Jan. 17 (UPI) -- A military training exercise scheduled for this weekend could jam GPS signals in the Southeast and Caribbean, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

An FAA advisory warns pilots could experience "unreliable or unavailable GPS signal" during a training exercise scheduled for Jan. 16 through Jan. 24.

The U.S. Navy's Carrier Strike Group Four will be conducting GPS testing exercises off the coast of Georgia, causing likely disruptions as low as 50 feet above ground level within 207 miles of the test location -- and as high as 40,000 feet within 460 miles.

"The Global Positioning System (GPS) constellation is provided by the Department of Defense (DoD). Routine testing is conducted on the GPS," an FAA representative told Military Times. "The FAA issues advisories to inform operators that they may experience interference with or disruption of their GPS navigation systems in the vicinity of the testing."

Following successful tests, the US Army has decided to use the Israeli Spike missile on its attack helicopters until a domestic replacement can be produced.

The Spike Non-Line-of-Sight (NLOS) missile, made by Israel-based Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, will be temporarily appearing in US rotary wing arsenals, following a recent decision by an Army Requirements Oversight Council.

Brig. Gen. Wally Rugen, who heads the Army’s Vertical Lift Modernization team, made the announcement on Wednesday, Defense News reported. Rugen did not say how many Spike NLOS missiles would be procured.

The Army tested the Spike several times last year at its Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona as well as in Israel, Sputnik reported, settling on the weapon due to its range and maneuvering capabilities.

Russia’s defense budget is a small fraction of what the US spends for militarism and warmaking. Yet Russia’s super-weapons exceed the best in the West because of efficient and effective use of its resources.

Meeting with Russia’s Defense Ministry Board on Tuesday, Putin discussed Moscow’s military development and key objectives next year.

Ahead of the meeting, he “visited an exhibition of advanced Russian weapons and equipment.

Putin earlier said Russia will not engage in an arms race. It’ll use its resources effectively and efficiently for maximum bang for the buck, my words interpreting his.

He also stressed that, unlike the US and NATO, Russia abides by its treaty obligations.

“How are we able to…remain in the lead,” he asked? “By using our brains, by intellect, by a better work organization, by minimizing” waste, fraud and abuse, by focusing on achieving maximum defense capabilities against possible aggression.

Wikileaks has published shocking leaked documents from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in which they covered up a dissenting report that concluded chemical weapons were not used in the Syrian city of Duoma last year.

The latest release is the fourth batch of leaked documents that WikiLeaks has published from OPCW.

Moscow’s deployment of ‘Avangard’ hypersonic warheads means the US missile defense installations in Europe are now obsolete – and that Washington would have to spend a lot of money it doesn’t have in order to catch up.
Video released by the Russian defense ministry on Friday shows the hypersonic glider warheads being loaded onto silo-based missiles. For now, the Avangards will be mounted on the UR-100N (or SS-19 Stiletto, as NATO calls them) ballistic missiles, until the RS-28 Sarmat is ready to enter service.

Hypersonic weapons fly far faster than the speed of sound. Avangard is capable of reaching Mach 27 without losing control or disintegrating under heat and pressure. This means that the weapon can outmaneuver any defenses on its approach phase, rendering it “absolutely invulnerable to any air or missile defense system,” in the words of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

China has condemned the inauguration of the newest branch of the US military, the Space Force, describing its creation as a threat to peace that endangers global stabilit
y.
Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters on Monday that Beijing was "deeply concerned" and "resolutely opposed" to the Space Force, which received its first funding after US President Donald Trump signed the annual military budget last week.

The Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said Washington's new military branch sets a dangerous precedent for the militarization of outer space.

The specific US actions are a serious violation of the international consensus on the peaceful use of outer space, undermine global strategic balance and stability, and pose a direct threat to peace and security in outer space.

He called on the international community to "adopt a cautious and responsible" approach to space, in order to prevent it from becoming a conflict zone

Former Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev has urged President Donald Trump's administration to re-engage with Russia on landmark arms control treaties, warning that the collapse of Cold War-era nuclear weapon limits threatens global catastrophe.

The possibilities offered by this new technology are explained by the Defense Applications of 5G Network Technology, published by the Defense Science Board, a federal committee which provides scientific advice for the Pentagon –

“The emergence of 5G technology, now commercially available, offers the Department of Defense the opportunity to take advantage, at minimal cost, of the benefits of this system for its own operational requirements”.

In other words, the 5G commercial network, built and activated by private companies, will be used by the US armed forces at a much lower expenditure than that necessary if the network were to be set up with an exclusively military goal.

Medical authorities in al-Anbar province in Western Iraq report a sharp rise in the number of registered cases of cancer diagnosis as a result of the US military's use of banned munitions at the time of occupation.

"The radiation of prohibited ammunition used during the US occupation of Iraq is the most important cause for the heightened number of cancer patients in al-Anbar province," an oncologist in the province was quoted as saying by the Arabic-language Afaq news channel on Wednesday.

He noted that people in al-Anbar are facing different problems risen from the Americans' use of banned weapons and munitions, and said that cancer is a disease whose treatment is much costly, while people in the province cannot afford it, and even the few that could bear the huge expenses are facing shortage of cancer drugs.

The US troops used white phosphorus in the offensive in the Iraqi city of Falluja in 2004, the US said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that a global arms race is inevitable if the US and Russia do not agree to extend the ten-year Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which is due to expire in early 2021.
Speaking at a Q&A session with reporters in Moscow on Thursday, Putin said that Russia stands ready “to simply renew the existing New START agreement,” even if it happens as fast as by the end of this year.

They can send us the [agreement] tomorrow, or we can sign and send it to Washington. Let their designated official sign it too, including the president, if they’re ready to do so.

“But so far our proposals have been left unanswered” by the US, Putin stressed.

If the New START ceases to exist, nothing in the world will hold back an arms race. I believe this is bad.

SOURCE: RIGGED GAME
PAM MARTENS AND RUSS MARTENS OF WALL STREET ON PARADE.
One has to wonder how much money it would take for the New York Fed to throw at Wall Street before the New York Times reports to its readers on the biggest Wall Street bailout by the Fed since the financial crisis.

Last Thursday, December 12, the New York Fed announced that over the next month it would shower the trading houses (primary dealers) on Wall Street with a total of $2.93 trillion in short-term loans. The money is for a Wall Street liquidity crisis that has yet to be explained in credible terms to the American people and yet the New York Times does not appear to have an investigative reporter assigned to investigate what’s really going on just 11 years after those same trading houses blew themselves up in the biggest financial crash since the Great Depression and took the U.S. economy along for the ride.

The missile has a range of 18,000 kilometers, takeoff mass of 208.1 tons and a payload of 10 tons.

The Russian intercontinental ballistic missile Sarmat will have a wide variety of combat warheads, including the latest generation of hypersonic, according to the commander of the Strategic Missile Force of Russia, General Sergei Karakaev, reported the newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda.

Work is currently underway to prepare the main missile regiment for rearmament with these missile systems, the general said.

The US has torn up the INF nuclear treaty which prohibited land-based mid-range conventional and nuclear missiles. Russians expect the next step for the US is to bring mid-range nuclear missiles aimed at Russia to Europe as they did in the 1980s.

Putin has made it clear if that happens, the Russian response will not be simply to deploy its own land-based missiles aimed at European hosts of American missiles as was the case in the 1980s, but to also park such missiles under the waters of the Atlantic aimed at the US.

Scientists have for the first time registered and mapped the aftermath of underwater nuclear tests from the 1940s and 1950s, as they combed the so-called Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, Popular Mechanics reported citing the research revealed at a 2019 meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

Using advanced sonar, the team of researchers scanned the sea floor for evidence of the first two tests on the atoll, which were conducted as part of Operation Crossroads.
The first test, Able, was a 23 kiloton atomic bomb dropped from a B-29 bomber and set to explode at 1,500 to 2,000 feet.

The explosion was 50 percent more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Able sank five warships but according to scientists there is no distinct sign of the test on the seabed.

The day before, US Secretary of Defence Mark Esper praised the successful test of the INF-banned ground-based missile, noting that it had taken less than nine months, instead of the usual two years, to go from concept to launch.

Washington's recent ballistic missile test proves that the country used to prepare for tests of missiles banned under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty well ahead of withdrawing from the deal officially, the Chinese Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, said on Friday.

Authored by Tho Bishop via The Mises Institute,

This week saw the Washington Post published a bombshell report titled “The Afghanistan Papers,” highlighting the degree to which the American government lied to the public about the ongoing status of the war in Afghanistan. Within the thousands of pages, consisting of internal documents, interviews, and other never-before-released intel, is a vivid depiction of a Pentagon painfully aware of the need to keep from the public the true state of the conflict and the doubts, confusion, and desperation of decision-makers spanning almost 20 years of battle.

A week after North Korea resumed its "dotard" insults at President Trump and their ambassador to the United Nations said further denuclearization talks are no longer needed, Reuters reported Thursday via Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) that, even if denuclearization talks resumed between both countries, the Trump administration has nothing to offer:

North Korea's foreign ministry criticized the Trump administration for meeting with officials at the UN Security Council and suggested that it would be ready to respond to any corresponding measures that Washington imposes.

"The United States said about corresponding measure at the meeting, as we have said we have nothing to lose and we are ready to respond to any corresponding measure that the US chooses," said KCNA citing a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson.

Earlier, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Ankara will not abandon the Russian S-400 air defence systems in order to buy American Patriot anti-aircraft missile systems.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in a statement that Ankara may insist that the US leave Incirlik air base if Washington goes ahead with the sanctions it has threatened in response to Turkey's purchase of S-400 missiles.

"We will assess the worst-case scenario and make a decision. If the US imposes sanctions against Turkey, then the issue of the Incirlik and Kurecik bases may be on the agenda," Cavusoglu said.
The missile attack early warning radar, which is part of the NATO missile defence system in Europe, deployed in the Kurecik region of Malatya province in southeastern Turkey, was put into operation in early 2012. Its functioning is provided for by the US military.

The U.S. Navy and Air Force are teaming up to rapidly develop a network that can link together Air Force and Navy assets during battle, an effort the Navy’s top officer compared to the 1940s program to develop an atomic bomb.

Adm. Michael Gilday, the new Chief of Naval Operations, told an audience Thursday that in order to take on China, the Navy will have to spread out and rely on networked weapons and sensors distributed over a wide area. But doing that would rely on a network architecture that doesn’t yet exist.

To be the most effective force, the Navy acknowledges it must be able to connect with Air Force bombers and aircraft, leading the two services to an agreement to join forces.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday that Russia will not hesitate to respond to any new deployment of missiles by the United States.

"We will have a mirror reaction", Lavrov said. "Every step will have a Russian reaction," Lavrov said at a news conference in Rome with his Italian counterpart, speaking through an Italian interpreter.

Russia has proposed a moratorium on the deployment of short and intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe after the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) banning such a move formally ended in August.

Russian President Vladimir Putin offered Thursday to immediately extend the only remaining nuclear arms reduction pact with the United States, but a senior U.S. official said Washington wants a broader deal involving China.

Speaking at a meeting with military officials, Putin said that Russia has repeatedly offered the U.S. to extend the New START treaty that expires in 2021 but that it hasn’t heard back.

“Russia is ready to extend the New START treaty immediately, before the year’s end and without any preconditions,” he said.

SOURCE: CNN.COM
The US Navy on Monday awarded its most expensive shipbuilding contract ever, more than $22.2 billion worth of the world's most advanced submarines.

The massive contract for nine nuclear-powered, Virginia class attack submarines comes just months after the head of the US Navy in the Pacific warned of a massive Chinese naval buildup and his trouble in getting enough submarines to counter it.

The deal "marks the US Navy's latest response to China's growing military power and aggressive actions in the Western Pacific," said Carl Schuster, a former director of operations at the US Pacific Command's Joint Intelligence Center.

"The PLAN (Chinese Navy) is getting better and larger so the US Navy has to respond," he said. "It doesn't make China an enemy, but China's actions do bear watching."

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard in August 2019. (Flickr/Creative Commons/Gage Skidmore)
NOVEMBER 29, 2019|12:01 AM
DOUG BANDOW
The Democratic establishment is increasingly irritated. Representative Tulsi Gabbard, long-shot candidate for president, is attacking her own party for promoting the “deeply destructive” policy of “regime change wars.” Gabbard has even called Hillary Clinton “the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party.”

Senator Chris Murphy complained: “It’s a little hard to figure out what itch she’s trying to scratch in the Democratic Party right now.” Some conservatives seem equally confused. The Washington Examiner’s Eddie Scarry asked: “where is Tulsi distinguishing herself when it really matters?”

SOURCE: MIDDLE EAST MONITOR
The Israeli government is aiming to increase the volume of Israel’s defence exports, reported Globes, which has revealed the main points of the plan for the first time.

The project, being overseen by the Defence Ministry’s International Defence Cooperation Directorate (SIBAT) led by Brigadier General (Res.) Yair Kulas, will begin to be rolled out in early 2020.

According to Globes, the plan is based on “focused seminars for senior commanders in foreign armies”, Israeli military “assistance for promoting sales of Israeli weapons”, and “subsidising small and medium-sized defence companies seeking to sell arms around the world”.

Speaking this week, Kulas said that SIBAT favours a major expansion of agreements between countries, resulting in significant deals for the large defence companies, especially Elbit Systems, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and Rafael Advanced Defence Systems.

In her testimony, Plowshares defendant Clare Grady of the Ithaca, New York Catholic Worker community tried to explain to the jury the motivation and urgency of the group: US government is using nuclear weapons daily as a gun pointed at the head of the planet. But even as she spoke, she had a series of legal guns pointed at her own head. She and her fellow defendants had been threatened with contempt if they disobeyed Wood’s edict not to cite evidence or legal arguments that might result in acquittal. As law professor Francis Boyle warned before the trial: “This is a kangaroo court with a rubber stamp and a railroad all put together.”

SOURCE: ZERO HEDGE

China is again furious after the US sailed several warships through the heavily disputed waters in the South China Sea, military sources told Reuters. The move by the US has escalated tensions between both countries, already tense as the latest round of trade talks have fallen apart, and the signing of the phase one trade deal has likely been delayed.

SOURCE: MINT PRESS
The 9/11 Report states that “we have found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization [al-Qaeda].” The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has used that sentence numerous times defending itself against families of 9/11 victims that are attempting to sue them for financially supporting the 9/11 attacks. 9/11 family member, September Eleventh Advocate, and Jersey girl, Kristen Breitweiser addressed the issue here.

For a long time, the U.S. Government argued that since Saudi Arabia was not on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism, the 9/11 families couldn’t sue the Kingdom in a court of law. But in 2016, a bill called the “Justice Against Sponsors Of Terrorism Act (JASTA)” was passed allowing 9/11 families to sue, despite the formality. President Obama attempted to veto the bill but his decision was overridden by Congress.

A US military program dubbed ‘Insect Allies’ could be used as a biological weapon, a group of European scientists warns. The Pentagon’s research arm claims they are intended to defend crops, but doesn’t deny ‘dual-use’ potential.
Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology and the University of Freiburg in Germany, as well as the University of Montpellier, France, have published a critique of the program, dubbed “Insect Allies,” in the October 5 edition of Science.

They argue that “the knowledge to be gained from this program appears very limited in its capacity to enhance US agriculture or respond to national emergencies” and therefore the program “may be widely perceived as an effort to develop biological agents for hostile purposes and their means of delivery,” which would mean a breach of the Biological Weapons Convention.

US Defense Secretary Mark Esper warned during a speech on artificial intelligence at the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence public conference Tuesday (Nov. 05) that China is exporting a series of "next-generation drones" to countries in the Middle East, reported Flight Global.

"Beijing has made it abundantly clear that it intends to be the world leader in AI by 2030," Esper said. "While the US faces a mighty task in transitioning the world's most advanced military to new AI-enabled systems, China believes it can leapfrog our current technology and go straight to the next generation."

Middle East countries banned from purchasing advanced US drones due to a weapons embargo are increasingly gravitating towards Chinese defense manufacturers.

The US Navy’s inventory tracking issues recently reached a new level after around $126 million worth of aircraft parts needed for repairs were discovered in a warehouse Navy officials did not even know existed.

Undersecretary of the Navy Thomas Modly announced last week that Navy aircraft sidelined last year may have received necessary parts ahead of schedule following a Navy-wide audit that both identified and located the whereabouts of aircraft parts for the P-8 Poseidon, P-3 Orion and F-14 Tomcat.

"Not only did we not know that the parts existed, we didn't even know the warehouse existed," Modly said at the Military Reporters and Editors conference in Washington, DC, reported Military.com. The warehouse in question is located in Jacksonville, Florida.

Amid a heap of repairs, refuelings and overhauls, all six of the US Navy’s aircraft carriers assigned to the East Coast are in port at the same time. The Navy is pulling itself increasingly thin in an effort to accomodate the Pentagon’s program for “great power competition” with Russia and China.

As of this article’s publishing, not one of the US Navy’s carriers on the Atlantic coast is ready for deployment - all six are tied up dockside in Norfolk, Virginia. Earlier this year, several of the huge, 100,000-ton warships returned to Norfolk for a series of overhauls, but others have encountered unexpected problems.

The eyes of the world have become fixed on the estimated 50 B61 nuclear bombs stored at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. As the Turkish military operations in Syria strain relations with the U.S., the security of the bombs has become a potential concern and a certain geopolitical headache. One unidentified senior U.S. official expressed worry to The New York Times that the bombs are being “held hostage” by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Extreme caution is always warranted where nukes are concerned, but what is the actual risk of rogue nuclear bombs pose? How well guarded are they, and what could someone do if they got their hands on them?

Though it's as yet uncertain whether the Pentagon is actually going to execute the plan, Trump is mulling keeping a small US troop contingency in Syria in order to "secure the oil".

The president said at a cabinet meeting Monday: “I always said if you’re going in, keep the oil,” the WSJ reported. “We’ll work something out with the Kurds so that they have some money, so that they have some cash flow. Maybe we’ll get one of our big oil companies to go in and do it properly.”

In response, former special presidential anti-ISIL envoy Brett McGurk, who served under both the Obama and Trump administrations, stated the obvious: “Oil, like it or not, is owned by the Syrian state,” he said Monday. “Maybe there are new lawyers, but it was just illegal for an American company to go and seize and exploit these assets."

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
?
@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.