The reported war games are being held a few months after the collapse of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty between Russia and the US, which was prompted by Washington’s move to withdraw from the accord on 2 August.

NATO allies are holding secret military exercises in Germany, which aim to drill a nuclear war scenario, the German newspaper Kronen Zeitung reports.

During the drills, codenamed “Steadfast Noon”, the military personnel utilise warplanes which could be equipped with nuclear weapons in the event of a war.

United Nations chemical weapons inspectors announced on Friday that they are investigating whether Turkish forces used chemical weapons in their invasion of Syria, the Guardian reported Friday.

The Kurds have accused Turkey of using white phosphorous during their recent incursion into northeastern Syria. The Kurdish Red Crescent claims that six patients, including civilians and military members, have been hospitalized in the city of Hasakah due to burns from “unknown weapons.”

The organization could not confirm chemical weapons usage, saying it was “working together with our international partners to investigate this subject.” However, a British chemical weapons expert who examined a photo of one of the victims said the burns on the victim were likely from a chemical weapon.

When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, of the $87 billion earmarked for the first year of the campaign, $30 billion was budgeted for private contractors. That’s 34% of the entire invasion-budget. Over the course of the 8-year US occupation of Iraq, the largest private recipient of Pentagon contracts was Kellogg Brown and Root, an engineering and construction company, which grossed $40.6 billion from the occupation. According to a 2011 report by the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, at least $60 billion in Pentagon expenditure on private contractors over the period 2001-2011 could be classified as “fraud” or “waste.” This report estimated the level of “waste” at the time of publication at $12 million per day.

Authored by Lawrence Franklin via The Gatestone Institute,

The People's Republic of China, which celebrated its 70th anniversary on October 1, is led by the Chinese Communist Party's General Secretary, President Xi Jinping. In his speeches, Xi often refers to "Qiang Zhong Gwo Meng" ("the Chinese dream"), a code phrase for the era of rejuvenation when China will eventually overtake the United States as the most powerful nation in the world.

Beijing apologists depict China as a non-predatory power, comparing it favorably to Europe's colonial countries in the past and to today's United States.

Similarly, the state-controlled Chinese media depict Chinese statecraft as being based on and reflecting ancient Confucian ethics:

The recent Houthi drone and missile strike on the Saudi oil installations has shown to the world something which the Russians have known for several years: that even rather primitive drones can be a real threat. Sophisticated drones are a major threat to every military out there, though Russia has developed truly effective (including cost-effective, which is absolutely crucial, more about that later) anti-drone capabilities.

First, lets look at the very low-cost end of the spectrum: drones

immy Carter announces his run for the presidency in 1974. During his bid for re-election in 1979, it is alleged he covered up a nuclear weapons explosion carried out by Israel and apartheid South Africa. | AP
Former President Jimmy Carter covered up a nuclear weapon test by Israel in 1979, declassified reports have suggested. His administration feared that making the discovery public would damage his bid for re-election.

U.S. satellites picked up a “double flash” signal associated with a nuclear explosion in the South Indian Ocean in September 1979. This led to an emergency at the White House, according to Foreign Policy magazine which obtained the documents.

Moscow has repeatedly voiced concerns over the deployment of US missile defence system components in Poland and Romania, alleging that the MK-41 interceptor launchers could easily be used to fire offensive nuclear-tipped Tomahawk cruise missiles at targets inside Russia.

Construction of the Aegis Ashore facility in Redzikowo, northern Poland is nearing completion, with US Missile Defence Agency director Vice Adm. Jon Hill carrying out an inspection tour of the facility late last week, Defense Blog has reported.

Hill reportedly inspected multiple sites on the base, including the multipurpose and housing unit, galley, and the inside of the Aegis Ashore deckhouse structure, which contains the system’s command and control system.

For the first time in world history, one nation threatens everyone everywhere at home and abroad. It risks destruction of planet earth to own it, along with all its life forms.

Nations not subordinating their sovereign rights to its interests are considered enemies of the state threats to its national security.

Those many countries, including some leading Great Powers, value their trade ties with India over the human rights of the Kashmiris and respect for the same UN Charter that they all officially agreed to uphold.

The following is the speech that Andrew Korybko gave at the “Humanitarian Crisis In Kashmir: Paths To A Resolution” conference that was held in Moscow on 23 September.

We’re here today to draw attention to what’s been happening in Indian-Occupied Kashmir for the past month and a half, and from the little that we know, it’s extremely alarming. The 8 million people of the valley have been living in lockdown since early August, with a military-imposed curfew upheld by nearly one million Indian troops who have arbitrarily arrested thousands since then.

Yet, while the U.S. government hopes to ensure Hale cannot put on a whistleblower defense during his trial, Hale’s defense attorneys have directly challenged the constitutionality of the Espionage Act, arguing [PDF] it violates the First Amendment. They also assert that the government is selectively and vindictively prosecuting Hale for his alleged act of dissent.

Hale was indicted on five counts on May 9. Three of the charges allege he violated the Espionage Act. One charge alleges he disclosed “communications intelligence” without authorization. The fifth charge alleges he stole “government property.”

In October 2015, The Intercept published a “cache of secret documents detailing the inner workings of the U.S. military’s assassination program in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia.” The media organization said the documents were provided by a whistleblower and offered “unprecedented glimpse into [President Barack] Obama’s drone wars.” They were called “The Drone Papers.”

SOURCE: THEMINDUNLEASHED.COM
(TMU Op-Ed) — In a recent interview with Al-Jazeera, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan made some controversial statements regarding the use of nuclear weapons against India.

First, Khan started off by saying he was anti-war—a “pacifist.” He then developed his stance, stating that “when two nuclear-armed countries fight, if they fight a conventional war, there is every possibility that it is going to end up into nuclear war.” However, this scenario, as Khan described, is “the unthinkable.”

Khan went on to say:

“If say Pakistan, God forbid, we are fighting a conventional war, we are losing, and if a country is stuck between the choice; either you surrender or you fight ‘til death for your freedom, I know Pakistanis will fight to death for their freedom.

So when a nuclear-armed country fights to the end, to the death, it has consequences.”

SOURCE: ZERO HEDGE
The Department of Defense (DoD) has apologized for an obscene tweet that threatened to deploy a stealth bomber against "millennials" on Friday who tried to break into a highly classified US Air Force facility located within the Nevada Test and Training Range, reported Reuters.

The now-deleted tweet, posted on Friday on the Twitter account Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS), a PR arm of the DoD, showed a photo of a Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit stealth bomber, stating: "The last thing #Millennials will see if they attempt the #area51raid today."

DVIDS took aim at "Storm Area 51," a Facebook group that planned to storm Area 51 in Nevada on Friday, with intentions to "see them aliens" which conspiracy theorists claim the secret base holds evidence of extraterrestrials.

SOURCE: ZEROHEDGE
It's that time once again: over the weekend Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan for perhaps the twentieth time warned his army is making preparations to act on its southern border with Syria, saying it will take unilateral steps to create a "safe zone" amid accusations the US is dragging its feet implementing agreements to push Syrian Kurdish forces from the border.

This as yet another 'conspiracy theory' gets belatedly confirmed as conspiracy fact by the mainstream. The New York Post asks "Why isn’t the media covering Turkish President Erdogan’s ties to ISIS?" — well, it's at least been endlessly reported here and other places for about the past half decade. Better late than never, we suppose. The report details:

The evidence of Erdogan’s direct, personal and institutional support for ISIS and related jihadi groups is so extensive, the wonder is why the American media is not paying more attention to it.

Last week, Mark Zuckerberg visited Capitol Hill to try and 'win friends' in Congress. It was his first big trip back to Washington since the contentious House and Senate hearings last year, where the Facebook chief was accused of sometimes treating lawmakers with disdain (who can forget 'senator, we run adds'?).

The timing of his trip is starting to make more sense. Thanks to a flurry of federal and state investigations, for the first time in its existence, Facebook is facing the very real risk of being broken up. Several lawmakers have asked whether breaking Facebook into Instagram, Whatsapp and Facebook wouldn't be better for consumers. Facebook agrees that something should be done to regulate social media and other Internet companies, but it doesn't think the bipartisan anti-trust movement that formed in the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica scandal is the right path.

Over 50,000 people showed up for the ‘Howdy, Modi’ event in Houston, Texas, giving India’s PM a rock star-level welcome. President Donald Trump joined him on stage as the two leaders lauded US-India ties.
People gathered hours in advance for the massive rally at Houston’s NRG Football Stadium with a music and dance show featuring around 400 artists. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s name was chanted long before his appearance – a welcome for a foreign leader rarely seen on American soil.

Sunil Deodhar
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@Sunil_Deodhar
The man who has single handedly transformed the global image of India, PM @narendramodi Ji receives a hero's welcome in Houston,Texas. No other world leader has achieved anything close to what Modi ji did today. India had truly risen, India has truly arrived. GLOBALLY.#HowdyModi

If it all sounds like a big fabricated confusion, it’s because it is a big fabricated confusion. Iran is singled out; fingers pointing to Iran (except, miraculously those of Saudi Arabia), like a sledgehammer hitting Iran, again and again. – The mainstream media loves it. Today, a week after the attack, most nobody remembers the Houthis claiming responsibility – it was Iran. Period. The media blitz won.

New Delhi (Sputnik): In a shift from the much-used slogan of “Kashmir is Ours” all these years in election speeches, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday called on people to work towards building a new Kashmir, as he gave people a new slogan — “We’ve to Build A New Kashmir”.

“Earlier the slogan was ‘Kashmir Humara Hai’ (Kashmir is Ours). Now we must work towards a new slogan, ‘Naya Kashmir Banana Hai’ (We’ve to Build a New Kashmir),” he said, addressing a public rally in Nashik city of the Indian state of Maharashtra, which is expected to undergo state elections soon.

While giving a clarion call to embrace Kashmiri brothers and sisters, the Indian prime minister said there is need to strive to create a “new paradise in Kashmir” once again.

Stating that a lot of efforts are being made from across the border to create mistrust and violence in Jammu and Kashmir, he said: “We have to create a new paradise in Kashmir... embrace each Kashmiri.”

Authored by Eoin Higgins via CommonDreams.org,

A U.S. drone attack killed 30 pine nut farmers and wounded at least 40 others in Afghanistan Wednesday night, the latest killing of innocent civilians by American forces as the "war on terror" enters its 19th year.

The farmers had just finished work and were sitting by a fire when the strike happened, according to tribal elder Malik Rahat Gul.

"Some of us managed to escape, some were injured, but many were killed," said farm laborer Juma Gul.

Reteurs reported that there may be more farmers missing:

Haidar Khan, who owns the pine nut fields, said about 150 workers were there for harvesting, with some still missing as well as the confirmed dead and injured.

A survivor of the drone strike said about 200 laborers were sleeping in five tents pitched near the farm when the attack happened.

French President Emmanuel Macron is deploying experts to Saudi Arabia to investigate the origin of the attacks on major oil facilities that Washington and Riyadh blame on Iran, Paris said Wednesday.
France’s presidential palace announced Macron’s decision to send the experts after the French leader held a phone conversation with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS), the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency reports.

The United States and Saudi Arabia have accused Iran of carrying out Saturday’s devastating attacks on two facilities operated by the Sunni kingdom’s state-run Aramco. Macron’s administration appears to doubt Iran’s involvement in the debilitating attacks. Iran also denies involvement in the assault on the two plants, which include the top petroleum processing facility in the world.

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan warned of “consequences” if nuclear-armed Pakistan ends up losing a conventional war to its nuclear-armed rival and neighbor India.
Asked in an Al Jazeera interview to set the record straight on whether Pakistan would hit India with nuclear weapons in case of a large-scale conflict, Khan began with the disclaimer that he would never be the one to attack.

“Pakistan would never start a war, and I am clear: I am a pacifist. I am anti-war,” he said.

However, the prime minister quickly added that when two nuclear-armed states “fight a conventional war, there is every possibility that it is going to end up into nuclear war.” And while he described it as “unthinkable,” his next hint sent a clear message about what Pakistan may do if it’s losing a conventional war against India.

More than 134 people have been brutally executed in Saudi Arabia so far this year, including six who were just kids when they were arrested.

A massive spike in crucifixions and beheadings has seen the slain tortured and slaughtered by brutal methods, according to a human rights organisation.

In a report presented at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Baroness Helena Kennedy, QC revealed a further 24 people are at “imminent risk” of execution.

They include three children, prominent political opponents of the crown prince, clerics, and human rights campaigners.

An event hosted by The Death Penalty Project highlighted the “illegal and arbitrary executions” in Saudi Arabia as well as human rights abuses for both detainees and their families.

Experts said these abuses have been "exacerbated by the systematic torture of detainees and grossly unfair trials culminating in death sentences".

It is rather bizarre Liz Cheney, the daughter of Dick Cheney, would cofound Keep America Safe (now defunct) with a neocon talking head, Bill Kristol. The forever war outfit was funded by Mel Sembler, an Israel-first real estate tycoon who is a good friend of Bibi Netanyahu.
Cheney has absolutely no interest in keeping America safe. She is calling for an immediate attack on Iran.

From The Hill:

House Republican Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said on Wednesday the U.S. should consider a “proportional military response” against Iran, among other potential actions, over its suspected involvement in drone attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil supply.

Liz Cheney calls for "proportional military" response against Iran https://t.co/4bmxqLnXK0 pic.twitter.com/ubQXGg1SsL

— The Hill (@thehill) September 18, 2019

Much of the attention concerning the crippling damage to Saudi Aramco facilities struck in last week's aerial attack ultimately blamed on "Iranian sponsorship" by US and Saudi officials has focused on Abqaiq processing plant, but on Friday the first on the ground images from the kingdom's giant Khurais oil field — the country's second largest — have been revealed, showing scorched infrastructure, ruptured pipelines, and "a mess of oil melted to asphalt, twisted and charred metal grates" according to an on site Bloomberg report.

And yet Aramco has remained insistent that the field will return to pre-attack output levels this month, after the company reported losing half its daily output in the aftermath of the early Saturday attacks, impacting a whopping 5% of total global supply.

Per Bloomberg, Khurais has a capacity of 1.45 million barrels a day, processing all oil on site; however the attack took out four 300-foot towers essential to the production process.

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Saker blog,

The Yemeni Shiite group’s spectacular attack on Abqaiq raises the distinct possibility of a push to drive the House of Saud from power.

Houthi striking capability – from drone swarms to ballistic missile attacks – has been improving remarkably for the past year or so. It’s not by accident that the UAE saw which way the geopolitical and geoeconomic winds were blowing: Abu Dhabi withdrew from Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s vicious war against Yemen and now is engaged in what it describes as a “peace-first” strategy.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested Saudi Arabia should buy Russian air defense systems to protect its oil facilities from drone attacks, pointing to Iran and Turkey, who operate S-300 and S-400 missiles, respectively.

“Saudi Arabia needs to make a smart decision, as Iran did by buying our S-300, and as Mr. Erdogan did by deciding to buy the most advanced S-400 Triumph air defense systems from Russia,” Putin told reporters in Ankara on Monday. “These kinds of systems are capable of defending any kind of infrastructure in Saudi Arabia from any kind of attack.”

Putin was answering a question about the recent drone attack on Saudi Arabian oil facilities, which Washington has blamed on Iran, though Yemen’s Houthi rebels have claimed responsibility. A coalition led by Saudi Arabia invaded Yemen in 2015 and has fought the Houthis there since.

Incoming National Security Advisor, Charles Kupperman, made the claim Nuclear War With USSR Was Winnable.

He made those statements in the 1980s. I do not know his views today, but let's review what he said then.

President Donald Trump’s acting national security adviser, former Reagan administration official Charles Kupperman, made an extraordinary and controversial claim in the early 1980s: nuclear conflict with the USSR was winnable and that “nuclear war is a destructive thing but still in large part a physics problem.”

Kupperman, appointed to his new post on Tuesday after Trump fired his John Bolton from the job, argued it was possible to win a nuclear war “in the classical sense,” and that the notion of total destruction stemming from such a superpower conflict was inaccurate. He said that in a scenario in which 20 million people died in the U.S. as opposed to 150 million, the nation could then emerge as the stronger side and prevail in its objectives.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday it is “not fair” to either Turkey or the United States that Washington cannot sell Ankara billions of dollars worth of F-35 fighter jets after it bought a Russian air defense system.

Turkey started taking delivery of Russia’s S-400 air defense system last week in defiance of U.S. warnings that doing so would mean the Pentagon would kick it out of the F-35 stealth fighter program and that it could be subject to sanctions.

Washington’s concern is that deploying the S-400 with the F-35 would allow Russia to gain too much inside information of the stealth system.

Buying military equipment from Russia also leaves the NATO member liable to U.S. sanctions retribution under a 2017 law known as the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, or CAATSA.

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk,

Questioning “mutual assured destruction,” Charles Kupperman called nuclear conflict “in large part a physics problem.”

He made those statements in the 1980s. I do not know his views today, but let's review what he said then.

President Donald Trump’s acting national security adviser, former Reagan administration official Charles Kupperman, made an extraordinary and controversial claim in the early 1980s: nuclear conflict with the USSR was winnable and that “nuclear war is a destructive thing but still in large part a physics problem.”

SOURCE: ALJAZEERA.COM
US Energy Secretary Rick Perry said on Friday he will meet the new Saudi energy minister on Monday and likely discuss plans Saudi Arabia has to build nuclear reactors.

Perry did not say where he would meet Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, who took over from Khalid al-Falih on Sunday. But a US official said the meeting would likely take place on the sidelines of an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) meeting in Vienna next week.

The kingdom has so far resisted agreeing to standards that would block its ability to enrich uranium and reprocessing of plutonium, possible pathways to making an atomic weapon. On Monday, Prince Abdulaziz said the kingdom wanted to enrich uranium for its nuclear power programme, potentially complicating talks with the Trump administration on the atomic pact and the role of US companies.

Serbian Armed Forces have reportedly bought Chinese-built armed drones, could receive the drones in the coming months, Stars and Stripes reported Tuesday, citing local media reports and officials.

Serbia is expected to take delivery of nine Chengdu Pterodactyl-1 drones from now until February 2020. Media reports in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, said follow up orders in 2020 could exceed 15 more.

Stars and Stripes said the sale "marks Beijing's most significant foray into a continent where armed forces have traditionally relied on US and European weapon-makers."

Earlier this year, Serbian President Aleksander Vucic signed several agreements with Beijing to expand the Belt and Road in the country.

Under the agreement, China is expected to construct new power plants, lay transmission cables, and fiber optics, build new railways, and ports in the country.

SOURCE: KURTNIMMO.BLOG

Thanks to “public” education (indoctrination) and the corporate media, far too few Americans understand the founders designed a constitutional republic. Instead, we’re told America is a “democracy”—the ideal of mob rule—and we all have a role to play in deciding who will lead the nation.

This is, of course, nonsense. We are spectators in the bleachers of the three-ring circus of national elections. The state is run by and for the sake of the financial class and transnational corporations. The election of handpicked yesmen (and women) every four and eight years is routinely portrayed as the will of the people.

This is why Donald Trump is a big problem—he went around the political class and made grandiose promises (deep-sixed after the election) and this is why so many Americans voted for him and why the state and its professional careerist class of politicians hate him and want him impeached, even dead.

SOURCE: ALJAZEERA.COM
Iran was clandestinely developing nuclear weapons but destroyed a secret site after Israel discovered it, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu alleged on Monday.

Tehran had been developing atomic arms at a facility in Abadeh, south of Iranian city of Isfahan, said Netanyahu. It was the first time the prime minister identified the site after publicly accusing Iran of building a bomb last year while citing a trove of Iranian documents allegedly stolen by Israeli agents from an Iranian warehouse.

"In this site, Iran conducted experiments to develop nuclear weapons," Netanyahu said, adding after Israeli intelligence found out about it, "they destroyed the site. They just wiped it out".

The prime minister did not provide further details on the alleged experiments, or say when they purportedly were held.

SOURCE: ZEROHEDGE
Among the most underreported but explosive stories of the past six months has been growing signs of Saudi Arabia's nuclear ambitions. But now there are new questions over whether the kingdom's future planned two nuclear power reactors will be limited to purely energy-related and peaceful purposes.

On Monday the kingdom's nuclear energy minister said Saudi Arabia wants to enrich uranium for its nuclear power program, Reuters reports — an announcement likely to hinder talks with Washington over American companies' potential help in establishing its atomic energy program.

"The world’s top oil exporter says it wants to use nuclear power to diversify its energy mix, but enrichment also opens up the possibility of military uses of uranium," Reuters noted.

The US government’s withdrawal from the INF Treaty arms control mechanism and its push towards upgrading its nuclear weapons shows it is planning to take on Russia and China militarily, an American scholar has warned.

Dennis Etler, a former professor of Anthropology at Cabrillo College in California, made the remarks after the US Navy test-fired four Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs).

The test launches were carried out by the Ohio class ballistic missile submarine USS Nebraska this week from an unspecified location off the coast of Southern California.

The USS Nebraska received the first series of improved Trident missiles in 2013. Dubbed D5 Life Extension, the missiles have improved range and electronics and would remain in service until 2040s, the report said.

Two weeks after the first significant Israel-Hezbollah exchange of fire since the 2006 war, Hezbollah announced Monday it has downed another Israeli drone in southern Lebanon, The Washington Post reports.

A Hezbollah media statement said the group had "confronted" the Israel drone with "appropriate weapons" near the southern town of Ramiyeh, indicating the small drone was shot down. The paramilitary group now has the drone in its possession.

However, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) denied its surveillance drone was shot down, only saying it had crashed in the pre-dawn hours of Monday morning. The IDF affirmed it had been conducting a reconnaissance mission in the area.

SOURCE: ZEROHEDGE

The race for hypersonic missiles heated up last week when the US Army awarded two key contracts to catch up to Russia and China. After a decade of experimental prototypes, the Army is expected to get its hands on hypersonic missiles that will be fielded in the next four years, reported Breaking Defense.

Dynetics won the first contract to produce 20 Common Hypersonic Glide Bodies (C-HGB) for both the Army and the Navy.

Lockheed Martin won the second, with a $347 million contract to upgrade eight of the C-HGBs with guidance systems, rocket boosters, protective canisters, and a missile battery that can house four Long Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) launchers.

After last Sunday's first ever Pentagon test of a previously banned ground-launched cruise missile with a range of over 500 km in a post-INF treaty world, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday said he has ordered a reciprocal response, meaning the Kremlin will likely soon conduct its own highly visible land-based missile test.

In his remarks before Russia's Security Council on Friday, Putin was scathing in his reaction to the US missile test as well as American Defense Secretary Mark Esper's recent signalling of a possible missile deployment to Asia "sooner than later". Putin said any planned Asia-Pacific region US deployment "affects our core interests as it is close to Russia's borders".

"All this leaves no doubts that the real intention of the United States (in exiting the INF pact) was to... untie its hands to deploy previously banned missiles in different regions of the world," Putin said.

India's Business Standard is reporting a major mobilization of Pakistani military forces underway along the border with India, citing government sources which talked to Asia's ANI news agency.

The contested Kashmir region is on edge following India last week taking the unprecedented step of revoking Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir's (J&K) autonomous status amid a military crackdown involving deployment of tens of thousands of Indian troops to the region.

"Three C-130 transport aircraft of the Pakistan Air Force were used on Saturday to ferry equipment to their Skardu air base opposite the Union Territory of Ladakh. The Indian agencies concerned are keeping a close eye on the movement of Pakistanis along the border areas," sources told ANI.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Terrorist groups continue boosting their presence in the south of the Idlib de-escalation zone in Syria, having recently dispatched there about 470 militants and additional military hardware, the head of the Russian centre for Syrian reconciliation said on Saturday.

"There has been recorded a transfer of about 120 militants of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham* [terror group, formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra], three armoured vehicles and four pickups with mounted heavy machine guns from the area near the town of Hesh," Maj. Gen. Alexei Bakin said at a briefing.

In addition, the Ajnad al-Kavkaz* terrorist group has sent to the contact line about 200 militants, five armoured vehicles, 10 pickups mounted with weapons and two trucks filled with bombs.

Near the settlement of Knedde, militants have, meanwhile, deployed 150 members of the Islamic Party of Turkestan* and 13 pickups with mounted mortars, multiple launch rocket systems and heavy machine guns.

SOURCE: RT

Millionaire financier and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein has died in a Manhattan jail, with law enforcement sources saying he killed himself. Epstein was in custody pending trial for child sex trafficking and for conspiracy.

The incident comes two weeks after the 66-year-old was found “injured and in a fetal position” on the floor of his cell, with injuries to his neck. Epstein had been placed on suicide watch as a result.

Law enforcement sources told multiple news outlets that Epstein had committed suicide on Saturday morning, with his body wheeled out and taken to a New York hospital around 7:30am.

Epstein was arrested on July 6 and charged with sex trafficking and conspiracy. The charges against the millionaire allege that he'd abused dozens of young girls at his properties in Manhattan and Palm Beach, Florida, some of them as young as 14. Aside from the offenses alleged, rumors circulated of further child abuse at Epstein’s private Caribbean island.

SOURCE: RT

Millionaire financier and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein has died in a Manhattan jail, with law enforcement sources saying he killed himself. Epstein was in custody pending trial for child sex trafficking and for conspiracy.

The incident comes two weeks after the 66-year-old was found “injured and in a fetal position” on the floor of his cell, with injuries to his neck. Epstein had been placed on suicide watch as a result.

Law enforcement sources told multiple news outlets that Epstein had committed suicide on Saturday morning, with his body wheeled out and taken to a New York hospital around 7:30am.

Epstein was arrested on July 6 and charged with sex trafficking and conspiracy. The charges against the millionaire allege that he'd abused dozens of young girls at his properties in Manhattan and Palm Beach, Florida, some of them as young as 14. Aside from the offenses alleged, rumors circulated of further child abuse at Epstein’s private Caribbean island.

Hiroshima was atomic-bombed 74 years ago on Tuesday, Nagasaki 74 years ago on Friday. Given the extent of the casualty figures, you’d think they’d be unforgettable. But we don’t quite know (nor ever will) what they were.

SOURCE: TRUEPUBLICA
By John W Whitehead – US Constitutional attorney, Charlottesville, Virginia: Enough with the distractions. Enough with the partisan jousting. Enough with the sniping and name-calling and mud-slinging that do nothing to make this country safer or freer or more just. We have let the government’s evil-doing, its abuses, power grabs, brutality, meanness, inhumanity, immorality, greed, corruption, debauchery and tyranny go on for too long. We are approaching a reckoning.

This is the point, as the poet W. B. Yeats warned, when things fall apart and anarchy is loosed upon the world.

This is believed to be the earliest photograph from the ground, 15 minutes after the plutonium bomb detonated over Nagasaki. The destruction was so incredible that there is no count on how many people died that day. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki will forever live in the pages of history as two of the most significant turning points in modern history, initiating the world into the nuclear age.

The tragic anniversary of the United States’ detonation of two nuclear weapons over Japan's Hiroshima and Nagasaki is an annual reminder of the short-sighted bombing orders and the normalization of dehumanization. Despite lessons and warnings throughout history, the reliance on and proliferation of nuclear weapons continues to trump diplomacy.

Kevin Kamps, the radioactive waste watchdog at the organization Beyond Nuclear, joined Radio Sputnik’s Loud and Clear on Wednesday to review some lesser-known tidbits of anti-nuclear history on the anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Having only just been sworn into the job on July 23, the aim of the tour is mainly to recruit anti-Chinese and anti-Iranian allies that the US can rely on heavily to defend its interests in the Asia-Pacific region. I would even venture to bet that the recent mass shootings in the US, in light of the Christchurch terror attacks in March this year, barely attracted a mention behind closed doors between Esper and New Zealand government officials. Quite a risky contention, but I will find out if my assertion is true in about twenty working days as I have already requested the briefing notes from the meetings.

The days of the fallout shelters with their supplies of long-lasting food to nurture us after the bombs had dropped and the school drills with children taking cover under their desks are long behind us. That was back during the height of the Cold War, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when world Communism was still on the march and only the assurance of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) was believed to prevent a hot war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Then, in 1964, the great Stanley Kubrick movie, Dr. Strangelove, or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb, came out, and we began to come to our senses. We were shown graphically how, through a series of misunderstandings, the nuclear hair-trigger could be pulled and the world annihilated.

MacArthur “…no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor.”

“Albert Einstein…President Roosevelt would have forbidden the atomic bombing of Hiroshima had he been alive and that it was probably carried out to end the Pacific war before Russia could participate.”

On this day in 1945, the US military under the direction of President Truman dropped a nuclear bomb on a civilian target killing over 80,000 people instantly.

Was the attack on Hiroshima a military necessity?

No and here’s why.

China's Global Times — the communist country's hawkish, belligerent state tabloid — has responded to the Pentagon's Friday announcement stating the US is looking to deploy intermediate range ballistic missiles to Asia "within months," warning "it will certainly trigger an intense arms race in the region."

Its editorial board, long understood as a mouthpiece of the state, has slammed remarks made by US Defense Secretary Mark Esper outlining the new mid-range ballistic missile deployment plans, crucially which came immediately on the heels of the formal collapse of the landmark US-Russia INF treaty, saying American greed and naked drive for hegemony will spark a dangerously unprecedented arms race which will fuel further "instability" across Asia.

Today, the Doomsday Clock is at just two minutes to midnight – the closest we’ve been to nuclear conflict since 1953, at the height of the Cold War. And unlike in 1953, we know ducking under a school desk isn’t going to save us.

My organization, Physicians for Social Responsibility, was founded to raise the alarm about the health impacts of nuclear weapons and the risks of nuclear war. We’ve researched everything from nuclear winter to what a nuclear war could mean for human health.

So, let us be the first to tell you: The US is playing an elaborate, high-stakes, screwed-up game of chicken with other nuclear-armed countries.

All research at a Fort Detrick laboratory that handles high-level disease-causing material, such as Ebola, is on hold indefinitely after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found the organization failed to meet biosafety standards.

No infectious pathogens, or disease-causing material, have been found outside authorized areas at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.

The CDC inspected the military research institute in June and inspectors found several areas of concern in standard operating procedures, which are in place to protect workers in biosafety level 3 and 4 laboratories, spokeswoman Caree Vander Linden confirmed in an email Friday.

The CDC sent a cease and desist order in July.

Speaking to reporters over the weekend, Defense Secretary Mark Esper claimed that he believes there is “rising support” for the US-led naval fleet in the Strait of Hormuz

The US has been pushing that plan for over a month, on the idea that the US would get access to a large fleet to confront Iran, and would only have to contribute about 10-20% of the fleet themselves. So far they’ve gotten no commitments to join the fleet.

Despite Esper’s optimism, the US still has no commitments to join the fleet, though he suggested that some countries might sign up soon, citing 30 nations attending a meeting last week in Florida to talk about it.

Australia seems like a likely candidate, though why Australia would join the US fleet and not the British alternative is unclear. Even then, most nations have flat out rejected the scheme, and Australia’s willingness to consider it at all is still something.

It’s old news that the US has A-bombs in Europe, but last month when a Canadian Senator accidentally spilled the beans about where they are, the locals got upset.

US officials are continuing to emphasize that ISIS poses a “global threat,” even though it lost all its territory in Syria and Iraq. While that continues the narrative of an open-ended fight across the planet, officials are also clear the focus right now is on Africa.

It’s not clear exactly why ISIS is being chosen as the immediate focus for US anti-ISIS operations, with so much of a deal being made previously of the group in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but the US is hoping to get global support for the Africa fight.

US officials are emphasizing the substantial number of ISIS-affiliated factions inside Africa in their narrative, though of course, not all ISIS are created equal, and nowhere is that more apparent than in Africa.

The Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty (INF) signed in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has now officially ended, six months after President Trump issued Moscow an ultimatum to cease its alleged violations.

“Decades ago, the United States entered into a treaty with Russia in which we agreed to limit and reduce our missile capabilities,” the President said during his February State of the Union address.

“While we followed the agreement to the letter, Russia repeatedly violated its terms. That is why I announced that the United States is officially withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, or INF Treaty.”

The clock on that timetable has just run out, with the US announcing it has ripped up the landmark agreement.

SOURCE: ECOWATCH

The U.S. Department of Justice won't turn over 60 boxes of files about a nuclear arms plant in Colorado because it says it can't find the files. The missing documents were presented to a grand jury during a two-year criminal investigation that looked into environmental crimes committed at Rocky Flats, which produced plutonium triggers for the nation's nuclear arsenal throughout the Cold War, as the Denver Post reported.

The nuclear plant, just outside of Denver, operated from 1952 to 1989 when it shut down amid the grand jury investigation. While running, it had a history of fires, leaks and spills. Files about the plant, however, have remained a state secret since the grand jury investigation concluded in 1992.

SOURCE: NEXTGOV
The Pentagon last year purchased thousands of Chinese tech products that contained known cybersecurity vulnerabilities, and officials have yet to enact policies to stop it from happening again, an internal watchdog found.

In 2018, the department bought more than 9,500 commercial printers, computers and cameras despite warnings that adversaries could use the products to infiltrate networks and spy on personnel, according to an inspector general audit. The procurements, which totaled roughly $33 million, expose significant shortcomings in the department’s supply chain security policies that persist to this day, auditors said in a redacted report published Tuesday.

Specifically, the Army and Air Force purchased more than 8,000 printers from Lexmark and 1,500 computers from Lenovo, two Chinese companies that national security officials previously linked to the Communist Party’s espionage operations.

The New START treaty was signed in 2010 and is currently the only Russia-US arms control treaty.

The treaty expires in 2021 and the administration of US President Donald Trump reportedly remains undecided on whether to extend it, while Russia has repeatedly stressed that it is ready for dialogue.

The agreement limits the number of deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, nuclear-armed bombers and nuclear warheads.

Just as Lighthizer and his band of merry trade-deals-men prepare to head to China for face-to-face talks, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reports that North Korea has fired an unidentified projectile.

South Korea's joint chiefs of staff have confirmed the unidentified projectile's firing from the Wonsan region of North Korea. The launch took place “early morning” today, according to the statement.

Bloomberg reports that South Korean military are monitoring movement and preparing for additional launches.

As a reminder, at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan in June, Xi urged US President Donald Trump to show "flexibility" and act in a "timely" fashion to ease sanctions on North Korea, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said earlier this month.

Xi's request reflected Beijing's desire to boost economic engagements with Pyongyang, analysts said.

Developing...

Media leaks of a NATO report revealing locations of European sites where US nuclear weapons are stationed appear to be more a "minor embarrassment" than a big surprise, and will unlikely have any far-reaching consequences, experts said.

Earlier in the week, media published a copy of a NATO report featuring the locations of US nuclear weapons in Europe. In particular, it has revealed the locations of US weapons at such bases as Kleine Brogel in Belgium, Buchel in Germany, Aviano and Ghedi-Torre in Italy, Volkel in The Netherlands, and Incirlik in Turkey.

If the documents ended up in the hands of a malefactor, they would have gained a vast, if somewhat outdated, knowledge of the facility’s security system, including home addresses of the guards and computer passwords.

Top secret documents related to the notorious UK chemical weapons facility at Porton Down were found discarded in a trash bin in a north London car park, according to a Thursday report by The Daily Star.

After the edition was tipped by an undisclosed source about the documents, thousands of pages were retrieved from a public dumpster, reportedly containing highly-sensitive information regarding the chemical facility security, including details of equipment carried by the guards and their home addresses, details about the responsibilities of patrols and even passwords to computers, written in plain text, the Daily Mirror report says.

SOURCE: ZEROHEDGE

Authored by William Hartung via TomDispatch.com,

When, in his farewell address in 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the “unwarranted influence” wielded by the “military-industrial complex,” he could never have dreamed of an arms-making corporation of the size and political clout of Lockheed Martin.

In a good year, it now receives up to $50 billion in government contracts, a sum larger than the operating budget of the State Department. And now it’s about to have company.

As the nominee for Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper is set to inherit just a whole slew of US wars around the world. His long hearing at the Senate Armed Services Committee, however, didn’t spend a lot of time talking about wars.

Or indeed any time. Esper was faced with questions about his history as a lobbyist for a major arms maker, and how that was going to fit in to his potential new job. He was asked exactly zero questions about ongoing wars.

Esper assured Senators that he sees “the big picture,” and his focus was heavily on the need for the Senate to spend vastly more on weaponry for the US military, which would be his job as Defense Secretary, and largely just a scaled up version of his lobbying past.

How Israeli-designed drones ended up supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is a case study in the complicated relationship between Israel and Russia. Though Russia has been instrumental in protecting the Assad government, which appeared to be on the brink of collapse four years ago, it has also carefully cultivated a military relationship with Israel over the past decade.

After more than seven years of war, the skies over Syria are saturated with aircraft from multiple militaries and armed groups, each pursuing their own goals, including using the country as a weapons-testing ground. American airpower and Kurdish ground forces helped grind the Islamic State’s caliphate down to a tiny pocket before it dramatically collapsed this past spring. Meanwhile, Turkish occupation forces and their proxies are conducting a brutal campaign of repression in the Syrian-Kurdish canton of Afrin.

If you've ever wondered if the Pentagon has ever exposed the American public to ticks infected with biological weapons, you're not alone.

Rep. Christopher Smith (R-N.J.) authored an amendment to the House version of the Fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act would require the Defense Department Inspector General's Office to find out if the U.S. military experimented with using ticks and other insects as biological weapons between 1950 and 1975.

If such experiments took place, the amendment would require the inspector general's office to tell lawmakers if any of the ticks or other bugs "were released outside of any laboratory by accident or experiment design."

Was President Harry Truman “a murderer,” as the renowned British analytic philosopher Gertrude Elizabeth Anscombe once charged? Were the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki indeed a war crime and a crime against humanity, as she and other academic luminaries have publicly claimed? A Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Ethics at Oxford and Cambridge, who was one of the 20th century’s most gifted philosophers and recognizably the greatest woman philosopher in history, Dr. Anscombe openly called President Truman a “war criminal” for his decision to have the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki leveled by atomic bombs in August 1945 (Rachels & Rachels 127). According to another academic critic, the late American historian Howard Zinn, at least 140,000 Japanese civilians were “turned into powder and ash” in Hiroshima.

It was truly baffling to hear a grilled US official claim during a Senate hearing that the sales of weapons to Saudi Arabia are a ‘manifestation’ of exporting human rights and open society, an anti-war activist told RT.
R. Clarke Cooper, the US State Department’s assistant secretary for political-military affairs, was grilled during a hearing at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday. Defending arms sales to Saudi Arabia, he said that the deal itself means more than just selling weapons.

“Our policy is not just limited to arms transfers. It is a manifestation of what else we export: open society, human rights. That is a part of our policy,” he said. The official added that Washington does not cut security ties with partners like Riyadh that carry “so much weight for our interests.”

By Nicholas West

Nearly 4 years ago, I wrote an article entitled, “Lasers and Electronic Warfare To Be Used in New World of Drones and Anti-Drones,” wherein I detailed the trend toward using directed energy weapons in warfare. Unfortunately, it appears that much of the speculation at that time about whether or not this was merely the military-industrial complex looking to fund more boondoggle projects that would never see the light of day actually has become reality.

Fox News reports:

If swarms of enemy small attack boats armed with guns and explosives approached a Navy ship, alongside missile-armed drones and helicopters closing into strike range, ship commanders would instantly begin weighing defensive options – to include interceptor missiles, electronic warfare, deck-mounted guns or area weapons such as Close-in-Weapons System.