at war since at least 2014 (I have been warning about this year, after year, after year).
So far, this war has been about 80% informational, 15% economic and 5%
kinetic. But this could very well change, and very suddenly. Russia has
therefore embarked on an immense effort to prepare against both a
conventional and a nuclear attack by the AngloZionist Empire. Here are
some of the measures which have been taken in this context: (partial,
non-exhaustive list!)
In response to the conventional NATO threat from the West:
Putin has ordered the re-creation of the First Guards Tank Army. This Tank Army will include two Tank Divisions (the best ones in the Russian military – 2nd Guards Tamanskaya Motor Rifle Division and the 4th Guards Kantemirovskaya Tank Division),
and a total of 500+ T-14 Armata tanks. This Tank Army will be supported
by the 20th Guards Combined Arms Army (in progress). This will be what
was called a “Shock Army” during WWII and the Cold War.
The deployment of the Iskander-M operational-tactical missile system (completed)
The doubling of the size of the Russian Airborne Forces from 36’000 to 72’000 (in progress).
Creation of aNational Guard:
which will include troops of the Interior Ministry (about 170’000
soldiers), personnel from the Ministry of Emergency Situations, the OMON
riot police forces (about 40’000 soldiers), the SOBR rapid-reaction
forces (about 5000+ soldiers), the Special Designation Center of the
Operational Reaction Forces and Aviation of the Ministry of Internal
Affairs including the Special Forces units “Zubr”, “Rys’” and “Iastreb”
(about 700+ operators) for a total of about 250’000 soldiers which will
probably reach the 300’000 men figure in the near future.
The procurement and deployment of advanced multi-role and air
superiority fighters and interceptors (MiG-31BM, Su-30SM, Su-35S and,
soon, the MiG-35 and Su-57).
Deployment of S-400 and S-500 air defense systems along with very long range radars.
The adoption of about 70% of new, modern, systems across all the armed forces.
In response to the ABM “encirclement” of Russia by the USA:
The deployment of the RS-28 Sarmat ICBM with hypersonic maneuverable reentry vehicles
The deployment of conventionally armed very long-range cruise missiles
The deployment of a nuclear powered cruise missile with a basically unlimited range
The deployment of a nuclear powered unmanned submersible with
intercontinental range, very high speed, silent propulsion and capable
of moving a great depths
The deployment of the Mach 10 hypersonic missile Kinzhal with a 2’000 kilometer range
The deployment of a new strategic missile Avangard capable of Mach 20 velocities
This list is far from being exhaustive, there is much more missing
from it including new submarines, (air-independent propulsion,
conventional diesel-electric, nuclear attack and SSBNs), strike
aircraft, new armored vehicles of various types, new advanced (high
tech) individual soldier equipment, new artillery systems, etc. etc.
etc. But by far the most important element in the Russian readiness to
confront and, if needed, repel any western aggression is the morale,
discipline, training, and resolve of Russian soldiers (so powerfully
illustrated in several recent examples in Syria). Let’s just say that in
comparison US and EU servicemen (or their commanders, for that matter)
are not exactly an impressive lot and leave it at that.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The reality is, of course, that nobody in Russia plans for a war,
needs a war or wants a war. In fact, Russia as a country needs many more
years of (even relative) peace. First, because time is obviously on
Russia’s side and that the military balance with the USA is very rapidly
shifting in Russia’s favor. But no less important is the fact that,
unlike the USA which strives for conflicts, wars, and chaos, Russia
badly needs peace to deal with her still very numerous internal problems
which have been neglected for all too long. The problem is that the
entire US political system and economy are completely dependent on a
permanent state of war. That, combined with an imperial hubris boosted
by an increasingly vocal russophobia is a potent and potentially
dangerous mix leaving Russia no other options than “bare her fangs” and
engage in some saber rattling of her own. So will Putin’s speech be
enough to wake up the Empire’s ruling elites from their delusional
slumber?
Probably not. In fact, in the short term, it might have the opposite effect.
Remember when the Russian’s deflected Obama’s planned attack on
Syria? The US reaction was to trigger the Maidan. Sadly, I expect
something very similar will happen soon, most likely in the form of a
full-scale Ukronazi attack against the Donbass this Spring or during the
World Cup this summer. Of course, regardless of the actual outcome of
such an attack (already discussed here),
this will not in any way affect the actual correlation of forces
between Russia and the Empire. But it will feel good (Neocons love
revenge in all its forms). We can also expect further provocations in
Syria (already discussed here).
Hence and for the foreseeable future, the Russians will have to
continue on their current, admittedly frustrating and even painful
course, and maintain a relatively passive and evasive posture which the
Empire and its sycophants will predictably interpret as a sign of
weakness. Let them. As long as in the real world the actual power (soft
or hard) of the Empire continues to decline, as long as the US MIC
continues to churn out fantastically expensive but militarily useless
weapon systems, as long as US politicians are busy blaming everything on
“Russian interference” while doing nothing to reform their own,
collapsing economy and infrastructure, as long as the USA continues to
use the printing press as a substitute for actual wealth and as long as
the internal socio-political tensions in the USA continue to heat up –
then Putin’s plan is working.
Forward | In an interview
with NBC’s Megyn Kelly in Moscow that aired on March 9, Russian
President Vladimir Putin was asked about the 13 Russian nationals
indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller for interfering in the 2016
U.S. presidential election with a covert social media campaign.
Through a translator, Putin responded:
“Maybe they’re not even Russians. Maybe they’re Ukrainians, Tatars,
Jews, just with Russian citizenship. Even that needs to be checked.
Maybe they have dual citizenship. Or maybe a green card. Maybe it was
the Americans who paid them for this work. How do you know? I don’t
know.”
The reaction from U.S. and Israeli media outlets was immediate and angry, with headlines focusing on one word: Jews.
Slate went with “Putin: Maybe it Was the Jews Who Meddled in U.S. Presidential Election”, New York Magazine with “Putin Says Jews Might Be to Blame for 2016 Election Hacking”, and the Jerusalem Post with “Putin: Jews might have been behind U.S. election interference”, as a representative sample.
The American Jewish Committee called Putin’s remarks “eerily reminiscent of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a parallel also drawn
by the head of the Anti-Defamation League. Democratic lawmakers also
condemned the remarks, including Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut,
who tweeted,
“Repulsive Putin remark deserves to be denounced, soundly and promptly,
by world leaders. Why is Trump silent? Intolerance is intolerable.”
This reaction, while understandable, fundamentally misrepresents both
what Putin said and the cultural context in which he said it.
This is not to defend Putin for his smug and condescending tone
throughout the interview, his palpably dishonest statements regarding
whether the Russian government meddled in the 2016 election, or his
unhelpful injection of ethnicity into the debate. Nonetheless, it’s
important to be accurate about what Putin most likely meant and whether
it represents a deeper animus toward Jews. Anti-Semitism in Russia is a
real problem, but the panicked responses to Putin’s offhand comments
miss the mark.
WaPo | Jewish groups and U.S. lawmakers condemned Russian President Vladimir
Putin’s suggestion that the 2016 U.S. presidential election may have
been manipulated by Russian Jews.
Putin’s remarks came during a
long and occasionally surreal interview with NBC News on Saturday, in
which he speculated that nearly anyone other than the Russian
government could have been behind a program to disrupt the election. U.S. intelligence agencies believe Putin ordered the effort to undermine faith in the U.S. election and help elect Donald Trump as president.
“Maybe they’re not even Russians,” Putin told Megyn Kelly,
referring to who might have been behind the election interference.
“Maybe they’re Ukrainian, Tatars, Jews — just with Russian citizenship.”
He
also speculated that France, Germany or “Asia” might have interfered
in the election — or even Russians paid by the U.S. government.
But his
remark about Jews, which seemed to suggest that a Russian Jew was not
really a Russian, prompted particular outrage among those who remember
Russia’s centuries-long history of anti-Semitism and Jewish purges. Some
groups compared the statement to anti-Jewish myths that helped inspire
the Holocaust.
“Repulsive Putin remark deserves to be denounced, soundly and promptly, by world leaders,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) wrote on Twitter. “Why is Trump silent?” Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) also demanded a response by Trump, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.
strategic-culture |But
the real game changer is the Russian ability to negate America’s
ability to project power through its navy. The already deployed
air-launched Kinzhal anti-ship missile has a range of 2000
kilometers and a hyper-sonic speed that makes it nearly impossible to
intercept. The development has made America’s thirteen aircraft carrier
groups obsolete. President Putin made clear that Russia now has an
overwhelming military advantage in cruise and ballistic missiles that
are capable of penetrating U.S. defenses.
The
new reality may or may not impel policymakers in Washington to approach
Moscow and seek a new round of negotiations for arms control, but the
real shock deriving from the Putin announcement is the failure of the
intelligence community to anticipate the developments and advise their
significance. Some of the new systems were hardly secret, with
development of the Sarmat, for example, known to western governments for a number of years.
There
will no doubt be a blame game in Washington over the inability to learn
of Russia’s arms programs, but the questions that probably will not be
asked relates to the intelligence agencies themselves and their
capabilities, or lack thereof. It is no secret that organizations like
the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have seen their basic missions
change since 2001. An organization that used to pride itself on its
ability to conduct classic espionage operations involving recruiting and
running spies suddenly heard from policymakers that those skills were
no longer in demand. Many officers who were made redundant or forced to
retire were precisely those individuals who had cut their teeth on
running operations directed against the old Soviet Union. They had the
language and cultural skills necessary to collect information on Russia.
With their departure, those capabilities also largely vanished.
You may not know it yet, but the world changed on March 1st, 2018, an
old era was ended, and a new era begun. In very great part, the
meaning of this new era is up to you.
On that historic day, Vladimir Putin revealed to the world that the US
military is now obsolete, and no longer capable of "projecting power",
committing war crimes, or intimidating and destroying smaller nations
around the world. That day has ended forever, one way or another. The
US military is still completely capable of the mission it needs and
deserves to do, which is to defend the territory and people of the
United States of America. You are safe. There is no threat. But the
days of your government threatening and destroying other countries is
over. I hope you understand this.
Putin's revelation of Russia's game-changing weapons, against which the
US military is literally defenseless, is not a threat or a bluff. Only
liars and fools speak of "Russian aggression", and the stupidity of
anyone who says or believes "Putin is bluffing" is beyond measure.
Russia's weapons are real, and the US military industrial complex (that
Dwight Eisenhower warned about 57 years ago) has absolutely no defense
against them. In spite of plundering and squandering literally trillions
of dollars from the US treasury and the American People in the name of
"defense", they are defenseless.
Russia's new weapons present no threat to the American People, unless
you allow the people who own and control your government to to start a
world war and force the Russians to use them. But if you do allow that
to happen, the American people will get exactly what the "good Germans"
got in 1945. And you will deserve it, just as much as they did. For the
exact same reasons.
Four of the six weapons Putin mentioned are, if Putin is to be
believed, already developed: the Sarmat heavy Intercontinental Ballistic
Missile (ICBM), a nuclear powered cruise missile, a nuclear powered
underwater drone, and an aircraft launched Kinzhai hypersonic missile.
They are breathtaking for their speed, range, maneuverability,
undetectability, and miniaturization of nuclear reactor technology. The
other two, the Avangard hypersonic projectile and laser weapons (which
Putin only cryptically mentioned), are believed to be still under
development.
Hypersonic means a minimum of at least 5 times the speed of sound
(Mach 1 or 741 mph, Mach 5 is 3705 mph). Putin claimed the Kinzhai
hypersonic missile travels at Mach 10 (7410 mph). The Avangard
hypersonic projectile may hit Mach 20 (14020 mph). Intercepting missiles
traveling at supersonic speeds (Mach 1 to Mach 5) has proven difficult
enough. Even in the limited, controlled tests that have been conducted,
present technology has not been 100 percent effective. Presumably, in
real world situations they would be even less effective. The
difficulties of intercepting weapons traveling at hypersonic speeds are
obvious and daunting.
Compounding those difficulties are the weapons’ range and
maneuverability. The Sarmat ICBM is believed to have range of at least
10,500 miles (Putin said it has “practically no range restrictions”) and
can attack targets via either the North or South Pole (US missile
defenses are oriented towards the North Pole). It is able to constantly
maneuver at a speed of what is believed to be Mach 5 or Mach 6, and to
carry 15 warheads with yields estimated at 150 to 300 kilotons (the
Nagasaki atomic bomb had a yield of 23 kilotons).
Powering cruise missiles and underwater drones (both of which can
carry nuclear warheads) with miniature nuclear reactors gives them
virtually unlimited range. Putin claimed the Kinzhai missile, “can also
manoeuvre at all phases of its flight trajectory, which also allows it
to overcome all existing and, I think, prospective anti-aircraft
and anti-missile defence systems.”
WashingtonExaminer | A panel of national and local experts, comprised mostly of
African-Americans, lambasted Chicago city officials in a meeting
Wednesday night for how they have worked closely with the Obama
Foundation to build the Obama Presidential Center on public land despite
criticism and serious concerns from representatives of the South Side
neighborhood.
"You have all this talk about collusion between Trump and Russia,
right? To me, that sounds like collusion between the city and the
university, and we see the same thing happening in relation to this,"
one of the panelists, Jawanza Malone, executive director of the
Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization, said.
University
of Chicago professors, leaders in the black community, and experts on
historic preservation and architecture repeatedly condemned former
President Barack Obama and his organization for engaging in closed-door
negotiations with the university and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who
served as Obama's first term chief of staff, and said the Democratic
leader is ignoring the historic black community's needs.
Panelists indicated that their main gripe is the lack of
representation by those overseeing the project. The speakers also listed
other grievances they had with the current plan, though they agreed the
center itself was not the issue, but rather how it was being rolled
out.
Below is a list of 13 of those concerns.
1. Despite receiving invitations to attend and
participate in the discussion, no one from the Obama Foundation, city of
Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel's office, the park district, or University
of Chicago chose to attend the meeting, university professor Tom
Mitchell announced.
2. The Obama Foundation has refused to sign a
Community Benefits Agreement, which Mitchell said would put in "writing
the many glowing promises that protect low-income residents from
eviction and higher rents." The idea of a CBA was "declared out of
bounds with a promise that the Obama administration would do even better
than such an agreement." No such deal has been struck in the four years
that organizations and residents have voiced concerns about
gentrification due to the project.
3. In the early planning stages for the center,
which was rolled out in 2014 as a plan for a library, the Obama
Foundation did hold community meetings, but Mitchell said they were
"more like marketing exercises, sometimes like pep rallies, featuring
glossy PowerPoints, but relatively few opportunities for open public
discussion.
Instead, we were given breakout groups, which fragment the public and
questionnaires that reduce the public to statistical interest groups."
Mitchell added that on the "rare occasions when an open discussion was
allowed, questions were too often or evaded."
4. What started as a presidential library that would
be overseen by the National Archives quickly turned into a privately
run operation that saw other private entities try to get a piece of the
deal. A PGA golf course scheme and five-acre parking garage were both
announced as additions to the center, only to be rescinded later due to
public outcry.
medium | What does it
mean to be American? To really “be” — see, feel, think, act American,
so much so that you are not self-aware of it, because it is unconscious,
reflexive, invisible, this way of “being”?
Well,
it means what it always has. Punching down, not lifting up. Punching
down is hardwired into America by now, thanks to a unique history of
settlers — who had never had any — punching the next wave down for
relative hierarchical position. An attitude of cruelty was born. And so
today cruelty is the point of its institutions, the purpose of its
norms, and the linchpin of its perverse idea of virtue, that by
punishing people, we can better them. It is all that Americans expect
from each other — and give to each other. That is the terrible burden of
a Promised Land that history’s despised warred among one another for
domination of.
The
problem is this. A society of people punching one another down must
collapse. What else could it do? It cannot rise, can it? If I am
punching you down, and I am punching the next person down below me, how
can anyone ever lift anyone up? But without lifting one another up, a
society cannot grow in quantity or quality of life. This, too, is what
happened to Soviet Russia.
America
has never reckoned with its history of cruelty. Instead, it developed a
defensive mythology of being welcoming — even while every new wave of
immigrants had to fight, sometimes quite literally little street by
street, against the last wave, for a piece of the Promise Land. Like all
myths, that one — was a lie that revealed the truth: America was a
Promised Land for the huddled masses to roam free — but only if they
could fend off the other tribes, by punching them down, endlessly,.
A
Promised Land is like a Garden of Eden. But who can live in the Garden
peacefully but angels? Human beings, flawed, indelicate things, are only
meant to be cast out— they are ever in conflict, in tension, hungry and
ravenous. And that is never truer than for their most despised — who
need to be healed most, or else will ravage their Gardens worst.
consortiumnews | Jane Mayer of The New Yorker and Cenk Uygur of The Young
Turks are the latest progressives to jump on the anti-Trump,
pro-Russiagate bandwagon. They have made it crystal clear that, in
Mayer’s words, they are not going to let Republicans, or anyone else,
“take down the whole intelligence community,” by God.
Odd? Nothing is too odd when it comes to spinning and dyeing the yarn
of Russiagate; especially now that some strands are unraveling from the
thin material of the “Steele dossier.”
Before the 2016 election, British ex-spy Christopher Steele was
contracted (through a couple of cutouts) by the Clinton campaign and
Democratic National Committee to dig up dirt on candidate Donald Trump.
They paid him $168,000. They should ask for their money back.
Mayer and Uygur have now joined with other Trump-despisers and new
“progressive” fans of the FBI and CIA – among them Amy Goodman and her
go-to, lost-in-the-trees journalist, Marcy Wheeler of Emptywheel.net.
All of them (well, maybe not Cenk) are staying up nights with needle and
thread trying to sew a silk purse out of the sow’s-ear dossier of
Steele allegations and then dye it red for danger.
Monday brought a new low, with a truly extraordinary one-two punch by Mayer and Uygur.
strategic-culture |The
following report exposes one faux-‘progressive’ war-monger and
propagandist for U.S. invasions of countries that never invaded nor even
threatened the U.S.: Amy Goodman, and her “Democracy Now!”
‘alternative’ ’news’ media for Democratic Party billionaires’
international operations (such as for regime-change in Syria). These
propaganda-operations (just like the acknowlegedly mainstream ones, such
as TIME) promote using U.S. taxpayers’ money (the U.S. military, which is the most respected institution amongst Americans and thus receives “the benefit of the doubt” regarding any atrocities it may perpetrate — such as its having poisoned Iraq with depleted uranium,
for example) — using taxpayers’ money for so-called ‘humanitarian’
reasons that are actually just sales-angles for American billionaires’
bloody conquests of resistant foreign countries (in this case, Syria).
This propaganda is aimed at fooling liberals, or even “peaceniks,” into
supporting what are actually hidden financial benefits for these
behind-the-scenes billionaires.
Exposed here will be the depths that hypocrisy and psychopathy (both of which are pervasive at the very top of society, amongst the aristocrats and their retainers)
plunge down to, in American ‘news’. This type of operation can be done
only by taking advantage, especially, of well-intentioned Democrats, in
order for billionaires to become enabled to use taxpayers’ money, to
boost actually the private wealth not only of Democratic Party
billionaires, but even of Republican Party billionaires —
even of ‘the political opposition.’ The example that will be presented
in detail here, typifies a depraved scheme for the warfare-state (not
the welfare-state, which instead becomes proportionately
reduced as the warfare-state becomes increased), a scheme (support of
the military-industrial complex, or “MIC,” and its
permanent-war-for-permanent-peace economy) which largely controls
America, in order to build and maintain the public’s support for
obscenely high ‘defense’ spending and billionaires’ ‘defense’ profits,
which government-spending produces catastrophes for the victim-nations,
such as Iraq 2003, Libya 2011, and Syria 2012-, all of which invasions
are especially profitable for the owners of America’s ‘defense’
contractors such as General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin, which depend
upon war in order to funnel money from the domestic masses, to the
domestic classes, via taxes. And, of course, American
resource-extraction corporations, such as oil-and-gas giants, also
benefit handsomely from it, by grabbing foreign resources. Megabanks
benefit, too. After all: it’s the U.S. aristocracy that’s behind this,
the ultimate paymasters for these propaganda-operations (and some
details of this fact of aristocratic sponsorship will be documented
here).
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The
IG doesn’t place the internal investigative target “under oath”. An
outside prosecutor who is assisting the IG does. Hence Attorney General
Jeff Sessions is telling us what is going on – SEE HERE – Just like he did before:
