We recently highlighted the possibility that the US and China "may well be on the road to war, and nuclear war is no longer unthinkable." For years, we've discussed the relentless quest of Washington elites, preparing the empire for the inevitable collision with China as the battle for economic supremacy nears.

The rapid modernization of the military under the Trump administration, costing taxpayers $2 trillion, was an important signal in gauging Washington Warhawks' level of military preparedness as the threat of rising China increases by the day.

President Trump has described the trillions of dollars allocated to the military as a "colossal rebuilding" effort - something he says has 'never been done before.' Trump has routinely described all sorts of new military technology, including fifth-generation stealth jets, hypersonic missiles, and increased nuclear weapon capability.

Over five years ago we titled "Are missiles returning to Comiso? (Sicily)." [1] This hypothesis was ignored by the entire political spectrum and dismissed by some self-styled expert as "alarmist." The alarm, unfortunately, was well founded.

Secret South African documents reveal that Israel offered to sell nuclear warheads to the apartheid regime, providing the first official documentary evidence of the state's possession of nuclear weapons.

The "top secret" minutes of meetings between senior officials from the two countries in 1975 show that South Africa's defence minister, PW Botha, asked for the warheads and Shimon Peres, then Israel's defence minister and now its president, responded by offering them "in three sizes". The two men also signed a broad-ranging agreement governing military ties between the two countries that included a clause declaring that "the very existence of this agreement" was to remain secret.

The documents, uncovered by an American academic, Sasha Polakow-Suransky, in research for a book on the close relationship between the two countries, provide evidence that Israel has nuclear weapons despite its policy of "ambiguity" in neither confirming nor denying their existence.

In August 2019 the United States withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, citing Russia's alleged violation of the agreement's terms.

Russian President Vladimir Putin Says US exit from Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty was a "grave mistake" which creates the risk of a renewal of the nuclear arms race.

"We consider the US withdrawal from the INF Treaty, as a result of which it has ceased to operate, a serious mistake that increases the risks of unleashing a missile arms race, increasing confrontational potential and sliding into uncontrolled escalation," reads the statement cited by the Kremlin press service.

Recent satellite imagery suggests that Russia may be working to resume testing of its 9M730 Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile program in Novaya Zemlya, an archipelago above the Arctic Circle. This highly controversial missile, which is codenamed SSC-X-9 Skyfall by NATO, has suffered a number of mishaps during development work in the past, including a deadly explosion last year.

CNN was first to report that work might have resumed at the test site, drawing upon satellite images from Planet Labs that had been analyzed by researchers Michael Duitsman and Jeffrey Lewis at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. Two U.S. officials also told CNN that they were aware that Russia “has been preparing to test missiles as part of its advanced weapons program.”

For one year the countries will cap deployed and non-deployed warheads both — the latter have never been part of a deal because they're impossible to verify

The US is urging countries that have ratified a UN treaty that bans nuclear weapons to withdraw their support for the pact. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) is approaching ratifications from 50 countries, which is needed to bring the treaty into force.

The TPNW requires all ratifying countries “never under any circumstances … develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.” The TPNW also bans the transfer or use of nuclear weapons and requires its participants to promote the treaty to other countries.

The Associated Press obtained the US letter to the signatories of the treaty. The letter says Washington’s NATO allies and the five original nuclear powers, the US, Russia, China, France, and the UK, all “stand unified in our opposition to the potential repercussions” of the TPNW.

On Tuesday, Moscow said it is ready to offer the US a mutual one-year freeze on both sides’ nuclear arsenals to extend the New START treaty for the same period. The freeze on warheads is a key US demand to extend the treaty, which will expire in February 2021 if an agreement is not reached.

“Russia offers to prolong New START for one year, and it is ready to take on the political obligation along with the USA to freeze the amount of its nuclear warheads for that period. This position can be implemented strictly on the understanding that the freezing of the warheads will not be accompanied by any additional demands from the side of the US,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

A fleet of B-52 bombers based at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana lined the runway ready for takeoff in a display of air power and American military might.

A group of eight of the Boeing Stratofortress' were pictured on October 14 in what is known as an 'Elephant Walk'.

An elephant walk is a procession of military aircraft taxiing close in formation right before a minimum interval takeoff.

On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered to extend the last nuclear arms control treaty between the US and Russia for one year with no preconditions. The proposal to renew the New START, which will expire in February 2021, was almost immediately shot down by the US.

National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien called Putin’s offer a “non-starter” if Moscow does not agree to freeze its nuclear warheads. O’Brien said the US made a proposal to Moscow to extend the treaty for a year in exchange for Russia and the US to cap all nuclear warheads for that year.

In pursuit of nuclear deterrence, the United States has occasionally crossed over the line into schemes seemingly more appropriate for a James Bond movie than the defense budget, but few were as crazy as Project Iceworm.

Throughout the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union were locked in steady competition not only for the most capable and powerful nuclear weapons, but for novel approaches to deliver them.

Both world powers were aware that any nuclear attack would likely begin with strikes against the opposing nation’s nuclear arsenals aimed at limiting their capacity to respond in kind. As such, massive efforts were undertaken to make huge nuclear weapons mobile, hidden, or otherwise insulated from attack.

Numerous reports strongly suggest that Germany hosts certain amount of the American nuclear weapons as a member of the NATO alliance, but these reports remain unconfirmed on the official level.

The German Luftwaffe took part in secretive drills codenamed "Steadfast Noon", which involved the use of aircraft designed to carry nuclear weapons at times of war, Deutschen-Presse Agentur has reported. According to the news agency, the drills took place at Nörvenich Air Base in North Rhine-Westphalia land of Germany, which is believed to be a possible site hosting the US missiles, allegedly deployed in the country.

The DPA said the Luftwaffe was not using the actual nukes in the military exercise, but were rather practising the transportation of these armaments from the underground warehouses where they are purportedly stored, and training in attaching them to nuclear-capable aircraft.

On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered to extend the last nuclear arms control treaty between the US and Russia for one year with no preconditions. The proposal to renew the New START, which will expire in February 2021, was almost immediately shot down by the US.

National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien called Putin’s offer a “non-starter” if Moscow does not agree to freeze its nuclear warheads. O’Brien said the US made a proposal to Moscow to extend the treaty for a year in exchange for Russia and the US to cap all nuclear warheads for that year.

The New START limits the number of missiles, bombers, and nuclear warheads each power can have deployed. The US wants other weapons to be included in a new arms control deal. Russia is open to further limitations for a future treaty but wants to extend New START as it is. Moscow has repeatedly offered to extend the treaty for five years with no preconditions, as the agreement allows.

At the start of this week it was widely reported that President Trump is seeking a last minute pre-election nuclear deal with Russia given the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) is set to expire by this upcoming February.

Russia and the US have held recent talks for its five-year extension in Vienna and Helsinki within past weeks, but there's little substantial progress despite optimistic statements by the US delegation. Russia has consistently pushed for an unconditional five-year extension of the treaty, but it appears Putin is now ready for some level of compromise.

On Friday Putin informed the Russian Security Council of plans to push for an extension of at least one year without any preconditions.

New satellite analysis has found that China has expanded its capacity for building nuclear-powered submarines at one of its largest shipyards.

The US Naval Institute (USNI) news site reported this week that commercial satellite imagery has revealed work on a new construction hall at the Bohai shipyard – a major site for China’s nuclear submarine programme – that could make room for two additional submarines to be built simultaneously.

The latest hall resembles another one built there in 2015, which is believed to be intended for construction of a new generation of nuclear submarines, according to the report.

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This could mean the shipyard will have capacity for four or five submarines in the sheds at one time, including room for two more at the new hall and potentially another one at a third, older construction hall.

The Trump administration’s negotiations with Russia over the last nuclear arms control treaty between the two powers continue to falter. On Tuesday, Marshall Billingslea, President Trump’s envoy for arms control, said he believes the US and Russia reached an “agreement in principle” to extend the New START treaty temporarily, but Russia quickly rejected these comments.

Moscow’s top arms control negotiator, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, said in response to Billingslea’s comments that Washington’s proposal to renew the vital arms control treaty is “unacceptable.”

The New START limits the number of nuclear warheads each power can have deployed. Russia has offered to extend the treaty for five years with no preconditions, as the agreement allows. The US has been demanding additional concessions from Russia for a shorter extension.

On August 21st, six nuclear-capable B-52H Stratofortress bombers, representing approximately one-seventh of the war-ready U.S. B-52H bomber fleet, flew from their home base in North Dakota to Fairford Air Base in England for several weeks of intensive operations over Europe. Although the actual weapons load of those giant bombers was kept secret, each of them is capable of carrying eight AGM-86B nuclear-armed, air-launched cruise missiles (ALCMs) in its bomb bay. Those six planes, in other words, could have been carrying 48 city-busting thermonuclear warheads. (The B-52H can also carry 12 ALCMs on external pylons, but none were visible on this occasion.) With such a load alone, in other words, those six planes possessed the capacity to incinerate much of western Russia, including Moscow and St. Petersburg.

President Trump wants to seal a nuclear deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin before the November election. Top officials from both countries have been working ardently to meet the deadline, according to a report.

The two leaders have discussed arms control over a series of phone calls the pair shared in the past six months as their envoys negotiated in Vienna, Axios reported on Sunday.

The talks gained new momentum after Robert O’Brien, national security adviser, met with his Russian counterpart, Nikolai Patrushev, in Geneva on Oct. 2, leading Trump’s arms control envoy, Marshall Billingslea, to cut short a trip to Asia so he could huddle with Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov in Helsinki.

As the clock winds down on the last remaining U.S.-Russian arms control treaty, the United States and Russia remain locked in a stalemate with numerous obstacles blocking the path to prolonging the agreement. U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration will only contemplate a short-term extension of the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) if Russia agrees to a framework for a new trilateral treaty that verifiably covers all nuclear warheads, includes those of China in the future, and makes changes to the painstakingly negotiated New START verification regime.

Arms control talks between the US and Russia resumed in Helsinki on Monday as the fate of the New START hangs in the balance. Earlier reports indicated the negotiations were not going well, with the US demanding unreasonable concessions from Moscow. But a Trump administration official told The Wall Street Journal that the two sides are making progress and could agree on the framework for a new treaty soon.

“This is the first time the US has heard concrete proposals from the Russian Federation,” the official said after Monday’s talks. “We have an agreement on the way forward in terms of form. Where we have a lot of work to do is in terms of substance.”

President Trump’s envoy for arms control, Marshal Billingslea, said in a tweet that Monday’s meeting brought “important progress.”

The US anti-missile defense systems being installed near Russia’s borders can be “inconspicuously” transformed into offensive weapons, Vladimir Putin has said, adding that he knows “year by year” how Washington will develop its missile program.

Talking about NATO’s ballistic missile defense systems in Eastern Europe, Russia’s president said that the Americans are now deploying their missiles at these military complexes.

Russia and the United States will hold their latest round of nuclear arms control talks in Helsinki, Finland on Monday, following the last round in Austria over the summer.

The two major nuclear powers have yet to agree on the conditions for extending what's widely considered the most significant nuclear arms reduction treaty, New START, set to expire in February 2021 if the two sides don't agree to renew it. So far ongoing talks between Moscow and Washington have failed to extend it by up to five years, despite pressure to strike an extension by America's allies.

New START is the last remaining Russia/US arms control agreement.

Expiring on February 5, 2021 if not renewed, the Trump regime rejected Vladimir Putin’s offer to extend the agreement for another five years with no pre-conditions.

On September 28, Politico reported that Trump officials “asked the military to assess how quickly it could pull nuclear weapons out of storage and load them onto bombers and submarines if an arms control treaty with Russia” expires in February, citing three unnamed sources, adding:

The Trump regime “wants to underscore that it is serious about letting the treaty lapse if Russia fails to meet (its) demands.”

CHINA has unveiled its “ultimate doomsday weapon” during one of the nation’s biggest military parades.

The terrifying super-nuke took centre stage at a huge arms showcase held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, to mark 70 years of Communist rule.

For many decades governments around the world, especially in the USA, have fired tens of thousands of rounds of CS gas at their own people in an attempt to control “civil unrest”. The media falsely labels CS gas as “tear gas” rather than calling it what it is, poisonous gas. The original tear gas was relatively benign, irritating the eyes and mucus tissues but was not poisonous. CS gas, on the other hand, will kill you if you are exposed to enough of it.

CS gas is so toxic that it has been banned under international conventions governing the laws of war. In other words the USA, or any government signitory to these pacts, is not permitted to use CS gas in wartime against soldiers or civilians. To do so would be a War Crime or Crime Against Humanity. Yet these same governments commit Crimes Against Humanity almost every day, not hesitating to use poisonous CS gas against their own people.

The US has made Russia an offer it hopes she won’t refuse: accept a new arms control deal including no limits on NATO weapons in Europe, or deal with a modernized American nuclear arsenal on its doorstep.

Following the US’ unilateral withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty last year, the 2011 New START treaty remains the only arms control deal in force between Moscow and Washington. However, it’s due to expire in February, and negotiations to replace it remain deadlocked.

Now the US says it wants to extend New START by less than five years, and only by a memorandum of intent, rather than a binding treaty, according to Marshall Billingslea, US special presidential envoy for arms control, who spoke with the Russian daily Kommersant on Sunday.

In these final weeks of the 2020 presidential campaign, U.S. voters’ attention is being consumed by a maelstrom of crises — a merciless pandemic, a battered economy, a society ruptured by racist police violence and deadly structural inequalities, climate chaos and a fragile democracy.

Who has time to worry about nuclear war?

But just as warnings of a climate crisis and pandemics have been borne out, experts have long sounded the alarm about nuclear weapons, whether their use is triggered by impulse, accident or miscalculation.

The Trump administration is looking for a foreign policy victory ahead of the November election in the form of nuclear concessions from Russia. The fate of the last nuclear arms control treaty hangs in the balance as the administration is leveraging its renewal to be tough on Moscow.

The New START limits the number of warheads each signatory can have deployed and includes a verification regime, and is set to expire in February 2021. Arms control talks between Washington and Moscow have been ongoing for months.

Moscow has repeatedly offered to extend the New START for five years without preconditions, as the treaty allows, but the US has so far rejected that offer. According to a report from CNN, the Trump administration has assessed that Russia is “desperate” to renew the New START and that they will be willing to make concessions to hold up the treaty.

Trump Administration officials have been saying this for weeks, but on Friday reiterated their intentions to try to enforce a UN Security Council resolution that includes broad sanctions against Iran. Officials say they expect every nation to comply.

The glaring problem with this is that the resolution doesn’t exist, at least not as an active resolution the US wants. The P5+1 nuclear deal gave the US the authority to reimpose sanctions on Iran, but the US had withdrawn from that pact years ago. Though the Trump Administration argued that didn’t matter, the UN has virtually unanimously rejected their interpretation, and rejected the UN Security Council resolution. The US believes the resolution becomes active Sunday, but the reality is it just doesn’t exist legally.

Current nuclear war plans are among any nuclear-armed military’s most closely guarded secrets. Details of one such attack plan recently became available, however, revealing that the United States envisaged using 80 nuclear weapons in case of war with North Korea. The way this particular detail emerged is also pretty unusual — the associated passage appeared in U.S. journalist Bob Woodward’s book Rage, detailing President Trump’s administration, which was published this week.

During the early 1950s War on Korea the U.S. used biological weapons against North Korea and China. Bombs designed to spread leaflets were filled with plague infested rats and dropped on Korean towns. Various infecting insects were released. Leaflets were contaminated with small pox and then distributed. Several local epidemics were caused by these attacks.

The program was a continuation of one which a special unit of the Imperial Japanese Army had developed during the second world war. Unit 731 and its leaders were not indicted for the war crimes they had committed during the war but integrated into the U.S. biological warfare program.

It is the belief held by top officials within the U.S. military industrial complex that their ideology of appropriate morality is to prevail and that one must use these mind-over-matter techniques to achieve the ultimate goal, “the power to manipulate reality”, that global dominance can be achieved without wiping out the world.

A PAKISTANI minister has threatened India with a nuclear attack in "the bloody last war" and says only Muslims will survive.

Sheikh Rashid made the threat of nuclear war, claiming that Pakistan has very precise weapons which are “small and perfect” and are able to target specific regions.

On Saturday we reported that Dr. Li-Meng Yan - a Chinese virologist (MD, PhD) who fled the country, leaving her job at a prestigious Hong Kong university - appeared last week on British television where she claimed SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes COVID-19, was created by Chinese scientists in a lab.

In the past few months, the Black Sea is a lot less quiet than it ought to be. A mostly land-locked sea with decades of treaties designed to keep interlopers from sending warships into the area willy-nilly, the source of tension is in the skies, with U.S. planes showing up just outside of Russian airspace. There have been times where such interceptions are reported twice or even thrice a week, usually with Russian Su-27 fight jets intercepting U.S. Navy surveillance planes that were moving to the outskirts of Russia’s airspace.

This culminated at the end of August, with an overflight by U.S. strategic bombers of the entire NATO alliance. Nominally a show of solidarity, it quickly became provocation when one of the bombers, a nuclear-capable B-52, made a beeline for the Black Sea, and headed for Russian airspace. An interception followed, and the usual U.S. complaining about how “unprofessional” that was. An incident with spy planes happened at the same time.

Danielle Stephens ran her fingers down a long list of her relatives' names and sighed.

All of them had been diagnosed with cancer. Most of them had died, many before they were 55.

Like Stephens, 81, they had all spent their lives in Kingman, Arizona, where during the Cold War they often watched the early morning sky lit up by orange flashes from atomic bombs detonated at a government testing site in the Nevada desert less than 150 miles north of the city.

"Back then, no one thought the tests were dangerous," said Stephens, who ran a cattle ranch with her husband.

Taiwanese warplanes intercepted Chinese planes and chased them off.

With military tensions surrounding Taiwan already on the rise, the island decided this would be a good time to conduct a series of missile tests from several areas. This sparked an immediate reaction from China, in the form of multi-role fighter jets.

The Defense Ministry reported the planes entered Taiwanese airspace early Wednesday, but that Taiwanese planes intercepted them and chased them back out of the area. China sent Su-30 and J-10 fighters. No serious incidents were reported.

Taiwanese officials condemned the “unilateral actions,” and tried to link them to President Tsai’s call for a coalition of democracies to defend freedom in the region. It seems clear, however, that the missile tests precipitated the reaction from China.

While Sino-US relations are set to dominate the Southeast Asia summit on Wednesday, foreign ministers of ten Southeast Asian countries could discuss the recent North Korean ballistic missile activity that suggests a launch could be nearing.

New commercial satellite imagery of North Korea's Sinpo South Shipyard, first revealed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), shows the rogue nation could be preparing to test-fire a Pukguksong-3 submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) from a submersible test stand barge.

CSIS wrote, "activity is also noted around the static test stand on the south side of the Sinpo South Shipyard where vehicles or equipment appear to be positioned around the rail-mounted service stand and test stand strong arm (used to raise a launch tube or missile into the vertical position for testing). Similar activity has been seen in the past, both for maintenance and before ejections tests."

Defense firm Northrop Grumman has announced it has landed a major defense contract to lead in developing America's Ground Based Strategic Deterrent program.

It won a whopping $13.3 billion Air Force contract to build the Pentagon's next-generation intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), crucial in nuclear deterrence.

A Northrop Grumman press release said that a team nationwide that will include over 10,000 engineers, scientists and technicians will spend eight-and-a-half years building the new missile, with an expected operational goal of 2029.

Both Congressional Democrats as well as arms control groups have remained fierce critics. Former Defense Secretary William Perry said in a statement in association with the nuclear nonproliferation group Ploughshares Fund, subsequently cited in The Hill, “The highest probability of starting a nuclear war is a mistaken launch caused by a false alarm and a rushed decision to launch nuclear-armed ICBMs.”

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has partnered with an Israeli-based startup, called Xtend, to pilot test the Skylord drone, initially developed for the gaming world, which would be used as a drone interception system on the modern battlefield.

The Skylord drone is small and extremely fast and uses a net to disable small enemy drones. Skylord is equipped with a camera and automatic tracking software. The operator can control the drone via virtual reality and augmented reality glasses.

"Using an augmented reality (A.R.) device and single-handed controller, a military operator may employ the ... system to control the drone and perform complex tasks remotely, with great ease and precision. Its interface enables the operator to immerse themselves or 'step into' a remote reality and engage targets effectively yet safely," according to a statement from Xtend.

A clandestine Saudi nuclear programme, revealed by whistle-blowers, has been confirmed by satellite images showing a large compound, in a suspicious location in the middle of the desert, a checkpoint, towering security fences, a big building about 150 feet on a side and pools for the collection of uranium waste; a typical blueprint for yellow-cake mills.

In one of its latest reports, The Wall Street Journal, has uncovered a facility constructed in a remote area in Saudi Arabia for extracting uranium yellow-cake from uranium ore. Ironically, the facility is located near a solar-panel production area.

Such undeclared nuclear capabilities in the hands of the KSA are extremely worrying, in light of the abysmal Saudi human rights record, the last thing anyone would wish for is a nuclear armed KSA.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has defended Washington’s arms sales to Saudi Arabia after a watchdog report said the State Department failed to “fully assess” the risk of civilian deaths in war-torn Yemen.

Pompeo said on Wednesday that his department “did everything by the book” in regards to arms sales to Riyadh in May 2019.

“I am proud of the work that my team did. We got a really good outcome. We prevented the loss of lives,” he claimed.

News / Foreign Policy
US Secretary of State Pompeo defends Saudi arms sales after damning watchdog report on Yemen
Thursday, 13 August 2020 9:24 AM [ Last Update: Thursday, 13 August 2020 11:05 AM ]
US Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) (L) talks with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) during a rally with fellow Democrats before voting on H.R. 1, or the People Act, on the East Steps of the US Capitol on March 08, 2019 in Washington, DC. (AFP photo)

A new study for the US Air Force argues that a large-scale adversarial drone swarm attack could be classified as a "weapon of mass destruction" (WMD), a term commonly used to describe chemical, biological, or radioactive weapon capable of causing widespread death and destruction, reported Intelligent Aerospace.

Zachary Kallenborn, a senior consultant at ABS Group, specializing in drone swarms, WMD terrorism, and WMD warfare, authored the report for the Air Force Center for Strategic Deterrence Studies at Air University Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama where he makes the case that some weaponized drone swarm attacks could be viewed as a WMD:

"Drone swarms can also serve in traditional WMD roles. They would be highly effective as mass-casualty weapons, especially against soft targets," writes Kallenborn.

Drone swarming technology, one that is deployed in squadrons, able to autonomously operate in a pack, is the future of warfare on the modern battlefield.

Iran has urged the international community to pressure the Israeli regime into joining the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Deputy Representative of the Islamic Republic to the United Nations Es’haq Al-e Habib says the international community must force Tel Aviv to join the NPT and allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to access its nuclear facilities considering the Israeli regime's destructive role in the region.

Addressing a virtual meeting on the anniversary of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) on Thursday, Al-e Habib stressed that the destructive role of the United States and Israel has prevented the realization of a Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Free Zone in the Middle East.

In what is a turn-up for the books, a senior voice of the Catholic Church made something of an impression this month that did not incite scandal, hot rage, or the commencement of an investigation. It did, however, agitate a few editors. Archbishop John C. Wester of San Fe, in speaking at the online Hiroshima Day vigil, had put up his hand to defy the validity and morality of nuclear weapons and, along with them, the idea of nuclear deterrence. One of the organisers of the event, the veteran peace activist Rev. John Dear, claimed it had “never happened before.”

Dear had a point. There has been a shift within Catholic ranks urged along by Pope Francis on that most fatuous of strategic doctrines, nuclear deterrence. Before the United Nations General Assembly in June 1982, Pope John Paul II chose to argue that nuclear “‘deterrence’ based on balance, certainly not as an end in itself but as a step on the way toward a progressive disarmament, may still be judged morally acceptable.”

“I fear Biden will choose war again,” Paul asserted. “He supported war in Serbia, Syria, Libya. Joe Biden will continue to spill our blood and treasure. President Trump will bring our heroes home.”

“If you hate war like I hate war, if you want us to quit sending $50 billion every year to Afghanistan to build their roads and bridges instead of building them here at home, you need to support President Trump for another term,” said Paul, who has long been a fierce critic of former President Obama's foreign policy, including overt intervention in Libya, and covert action toward destabilizing Syria.

The sites in question are a pair of sites that the IAEA has claimed might have been nuclear sites, based on Israeli allegations and US backing of Israeli allegations. The US has pushed the IAEA to investigate the sites.

Iran did grant the IAEA access before, and it didn’t find anything definitive one way or another. They’ve kept asking for extra visits, even though Iran insisted neither was relevant to their nuclear program, and that letting them just keep visiting keeps it unresolved forever.

This puts things in an endless loop, where the US will ensure the IAEA keeps saying the issue is open, and Iran can’t resolve the matter outright, and has to just keep responding or be accused of a coverup.

When the Trump administration withheld billions of dollars in security aid to Pakistan in 2018, the logic then was that the Pakistani military would be forced to form greater ties with the US and surrounding allies to reclaim lost aid.

Fast forward today, the new reality, Pakistan abandoned the West and its allies for China.

Pakistan quickly bolstered ties with China via billions of dollars in Belt and Road projects over the last two years. China has also provided the Pakistani military with aircraft, weaponry, and other advanced hardware. The cooperation between both countries has taken another giant leap as China just delivered the first of four "most advanced" warships to the Pakistani Navy, a move that will clearly upset India and the US.

Following reports that this is a specific concern of Israel, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says he believes it is a “real risk” that Saudi Arabia will get nukes, and that the US views it as a “top priority” to try to prevent the Saudis from getting such arms.

Recent reports, all centering on the Israeli narrative, claim the Saudis are processing yellowcake uranium, and that they are getting secret help from China that could lead to the acquisition of nuclear arms in the future.

This is an unusual place for the administration to be in, as they general support arming the Saudis to the teeth, and Pompeo has repeatedly gone to bat for the idea that the Saudis need more arms for their “emergency” state. Those are US-made arms, of course.

Israel concerned Saudis might get nuclear arms with 'China's help'

Following reports that this is a specific concern of Israel, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says he believes it is a “real risk” that Saudi Arabia will get nukes, and that the US views it as a “top priority” to try to prevent the Saudis from getting such arms.

Recent reports, all centering on the Israeli narrative, claim the Saudis are processing yellowcake uranium, and that they are getting secret help from China that could lead to the acquisition of nuclear arms in the future.

This is an unusual place for the administration to be in, as they general support arming the Saudis to the teeth, and Pompeo has repeatedly gone to bat for the idea that the Saudis need more arms for their “emergency” state. Those are US-made arms, of course.

A June memo noted the OBIGGS system, once believed to be fixed, is continuing to turn up manufacturing flaws that reduce F-35 manufacturer Lockheed Martin’s confidence that the plane can weather a direct lightning hit without blowing up.

“The F-35B as a composite type aircraft does not provide inherent passive lightning protection,” the US Marine Corps (USMC) said in 2018, when Marine Corps Times reported the service was buying 14 LBA Technology lightning rods to protect F-35Bs at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Japan.
"To be clear, lightning protection is widely considered a best practice for all flight line operations and is an essential safeguard for all aircraft, not just the F-35,” USMC spokesperson Capt. Christopher Harrison told the publication. “Procuring portable lightning rods simply provides a reliable, cost-effective precautionary measure to protect the aircraft when they are located elsewhere on the flight line.”

Update: Adding fuel to the fire that Coughlin describes below, Global Times Editor Hu Xijin tweeted the following earlier today:

The more US aircraft carriers come to the South China Sea and exert pressure on China, the more it will prompt the PLA to develop complete and reliable methods against them. Once a war begins, these aircraft carriers are more likely to become vulnerable targets.

Authored by Con Coughlin via The Gatestone Institute,

China's decision to launch a fresh round of military exercises close to the disputed territory of Taiwan demonstrates that Beijing's communist rulers have little intention of backing down in their increasingly provocative confrontation with America and its allies.

73 years ago, at 11:02 am on August 9th, 1945, an all-Christian bomber crew dropped a plutonium bomb, on Nagasaki, Japan. That bomb was the second and last atomic weapon that had as its target a civilian city. Somewhat ironically, as will be elaborated upon later in this essay, Nagasaki was the most Christian city in Japan and ground zero was the largest cathedral in the Orient.

These baptized and confirmed airmen did their job efficiently, and they accomplished the mission with military pride. There was no way that the crew could not have known that what they were participating in met the definition of an international war crime (according to the Nuremberg Principles that were very soon to be used to justify the execution of many German Nazis).

In retaliation for Washington slapping sanctions on Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam, along with several mainland officials, China on Monday has slapped sanctions on ten American lawmakers - all Republicans - over their support for the Trump Administration's decision to strip Hong Kong of its "special status" and America's hectoring of Chinese (and HK) officials over their support for the new Beijing-imposed national security law.

Critics, including the US, UK and most western Democracies, have accused Beijing of willfully violating international law by imposing these "illegal" changes to the HK Basic Law, a UN-registered international treaty. Now, Beijing is accusing the US of foreign meddling in Hong Kong.

Angry Lebanese plan major protest on Saturday, one day before team investigating explosion reports to cabinet.

Dozens of bags of fireworks were stored in the same hangar as thousands of tonnes of ammonium nitrate at Beirut’s port and may have been a decisive factor in igniting the explosive chemical compound that fuelled Tuesday’s huge explosion, a former port worker and other sources have told the Guardian.

As angry Lebanese plan a major protest in central Beirut on Saturday, scrutiny has focused on how 2,750 tonnes of the dangerous material could have been stored so close to residential neighbourhoods for years – despite repeated warnings of the risk it posed.

A former port worker, Yusuf Shehadi, told the Guardian he had been instructed by the Lebanese military to house the chemicals in warehouse 12 at the port despite repeated protests by other government departments.

Russia has deployed an advanced S-300 air defense system to Libya to support the forces of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar against the Turkish military and its proxies, local media reported on August 5.

According to photos surfacing online, the supposed S-300 system is deployed near the town of Ras Lanuf, a key oil export port controlled by the Libyan National Army (LNA). The town is located more than 200km away from the port city of Sirte, which the LNA is defending against Turkish-led forces.

The circulating photos supposedly show a 96L6E Cheese Board radar and a transporter erector launcher (TEL) similar to those used in S-300 and S-400 air-defense systems. This 3D early-warning and acquisition radar has a range of 300 km and can track up to 100 targets simultaneously.

China has delivered six military drones to Serbia after the Balkan country moved to purchase them in a controversial deal a year ago which has put NATO on edge.

Though Serbia has an official policy of military neutrality vis-a-vis NATO, there's been increased cooperation over the past few years. However, both the Chinese drone acquirement and Present's Aleksandar Vucic recently signaling he'd like to acquire the S-400 anti-air defense system from Russia has caused Washington to threaten sanctions.

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.

There hadn’t been much word out of last week’s US-Russia nuclear talks in Vienna, but Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters Wednesday that the two sides are working together and have made progress, though he continued to say he believes Chinese involvement is necessary to move forward.

China has been a stumbling block in the talks for months, as President Trump has insisted any new deals include limits on China, while China isn’t interested in getting involved in talks. To be fair, US and Russian nuclear arsenal size are many times that of China’s and limitations don’t make much sense in that context.

If anything gets China involved, it would be the Pentagon’s call for sea-launched nuclear arms, something China has objected to. At the same time, it’s not clear what China can offer in trade for limiting US first-strike capabilities.

There is a need to rule out the possibility of a nuclear war, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in a message to the participants of a memorial ceremony in Hiroshima on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombing.

When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting for a bank to open.
At a quarter past eight on the morning of August 6, 1945, she and her silhouette were burned into the granite.

I stared at the shadow for an hour or more, then I walked down to the river where the survivors still lived in shanties.

I met a man called Yukio, whose chest was etched with the pattern of the shirt he was wearing when the atomic bomb was dropped.

He described a huge flash over the city, "a bluish light, something like an electrical short," after which wind blew like a tornado and black rain fell. "I was thrown on the ground and noticed only the stalks of my flowers were left. Everything was still and quiet, and when I got up, there were people naked, not saying anything. Some of them had no skin or hair. I was certain I was dead."

OURCE: ERIC ZUESSE
The great investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald gave an hour-long lecture on how America’s billionaires control the U.S. Government, and here is an edited summary of its opening twenty minutes, with key quotations and assertions from its opening — and then its broader context will be discussed briefly:

“How Congress Maintains Endless War – System Update with Glenn Greenwald” - The Intercept, 9 July 2020

2:45: There is “this huge cleavage between how members of Congress present themselves, their imagery and rhetoric and branding, what they present to the voters, on the one hand, and the reality of what they do in the bowels of Congress and the underbelly of Congressional proceedings, on the other. Most of the constituents back in their home districts have no idea what it is that the people they’ve voted for have been doing, and this gap between belief and reality is enormous.”

Today, an unprecedented campaign of propaganda is shooing us all off like rabbits. We are not meant to question the daily torrent of anti-Chinese rhetoric, which is rapidly overtaking the torrent of anti-Russia rhetoric. Anything Chinese is bad, anathema, a threat: Wuhan …. Huawei. How confusing it is when “our” most reviled leader says so.

The current phase of this campaign began not with Trump but with Barack Obama, who in 2011 flew to Australia to declare the greatest build-up of US naval forces in the Asia-Pacific region since World War Two. Suddenly, China was a “threat”. This was nonsense, of course. What was threatened was America’s unchallenged psychopathic view of itself as the richest, the most successful, the most “indispensable” nation.

While on a research trip to the Iraqi city of Basra in 1996, environmental engineer Souad Al-Azzawi encountered a mother taking care of three young children, all of them sick and unable to move on their own. With no idea why her children were ill, the mother hoped Al-Azzawi had come to help her family. Unfortunately, there was little Al-Azzawi—or anyone else—could do.

As the director of the doctoral program in environmental engineering at the University of Baghdad, Al-Azzawi had been researching radioactive contamination in Basra for years. She would go on to publish studies showing that cases of leukemia in children in Basra increased by 60 percent between 1990 and 1997, and that the number of children born with severe birth defects increased by a factor of three.

In a 227-179 vote Monday, the House passed an amendment to the upcoming National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) specifically forbidding any spending to carry out a nuclear weapons test. President Trump is reportedly keen to conduct such a test.

The vote passed heavily on party lines, and will set up a fight to reconcile this NDAA with the Senate version, as the Senate’s version has an amendment from Sen. Cotton (R-AK) that sets aside $10 million specially to reduce the time required to conduct the test.

The US hasn’t conducted a test in decades, but President Trump sees a quick test as leverage to try to get his way on nuclear arms limitation talks, which have been stalled on US demands that China agree to participate.

A nuclear test is likely to fuel a strong international backlash, and provoke other nations to test. It will also make it difficult for the US to criticize other nations for their own nuclear development, when they are flagrantly ignoring international norms.

The UK needs to rethink its priorities in light of the economic destruction wrought by the Covid-19 pandemic. It can no longer afford to play in the big league by remaining a nuclear power.

Coronavirus has given the global economy a real kick in the teeth, with many countries seeing large swathes of their national economies grind to a halt. Total losses will reportedly amount to $12 trillion this year, equivalent to a five percent decline of the global economy.

The UK government has already spent an extra £190 billion since the start of the pandemic, well in excess of the nation’s entire annual healthcare budget, and it is believed that expenditure over the course of the current financial year (April 2020-April 2021) will amount to around £300 billion.

In order to eliminate the nuclear threats from the US, the DPRK government has made all possible efforts, either through dialogue or in resort to the international law, but all ended in a vain effort…. The only option left was to counter nuke with nuke.

Does this statement made by the North Korean government sound like a threat to launch a nuclear strike on the US?

When one reads this brief snippet taken from a 5,500 word report carefully, it’s obvious that this is not a threat to launch a nuclear strike, but an explanation of the rationale behind North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

In the early part of 2020, the USS Tennessee ballistic missile submarine quietly set out to sea in the Atlantic Ocean on a historic deterrent patrol. In the past, this submarine could launch ballistic missiles armed with the W76-1 warhead (a 90 kiloton yield) or the W88 warhead (a 455 kiloton yield). Now the Ohio-class submarines carry at least one W76-2 warhead with a yield of about five to eight kilotons.

The low-yield nuclear warhead allegedly provides the U.S. with a needed capability for deterring the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons by Russia, a prospect considered more likely under its current nuclear doctrine. Proponents claim these new weapons are prompt, useable, and capable of circumventing Russia’s air defenses.

China says a move by the United States to place Chinese flags at a table of nuclear arms control negotiations with Russia was an act of “performance art.”

China had said it would not be participating in the talks because the US, under President Donald Trump, had unilaterally withdrawn from international treaty after international treaty.

The negotiations in question were on the replacement of New START, a nuclear arms treaty between the US and Russia that would expire next February and that has nothing to do with China. Washington had invited Beijing nevertheless and had been planning to portray the Chinese government’s refusal to participate as a sign of Beijing’s reluctance to take part in any arms control treaty.

The Pentagon’s budget is not large enough to buy new nuclear weapons and conventional forces simultaneously, the U.S. Air Force’s top general said Wednesday.

Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Goldfein gave a blunt assessment of the Pentagon’s growing list of bills amid a growing US deficit, on Wednesday, suggesting nuclear expenses have grown so great they may require a separate account of their own.

“I think a debate is that this will be the first time that the nation has tried to simultaneously modernize the nuclear enterprise while it’s trying to modernize an aging conventional enterprise,” Goldfein said during a Brookings Institution appearance. “The current budget does not allow you to do both.”

The India-China row in the disputed Ladakh border region isn't over, despite military leaders on both sides last week announcing a cooling and deescalation after the June 15 Galwan Valley clash which left 20 Indian troops dead and an untold number of PLA casualties.

Both sides continue military build-up in the area, despite delegations planning to meet for a third time on Tuesday to attempt a diplomatic way forward and reestablish escalation avoidance mechanisms.

China reportedly has tank and heavy artillery units there, based on satellite images which grabbed headlines days ago, while by the weekend India reportedly deployed quick reaction surface-to-air missile defense systems known as the Akash anti-air system into the northern Himalayan region.

A group of high-ranking Congress members is launching an investigation into Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jet program after being told U.S. military had to spend $300 million in the last five years on defective and missing parts.

The trillion-dollar F-35 program is just getting over many of the problems that plagued its early design and production and has now hit on delivery targets three years in a row and recently announced it had lowered the per-plane cost to $77.9 million.

But an investigation by the Department of Defense’s Inspector General said last year the office overseeing the spare parts program “did not receive ... F\u201135 spare parts in accordance with contract requirements and paid performance incentive fees on the sustainment contracts based on inflated and unverified F\u201135A aircraft availability hours.”

The problem with spare parts will continue to cost the military about $55 million a year, the report said.

Israel is already the US’s closest ally in the Middle East, with Washington committing to provide Tel Aviv with $38 billion in military aid over ten years in 2016. Israel became a major US non-NATO ally in 1987, making it eligible to receive the latest US military hardware as it became available.

Bipartisan groups of lawmakers in both the House and Senate are working on legislation which would further expand US-Israeli defence cooperation to include a ‘US-Israel Operations-Technology Working Group’.

With an already shattered medical infrastructure due to the five-year US-Saudi siege, Covid-19 has rapidly spread through Yemen. The Arab country lacks the basic necessities for preventative measures like clean water, and a population facing malnourishment is especially vulnerable to the disease. A recent uptick in Saudi bombing might put a country already on the brink of collapse over the edge.

Last week, Saudi warplanes pounded Yemen’s capital Sanaa, in what residents called the worst airstrikes they have seen since the first years of the war. Seventy-seven airstrikes hit several provinces in north Yemen within 24 hours. According to the Houthi’s health ministry and NGOs on the ground, one of the strikes hit a car traveling in the Sadaa province and killed 13 civilians, including four children.

India and Pakistan have already fought two wars since independence that were partially or completely over the sovereignty of the territory. The unmanned drone, which was reportedly carrying weaponry, was shot down by India’s Border Security Force (BSF) in Kathua district near the Pansar border outpost.

In a statement the BSF said: “Alert troops of BSF shot down a Pakistani Hexa copter drone carrying 01 M4 carbine machine (US Made), 02 filled magazines (60 Rds), 07 Chinese grenades.”

According to the Press Trust of India the drone was spotted by an Indian patrol at 12.40am BST.

It was allegedly then shot down 250 meters inside the Indian side of the border.

The BSF has launched an investigation to find out who the arms being carried by the drone were intended for.

Authored by Peter Pry, op-ed via The Hill,

The coronavirus pandemic has exposed dangerous weaknesses in U.S. planning and preparation for civil defense protection and recovery, and those weaknesses surely have been noticed by our potential enemies: China, Russia, North Korea, Iran and international terrorists.

The U.S. spent decades, and billions of dollars, supposedly preparing for biological warfare. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the departments of Defense and Homeland Security are supposed to have contingency plans to protect the American people from lethal biological weapons such as anthrax and genetically engineered smallpox, which could have mortality rates of over 90 percent.

China and Russia have rebuked the International Atomic Energy Agency for giving in to US "bullying" as the IAEA's board of governor on Friday passed a resolution critical of Iran for the first time since 2012.

The resolution, submitted by France, Britain and Germany, comes at a time when the United States is working to extend an arms embargo against Iran.

Diplomats attending the Friday meeting in Vienna were cited as saying that the resolution called on Iran to allow access to two former sites mentioned in two IAEA reports.

Iranian officials have said Tehran has responded to all outstanding questions about its nuclear activities and the IAEA has repeatedly confirmed it. The new questions, they say, have been raised based on information fabricated by Israel.

Previously is was only in the realm of speculation whether the White House would actually move forward with recent confirmed "discussions" over resumption of live nuclear testing, which hasn't been done in nearly thirty years, since the close of the Cold War and implementation of arms reduction treaties.

But now the Senate Armed Services Committee has just brought the US closer to resumption of testing, and appears to be moving forward with giving President Trump the option of pulling the trigger if the decision is made.

On Monday multiple reports confirmed that under an amendment by hawkish Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, $10 million is to be set aside in preparation for live nuclear testing.

SOURCE: ZEROHEDGE
The CIA's Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI) was so busy making cyber weapons - including tools to crack into smartphones, hijack smart TVs, or make it look like a foreign adversary hacked someone - that they internal security become "woefully lax," allowing a CIA employee to steal up to 34 terabytes of information later published by WikiLeaks in the spring of 2017.

An airstrike from the US-backed Saudi-led coalition hit a vehicle carrying civilians in north Yemen on Monday. The airstrike killed 13 people, including four children. The same day, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres removed the Saudi coalition from a global list of parties who have harmed children in conflicts.

The international humanitarian group Save the Children said the victims were on their way home from a local market when the vehicle was suddenly bombed. The Houthi’s Health Ministry identified 11 of the victims, which included one woman and four children, ages 12-14.

The coalition often targets civilian infrastructure, which is why Guterres’s move to remove them from the “blacklist” drew sharp condemnation from human rights groups. Saudi warplanes have hit schools, hospitals, water treatment plants, markets, weddings, and other civilian targets.

Israel may have increased its nuclear stockpile from 80 warheads in 2019 to 90 in 2020, according to a new report by a leading global arms watchdog.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) said in its annual report on Monday that Israel, one of the world's nine nuclear powers, could be in possession of up to 90 nuclear warheads.

The watchdog said that the true number could be higher as Israel does not officially comment on its nuclear capabilities.

"There is significant uncertainty about the size of Israel's nuclear arsenal and its warhead capabilities," it said.

"Israel continues to maintain its long-standing policy of nuclear opacity: it neither officially confirms nor denies that it possesses nuclear weapons."

The Defense Department is sending millions of dollars to keep companies afloat, and more deals are expected.

The Pentagon has begun to bail out U.S. companies that have seen large parts of their business dry up amid the coronavirus pandemic, in a bid to make sure they can still build weapons.

On Wednesday, officials announced that five mid-tier defense companies had received a total of $135 million to “help sustain defense-critical workforce capabilities in body armor, aircraft manufacturing, and shipbuilding,” according to a Defense Department statement.“These actions will help to retain critical workforce capabilities throughout the disruption caused by COVID-19 and to restore some jobs lost because of the pandemic,” Lt. Col. Mike Andrews, a Defense Department spokesman, said in the statement.

Longterm harm caused by US policies at home and abroad are far removed from a Panglossian best of all possible worlds view.

What’s going on has echoes of Orwell’s dystopian 1984.

Both right wings of the US war party wage forever wars against invented enemies.

Mass surveillance, controlling the message, and countering resistance are what police state rule is all about, how the US operates domestically, what it wants imposed on other nations worldwide.

The disparity between super-wealth and growing poverty in the US is greater than any time since the 19th century gilded age.

The nation’s economic policy elevates all yachts to unprecedented levels while protracted main street Depression harms ordinary Americans with nothing ongoing to change things.

Countless millions of US households face unacceptable choices between paying rent or servicing mortgages, seeking increasingly unaffordable medical care when needed, heating homes in winter, and feeding family members.

SOURCE: DEFENSE ONE
The Pentagon will send weapons and other military aid worth $250 million to Ukraine as part of the four-year-old Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, or USAI, defense officials announced Thursday.

The aid includes counter-artillery radars, air surveillance systems, other tactical equipment, military medical treatment, cyber defenses, “strategic communications,” according to a Thursday release by the Pentagon. Intended to help Ukraine fight the Russia-backed forces that have occupied part of the country’s eastern region since 2014, the aid aims to “enhance Ukraine’s defensive lethal capabilities and situational awareness in the maritime domain” and “counter Russian cyber offensive operations and misinformation.”

As tensions rise between China and the US, and the race for hypersonic weapons heats up, the Chinese Communist Party's daily tabloid newspaper Global Times is reporting "record-breaking progress" has been made in scramjet technology to power its hypersonic weapons.

Researchers at the Institute of Mechanics under the Chinese Academy of Science developed and tested new scramjet technology that resulted in a ground test that lasted 600 seconds (considered a "technological breakthrough"). Now, this far outpaced the world record of 210 seconds set by Boeing's X-51 Waverider using experimental scramjet technology to achieve hypersonic flight.

A scramjet (supersonic-combustion ramjet) is a ramjet engine in which the airflow through the engine remains supersonic. Global Times notes that developing such an engine that can operate for an extended period remains challenging because advanced heat resistant materials and cooling of the engine are needed for March 5 (>3,800 mph).

With the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s passage of the United States-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act of 2020 last week, the current Congress is now poised to enact with little transparency its most far-reaching bill related to Israel at the height of a national public health emergency.

This MOU, pledging a record-breaking $38 billion for Israel between 2019 and 2028, solidified President Obama’s legacy as the president most munificent to Israel.

S.3176 would authorize $3.3 billion annually in FMF not as a ceiling, as negotiated by the Obama administration, but as a floor. The bill seeks to do so surreptitiously by amending existing statutory authorization for military aid to Israel by replacing an amount “equal to” with “not less than” $3.3 billion annually.

Israel’s Dirty Little Secret
In other words, if this bill were to become law, then Israel could receive even more weapons at US taxpayer expense than envisaged under Obama’s MOU.

Washington has consistently objected to NATO-member Turkey acquiring the Russian-made S-400 missile systems, claiming they were incompatible with security standards of the alliance and might compromise the operations of the new US fifth-generation F-35 fighter jets.

Turkey is committed “in principle” to its earlier announced plans to activate the Russian-made S-400 missile defence systems acquired last year, despite procrastination due to a spate of issues, Turkish Presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin was quoted as saying by France 24 on Monday.

Speaking in an interview, the spokesperson referred to the COVID-19 pandemic as having delayed the matter of activation, slated originally for April, and reiterated the country’s intention to proceed with the move.

A live nuclear test could be arranged within “months” if requested by the president, a top defense department nuclear official said Tuesday, following a report that the Trump administration has discussed the first American nuclear test in decades.

However, Drew Walter, performing the duties of deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear matters, stressed that there “has been no policy change” when it comes to avoiding live nuclear testing.

Over the weekend, the Washington Post reported that there have been high-level discussions around the possibility of doing a live nuclear test for the first time since 1992. Since that time, the United States has relied on simulations and non-explosive testing to assess the health and capabilities of the nuclear arsenal; the National Nuclear Security Administration, a semi-independent branch inside the Department of Energy, currently oversees that effort through its Stockpile Stewardship program.

Unveiling the flag for his new space force in the Oval Office on Friday, Donald Trump said the US was developing a “super duper missile” to outpace military rivals including Russia and China.

“We have no choice, we have to do it with the adversaries we have out there. We have, I call it the super duper missile and I heard the other night [it’s] 17 times faster than what they have right now,” the president said, sitting at the Resolute Desk.

“That’s right,” said the defense secretary, Mark Esper, standing to Trump’s right.

Trump unveils logo for Starfleet ... er, Space Force ... and Trekkers take to Twitter
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“You take the fastest missile we have right now,” Trump said. “You heard Russia has five times and China’s working on five or six times, we have one 17 times and it’s just got the go-ahead.”

Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, has indeed announced a hypersonic nuclear missile, meaning one that flies at five times the speed of sound (767mph) or faster.

A US Army facility in Kentucky announced earlier this week it had destroyed the last of the United States’ 8-inch artillery shells containing the nerve agent sarin. It is one of two such plants scheduled to destroy the entire stock of US chemical weapons before 2024.

On Tuesday, the Blue Grass Chemical Agent-Destruction Pilot Plant (BGCAPP) announced it had completed the project it began in January of destroying the US Army’s stock of GB, the NATO designation for the sarin gas poisonous nerve agent.

“We are one step closer to destruction of the chemical weapons stockpile in Kentucky and fulfilling our pledge to the nation and an international arms control treaty,” Michael S. Abaie, chief of the Program Executive Office, Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives (PEO ACWA), said in the Tuesday news release. “The performance at this facility has been incredible, and that’s aside from doing this work safely during a pandemic. We are all justifiably proud of this team.”

A scientist argues that the evidence for a “natural” origin for the virus is fabricated. Report: Claire Robinson

An anonymous scientist[1] has published a detailed article arguing that SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing the COVID-19 pandemic, is a genetically engineered lab creation. What’s more, the author argues that the particular bat coronavirus from which SARS-CoV-2 is claimed to have naturally emerged – dubbed RaTG13 – is a fabrication. In other words, the author says the “natural origin” for the virus was made up in a desperate attempt to let those responsible for the lab escape off the hook.

The world’s nuclear powers are increasingly pouring money into their atomic arsenals, a new report shows, with Washington leading the way. The US has also exited a major arms control treaty and deployed a new tactical weapon.
Nine nuclear-armed nations spent an estimated $72.9 billion on their 13,000-plus atomic weapons in 2019, according to a new paper by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). At $35.4 billion in spending, the US accounts for nearly half the global total, ICAN says.

However, ICAN pointed out, all this money and all these bombs have done nothing to protect any of these countries from Covid-19.

The United States has reportedly established a new military base in Syria’s oil-rich eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr after bringing in reinforcements to the war-torn Arab country.

The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) quoted reliable sources as saying on Friday that the new US base is located in Day al-Zawr’s al-Jazrat area.

The US-based monitoring group reported that more than 300 trucks, carrying ammunition, weapons, military and logistical supplies, had entered Syria over the past few days and that most of those trucks headed to al-Jazrat.

It further said the US forces are expanding their base in the al-Omar oil field in the eastern countryside of Dayr Al -Zawr.

Recently, it added, American soldiers and other US-led coalition troops had arrived at the base.

Washington runs several military bases in Syria, mainly in northern and eastern regions where the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are operating.