There are many indications that the United States and China are creeping towards a potential conflict in the South China Sea. When the motivations behind this war become clear the stakes become that much more serious.

While the world is drumming up a potential maritime showdown between the US and Iran (yet again), Western media is conveniently ignoring a potential looming conflict in the South China Sea, one that has been building up for years.

Former Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who was chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell in the George W. Bush administration, warns in a new The Real News interview with host Sharmini Peries that the United States government is driving down a “highway to war” with China — a war for which Wilkerson sees no sound justification.

The drive toward war is not undertaken in response to a real threat posed by China to the people of America. Instead, argues Wilkerson, the US government is moving toward war for reasons related to money for both the military and the broader military-industrial complex, as well to advance President Donald Trump’s domestic political goals.

State TV says military shot down ‘hostile targets coming from direction of occupied territories,’ a day after explosions heard in vicinity of Iranian and Hezbollah facilities.

Syria claimed its air defenses on Saturday night shot down a number of missiles fired from Israel, for the second time in less than 24 hours.

The official SANA news agency said the military intercepted “hostile targets coming from direction of occupied territories.” Syrian state TV said the missiles were shot down over Quneitra and near Damascus.

Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said Israel fired at least three missiles. Two of the strikes targeted a Syrian army brigade which supervises the country’s Quneitra province, he told AFP, while the third missile was destroyed by Syrian defenses.

Seemingly every time a mass shooting occurs, whether it’s at a synagogue in Pittsburgh or a nightclub in Orlando, the anti-gun media and politicians have a knee-jerk response – they blame the tragedy solely on the tool used, namely firearms, and focus all of their proposed “solutions” on more laws, ignoring that the murderer already broke numerous laws when they committed their atrocity.

Facts matter when addressing such an emotionally charged topic, and more gun control legislation has shown that law-abiding Americans who own guns are not the problem. Consider the following: The more gun control laws that are passed, the more mass murders have occurred.

A CHINESE defence firm has unveiled a terrifying new battle truck which can unleash a swarm of killer drones behind enemy lines.

The armoured war machine - based on a Russian Tigr vehicle - can direct the drones so they simultaneously converge on targets and detonate their explosive payloads.

Source: Matt Agorist @ The Free Thought Project

(Support Free Thought) - For the last several decades, the US government has openly funded, supported, and armed various terrorist networks throughout the world to forward an agenda of destabilization and proxy war. It is not a secret, nor a conspiracy theory—America arms bad guys. The situation has gotten so overtly corrupt that the government just admitted the Pentagon asked Congress for funding to reimburse terrorists for their transportation and other expenses. Seriously.

“The Defense Department requested fiscal 2020 funding to support certain reconciliation activities, including logistic support for members of the Taliban and, in March 2019, they sent a notification letter to the Committee on using fiscal year 2019 funds for similar activities,” a spokesman for House Appropriations subcommittee on Defense Chairman Peter J. Visclosky (D-Ind.) told Roll Call.

Newly Released FBI Docs Shed Light on Apparent Mossad Foreknowledge of 9/11 Attacks

Source: Mint Press

NEW YORK — For nearly two decades, one of the most overlooked and little known arrests made in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks was that of the so-called “High Fivers,” or the “Dancing Israelis.” However, new information released by the FBI on May 7 has brought fresh scrutiny to the possibility that the “Dancing Israelis,” at least two of whom were known Mossad operatives, had prior knowledge of the attacks on the World Trade Center.

One of the most under-diagnosed illnesses in the world, Lyme disease is a growing health problem for many nations, especially in the northern hemisphere. Ever since the Dr. Rath Research Institute started its scientific work on the natural treatment of this condition, my colleagues and I have found it puzzling that a bacterium with such widespread and devastating consequences as Borrelia could somehow have escaped the serious attention of medical researchers for more than a century. While a German physician, Alfred Buchwald, was the first to document the disease in a study in 1883, albeit essentially describing it as a chronic inflammation of the skin, the Lyme disease syndrome as we now understand it was not officially recognized until 1975 when a cluster of cases was identified in the United States. Even today, it remains the case that conventional medicine has no reliably effective treatment for the illness.

Source: deepstateblog.org

In the growing confrontation between the United States and Iran, the Iranian special forces, known as the Qods Force, will play a leading role in defending Iran.

[For more on the Qods Force and the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security, click here.]

While the U.S. officials have claimed knowledge of specific and credible threats against American interests, the Iranians do not have a record of attack Americans, at least not recently.

A 2017 Congressional Research Service report lists all known Iranian attacks or planned attacks on Western targets. Only three of them took place in the 21st century. Only one took place in America and none resulted in the death or injury to any American.

A US airstrike conducted Thursday in Afghanistan killed more than a dozen local policemen and wounded just as many.

When a firefight broke out between the Taliban and the local police force after the latter attempted to take down a Taliban flag in southern Helmand province, Afghan forces on the ground called in an airstrike, telling the US that the area was clear of friendlies, Stars and Stripes reported, citing Resolute Support.

Unfortunately, they were not, and a tragic accident resulted," the NATO mission in Afghanistan explained in its statement. "We're examining the miscommunication to ensure it is not repeated. We regret this tragic loss of life of our partners and are committed to improvement every day with every mission."

Source: Anti Media

(ANTIWAR.COM) — Iraq has spent the better share of the last 16 years under US military occupation. Despite this, time and again US-Iraqi relations have come to be defined by US hostility toward neighboring Iran, and Iraq’s desire to not get mixed up in that.

So while Iraq’s parliament was already bristling under Pentagon talk of staying in Iraq, and Trump saying that the US was staying in Iraq to “keep an eye on Iran,” the recent escalation of US rhetoric about a war against Iran has sparked action within parliament.

On Saturday, Iraq will be voting on a bill that would aim to expel all foreign troops from Iraqi soil, and singles out US troops in particular as needing to leave. The bill is endorsed by Iraq’s top two Shi’ite blocs, and is expected to pass fairly easily.

The USS Zumwalt and her two sister ships are undergoing a dramatic change of mission just three years after the first ship was commissioned. The destroyers, originally meant to provide naval gunfire support for the Marines and bombard targets far inland, are now being reorientated to a ship-killer role.

TransDigm Group Inc. sold the Pentagon "drive pins" for $4,361 each - should only cost $46, a 9,400% gain in excess profits, according to the Inspector General US Department of Defense's audit labeled "For Official Use Only" obtained by Bloomberg.

The inspector general's audit shows 98 of 100 parts inspected were overinflated in value and concluded the Pentagon is paying the Ohio-based defense manufacturing firm $91 million more in the next several years for parts valued at $28 million, with excess profit per part of 95% to the 9,400%.

US President Donald Trump likes to keep people guessing whether there would be a war between Iran and the United States because that is the only way he can divert the constitutional crisis that is building up in Washington.

In a column for the Tennessean newspaper, Jon DiCicco, an associate professor of political science and international relations at Middle Tennessee State University, wrote Thursday that nothing like a military confrontation would help Trump dodge constant pressure by Democrats to expose his wrongdoings.

SOURCE: THE INTERCEPT

JOURNALISTS IN FRANCE are facing potential jail sentences in an unprecedented case over their handling of secret documents detailing the country’s involvement in the Yemen conflict.

Earlier this week, a reporter from Radio France and the co-founders of Paris-based investigative news organization Disclose were called in for questioning at the offices of the General Directorate for Internal Security, known as the DGSI, an organization that is tasked with fighting terrorism, espionage, and other domestic threats, similar in function to the FBI in the United States.

The two news organizations published stories in April – together with The Intercept, Mediapart, ARTE Info, and Konbini News – that revealed the vast amount of French, British, and American military equipment sold to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and subsequently used by those nations to wage war in Yemen.

The Trump administration has been trying to engineer an unlawful coup and regime change in Venezuela. After U.S. puppet Juan Guaidó declared himself “interim president” of Venezuela on January 23, high Trump officials quickly ratified his declaration. The U.S. government seeks to illegally install Guaidó and a new ambassador in the D.C. embassy as part of its coup attempt.

After cutting off electricity and refusing to allow food and water to the protectors, agents from the Secret Service, State Department and Washington, D.C., police tried to raid the embassy on May 13. They read from an unsigned piece of paper titled “Trespassing Notice,” which stated that the U.S. government recognized Guaidó as president of Venezuela and Carlos Vecchio as Venezuelan ambassador to the United States.

It’s not enough to want untold thousands to die and the country destroyed, now neocons in Congress want to steal more than a billion and a half dollars from Iran as compensation for something somebody else did or didn’t do.

From the Daily Caller:

A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced legislation Thursday to make $1.68 billion worth of Iranian funds available to the families of 241 American servicemen killed in the 1983 suicide bombing on a Marine base in Beirut, Lebanon.

In Trump Bizarro World, as in the Obama and Bush versions of the same, reality and facts are only applicable when they serve the agenda.

The U.S. Air Force has deployed at least 20 missiles that could zap the military electronics of North Korea or Iran with high-power microwaves, rendering their military capabilities virtually useless without causing any fatalities, DailyMail.com has learned exclusively.

Known as the Counter-Electronics High Power Microwave Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP), the missiles were built by Boeing's Phantom Works for the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory and tested successfully in 2012. They have not been operation until now.

The microwave weapons are fitted into an air-launched cruise missile and delivered from B-52 bombers. With a range of 700 miles, they can fly into enemy airspace at low altitude and emit sharp pulses of high power microwave (HPM) energy that fry computer chips, disabling any electronic devices targeted by the missiles with causing any collateral damage.

The US military industrial complex has grown into a self-sustaining organism with an immune system that attacks and smothers any threat to its food supply – the taxpayers' money, writes renowned defense analyst Andrew Cockburn.

This article was originally published by Kurt Nimmo on Activist Post.

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Saudi Arabia on Thursday blamed Iran for ordering an attack early this week on two Aramco pipeline booster stations, a strike that was intended as part of a broader sabotage campaign to disrupt world oil supplies, according to Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih.

The drone attacks came one day after a string of attacks on two Saudi oil tankers and two other vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, and caused the temporary closure of a vital east-west pipeline traversing the kingdom, since reopened.

Prince Khalid Bin Salman, the vice minister for defense and brother of the crown prince MbS, described Yemen's Houthis - which were believed to have launched the drone attack - of being used as an "Iranian" tool advancing Tehran's aggression and hegemony in the region.

In a tweet, he said the Houthi militias “are merely a tool that Iran’s regime uses to implement its expansionist agenda in the region, and not to protect the people of Yemen as the Houthis falsely claim”.

The scare mongering about an attack on Iran continues. Bolton must be laughing his ass off how easy he can play the issue based on nothing. He simply counters any debunking of the alleged 'thread from Iran' by upping the ante. Yesterday a British general denied that any such threat exists in the area of his responsibility:

“No – there’s been no increased threat from Iranian-backed forces in Iraq and Syria,” Maj. Gen. Christopher Ghika, deputy commander of Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR), the coalition responsible for counter-terrorist operations against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, said in a video briefing, according to the Guardian.

Today Bolton countered that by again raising the noise level around the imaginary threat:

The U.S. Embassy in Iraq says the State Department has ordered all non-essential, non-emergency government staff to leave the country right away amid escalating tensions with Iran.

After a long night of waiting, Bradley Fighting Vehicles from the 3rd Infantry Division's 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, or ABCT, surge through a breached obstacle to attack enemy forces in the fictional town of Razish.

It's midmorning on May 8. Infantrymen wearing bulky chemical protective suits and carrying rucksacks, weapons and ammunition dismount and sprint toward the closest buildings on the outskirts of one of the National Training Center's largest urban complexes.

Enemy rifle and machine-gun fire echoes through the air. M1 tanks and Bradleys from the 2nd ABCT begin to take direct hits from opposing force armor and anti-tank weapons.

For only the second time in U.S. Air Force history, the service has brought a B-52H Stratofortress bomber out of storage Boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona and delivered it to an operational unit. The aircraft, with the serial number 60-0034 and nicknamed Wise Guy, touched down at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana earlier today, where it will join the 307th Bomb Wing, the only bomb wing in the Air Force Reserve.

The Navy has tightly coupled early prototyping efforts and future acquisition efforts for medium and large unmanned surface vehicles, to speed up the time it will take to experiment with the vessels and get them fielded to fleet commanders, the program manager said last week.

The Navy recently accelerated its timelines for fielding the Medium Unmanned Surface Vehicle (MUSV) and Large Unmanned Surface Vehicle (LUSV) – both of which were planned to be part of the Future Surface Combatant family of systems fielded in the 2020s, but have since been accelerated to Fiscal Year 2019 and 2020 acquisition dates, respectively.

Helicopters ferried US staff from the American embassy in Baghdad on Wednesday out of apparent concern about perceived threats from Iran, which US sources believe encouraged Sunday’s attacks on four oil tankers in the Gulf, Reuters reports.

The sabotage of the tankers, for which no one has claimed responsibility, and Saudi Arabia’s announcement on Tuesday that armed drones hit two of its oil pumping stations have raised concerns Washington and Tehran may be inching toward conflict.

A US government source said American security experts believe Iran gave its “blessing” to tanker attacks, which hit two Saudi crude oil tankers, a UAE-flagged fuel bunker barge and a Norwegian-registered oil products tanker off Fujeirah near the Strait of Hormuz.

The source said the United States believes Iran’s role was one of actively encouraging militants but indicated the United States does not now have evidence that Iranian personnel played any direct operational role.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez brought more light and heat to a Congressional Oversight Committee hearing on Wednesday.

And more importantly, she connected the issue at hand with why those who wonder "how can we pay for" The Green New Deal and Medicare for All when there is plenty of money in excess profits for defense contractors.

AOC pointed out one example: non-vehicular clutch discs, which cost $32.00 to manufacture and for which the Pentagon pays $1443.00. That's a 4436% profit.

AOC asked the Pentagon contractor, TransDigm CEO Kevin Stein, "Are you aware how many doses of insulin we could get for that?"

"...for the cost of your price-gouging of the public on a non-vehicular clutch disk alone I could have sent 21 kids to college. I could have sent 18 toddlers to free preschool for a year, in the most expensive city in America."

Ask yourself: Do we really know how much our adversaries spend on their military, and what they are getting for their money? Russia, for example, presents a glaring problem for academic and policy circles alike. Most comparisons are done in current U.S. dollars based on prevailing exchange rates, making Russia’s economy seem the size of South Korea’s.This approach is useless for comparing defense spending, or the country’s purchasing power. Yet, it is used frequently to argue that despite a large military modernization program, and a sizable conventional and nuclear deterrent, Moscow is a paper tiger. As a consequence, the debate on relative military power and expectations of the future military balance is terribly warped by a low-information environment.

Saudi Arabia submitted on Wednesday a letter to the United Nations Security Council, in which it held Iran and the Yemeni Houthi group responsible for targeting their oil facilities on Tuesday.

The letter was handed over by the Permanent Representative of Saudi Arabia to the United Nations, Abdallah Al-Mouallimi, according to Saudi TV channel Al Arabiya.

The letter included “Saudi Arabia’s holding of Iran and the Houthi militias it supports fully responsible for Tuesday’s attack on the kingdom’s oil facilities.”

According to the same source, a joint message was sent from Saudi Arabia and the UAE to the UN Security Council and UN Secretary-General António Guterres, on the attack and sabotage operation that occurred last Sunday against four ships in the international sea off the UAE’s territorial sea and coasts.

The group calling itself the Islamic State has announced the establishment of a new overseas province in Pakistan, just days after proclaiming another new overseas province in northern India. Until recently, the Islamic State’s operations in Asia were conducted under the banner of the Islamic State – Khorasan Province, or IS-KP. The shadowy group was founded in early 2015 and was led by former Taliban warlords who pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the spiritual leader and self-proclaimed emir of the Islamic State. Since that time, at least two of IS-KP’s leaders have been killed by United States forces, while the group has been engaged in a war against rival militant groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan, notably the Taliban.

US Secretary of State Pompeo continues to travel the world, creating alarm, resentment and irritation almost everywhere. He maintained his lamentable reputation for crass rudeness by cancelling a meeting with Germany’s Chancellor Merkel on May 8 in order to go to Iraq, apparently to try to justify Washington’s despatch of nuclear-capable B-52H bombers and an aircraft carrier battle group to menace Iran.

As observed by Norbert Röttgen, head of Germany’s foreign affairs committee, “Even if there were unavoidable reasons for the cancellation, it unfortunately fits into the current climate in the relationship of the two governments.”

Below is a full video version of Collateral Murder, the 2007 war footage that was leaked in 2010 to Wikileaks by Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning. This version was posted to the Wikileaks YouTube channel with subtitles. It will only take about 15 minutes of your life to view it.

It's brutal to watch, but I challenge you to do it anyway. It shows not just murder, but a special kind of murder — murder from the safety of the air, murder by men with heavy machine guns slowly circling their targets in helicopters like hunters with shotguns who walk the edges of a trout pond, shooting at will, waiting, walking, then shooting again, till all the fish are dead.

John McCain is looking down on Washington and he is definitely not smiling.

The late senator had very little in common with the anti-interventionist principles of this magazine, but in the brighter moments of his 35-year career in Congress, he was the Senate’s most vociferous watchdog of Pentagon waste and contractor malfeasance. His grilling of military brass in this area was legendary, and his willingness to dress down an E-Ring four star or civilian executive in front of the C-Span cameras makes today’s congressional slobbering before the military high-hats look pathetic, and sad.

Source: Common Dreams

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday came out forcefully against the Trump administration angling the United States into another costly and unnecessary war of choice in the Middle East—this time against Iran—delivering an online address in which he warned that any military action without approval from Congress would be an "unconstitutional and illegal" breach of office.

"Let me be as clear as I can be: a war with Iran would be an absolute disaster," said Sanders in the roughly six-minute speech. "Sixteen years ago, the United States committed one of the worst foreign policy blunders in the history of our country by attacking Iraq. That war was sold to the American people based on a series of lies about weapons of mass destruction. We should remember that one of the leading advocates for that war was John Bolton."

The US State Department has issued a security alert and ordered staff to evacuate Iraq amid escalating tensions with neighbouring Iran. The alert posted on the US embassy in Iraq today read: “The U.S. State Department has ordered the departure of non-emergency U.S. Government employees from Iraq, both at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and the U.S. Consulate in Erbil. Normal visa services at both posts will be temporarily suspended. The U.S. government has limited ability to provide emergency services to US citizens in Iraq.”

A US embassy spokesperson is reported by the Financial Times saying that US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, had taken the decision to withdraw because of “the increased threat stream we are seeing in Iraq”. The spokesperson declined to say how, when, or how many staff were leaving, citing security reasons.

Media-savvy U.S. government officials, political operatives, and lawmakers and their staffs from all political parties and ideological persuasions have no doubt, throughout the history of our great country, duped a fair-minded but unwitting reporter into writing a juicy story in order to get a piece of information into the public bloodstream without their fingerprints on it.

This is, in large part, how the Bush administration sold the U.S. invasion of Iraq to the American people: Feeding knowingly bogus or unsubstantiated intelligence on Iraq’s (nonexistent) WMD programs to reporters, who then published it as fact, without much in the way of critical scrutiny.

Despite the lessons we’ve learned from that debacle, it’s happening again with regard to the Trump administration’s march toward war with Iran.

An American military team assessing blasts that damaged four commercial ships off the coast of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Sunday has blamed Iran or Iranian-backed proxies using explosive charges, a source told Fox News on Monday evening.

Each ship had a 5-to-10-foot hole in it, near or just below the water line, a U.S. official told The Associated Press. A Norwegian-flagged vessel, two Saudi oil tankers and a bunkering tanker flagged in Shariah, one of the UAE's seven emirates, all suffered similar damage Sunday.

The UAE asked the U.S. to help investigate the damage, which Gulf officials have characterized as sabotage. UAE's state media said Sunday there had been "no injuries or fatalities on board the vessels" and "no spillage of harmful chemicals or fuel."

The U.S. has warned ships that "Iran or its proxies" could be targeting maritime traffic in the region, and America has moved additional ships and aircraft into the region.

Authored by Craig Murray,

That the Swedish investigation into the rape allegation against Julian Assange is being re-opened is something that ought to be welcomed. The alternative would be for this accusation to hang unresolved over Julian’s head forever. The Swedish prosecutors now need finally, as my father used to say, either to piss or get off the pot. They need to decide whether there is sufficient evidence to charge or not.

There is no reason for delay. The Swedish police have had seven years to investigate this case and all the evidence has been gathered and all statements taken – the last being the interview of Julian Assange in the Ecuadorean Embassy in 2017. Hopefully to review the evidence and decide whether to charge will not now be a lengthy procedure. It is worth noting, contrary to much misreporting, Julian Assange has never been charged with anything in Sweden.

The state of arms control treaties between the United States and Russia is likely to feature prominently in the talks.

The U.S. unilaterally pulled out of a 1987 nuclear missile pact this year, accusing Russia of violations. Putin responded in kind, saying he was suspending Russia’s participation in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty and accusing Washington of making false allegations.

Trump has said he wants to negotiate new arms control accords that reflect current conditions and to bring in other nations, notably China.

The U.S. president said after he and Putin spoke by phone last week they were considering a deal that would “get rid of some of the tremendous firepower that we have right now” and also include China.

The US has already increased its military presence in the region amid growing tensions with Iran, sending an aircraft carrier strike group to the Persian Gulf. However, a recent New York Times report suggested that the military presence could expand to the level at the time of the Iraq invasion.

US President Donald Trump slammed the report about a possible deployment of 120,000 troops to the Middle East in order to counter Iran as "fake news" and expressed hope that such a plan won't be needed. At the same time, he said that he would "absolutely" send 120,000 troops more to the Middle East, or even more, if necessary.

"Would I do that? Absolutely. But we have not planned for that. Hopefully we're not going to have to plan for that. And if we did that, we'd send a hell of a lot more troops than that", Trump said.

A group of NATO warships entered the Baltic Sea in April, approaching Russia’s borders multiple times. In particular, the USS Gravely was previously spotted about 50-60 kilometres from a Russian naval base in Baltiysk.

Standing NATO Maritime Group One (SNMG1) flagship the USS Gravely has begun patrolling the Gulf of Finland, according to the Automatic Identification System (AIS) tracking. The American destroyer, which is equipped with Tomahawk missiles, will sail past Russia's borders during its mission.

Other NATO vessels, including the British HMS Westminster and Polish ORP General Kazimierz Pulaski from the SNMG1, are expected to join Gravely later this week.

The U.S. mainstream press and television networks are committing media malpractice and contributing to the rising risk of an American war with Iran.

* The cable TV networks are almost completely ignoring the Trump administration’s threatening moves, which could end in either a violent accident or a deliberate attack by Israel, America, or both. Instead, CNN and MSNBC continue covering Russiagate, ad nauseum.

* U.S. print media is also mostly ignoring the story, except to take dictation from Pentagon sources without doing independent reporting.

* The pundits, with one exception, are also still silent.

Trump destroyed his chance at being a successful president by the stupid appointments he has made. At the moment he is being set up by his national security advisor John Bolton and Israel for a war with Iran.

No kidding - this is not our headline, but Newsweek's: "US Special Forces School Publishes New Guide For Overthrowing Foreign Governments" - and as far as we can tell they are the only major mainstream outlet to have picked up on the fact that the US military is now essentially openly bragging on past and future capabilities to foster covert regime change operations.

The 250-page study entitled “Support to Resistance: Strategic Purpose and Effectiveness” was put out by the Joint Special Operations University under US Special Operations Command, which is the Army's official unified command center which overseas all joint covert and clandestine missions out of MacDill AFB, Florida.

Federal officials restored a Bible to a prisoner of war display at a veterans hospital and said it “will not be bullied” by an activist group that wants it removed.

Department of Veterans Affairs staff at the Manchester, New Hampshire, veterans hospital “temporarily removed the Bible from the display out of an abundance of caution” after receiving a complaint, the VA’s national headquarters said in a statement Tuesday.

“Following that removal, Manchester VAMC received an outpouring of complaints from Veterans and other stakeholders – many of whom dropped off Bibles at the facility – in protest of this action,” the VA said. “We apologize to the Veterans, families and other stakeholders who were offended by the facility’s incorrect removal of this Bible.”

The Bible is part of a display in the hospital’s lobby honoring prisoners of war and missing soldiers.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s anti-Iran threats are nothing but “bombastic” comments stemming from the same war rhetoric already used by Washington against Libya, Syria and Iraq, which itself receives “war marching orders from Tel Aviv,” says an American political analyst.

Rodney Martin, a former congressional staffer based in Scottsdale, Arizona, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV after Pompeo cancelled his scheduled meeting with German officials in Berlin to pay an unannounced visit to the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, where he continued attempts to sow discord between the two neighboring countries of Iran and Iraq.

The US Navy has ended operations assisting Japan's search for a stealth fighter jet that crashed in the Pacific, after some of its debris was recovered.

"A US Navy salvage team aboard a contracted vessel completed its mission supporting search and recovery operations with the Japan Self-Defense Forces," the US 7th Fleet said in a statement on Wednesday.

Japan will continue searching for the remains of the plane, a defence spokesman said.

If the United States does manage to con itself into attacking Iran, something which seems increasingly possible as days pass, the narrative seems to be that US officials are convinced that Iran is going to attack them first.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo once again warned Iran not to attack, a warning that seems particularly nonsensical following reports where intelligence officials confirmed that the claims of an Iranian plot were heavily exaggerated to justify anti-Iran measures.

The heavy exaggeration is just growing though, with unnamed US officials telling NBC News that an unnamed Iranian official had okayed a potential attack on a US military target, an attack these putative officials tied to putative Iranian proxies, which is almost always administration doublespeak for Iraqi militias.

The commander overseeing U.S. naval forces in the Middle East told Reuters on Thursday that American intelligence showing a threat from Iran will not prevent him from sending an aircraft carrier through the vital Strait of Hormuz, if needed.

As China and Russia modernize their militaries and restructure their forces, the U.S. military is wary that its traditional advantages may be negated in a potential war with either, or both, powers.

In the face of a rising China and resurgent Russia, some pundits point to the U.S. military’s surplus of combat experience and large-scale logistical expertise in massing forces as an overwhelming advantage.

But that may not actually help that much against a peer adversary capable of launching cyber attacks the minute mobilization orders are cut, according to retired Army Gen. Jack Keane, a former vice chief of staff for the U.S. Army.

Carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) is now in the Red Sea earlier than planned at the direction of the White House, USNI News has learned.

The Lincoln Carrier Strike Group left the Mediterranean and transited the Suez Canal on Thursday, officially entering U.S. 5th Fleet and U.S. Central Command.

Developed by Norway's Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace, the NSM features a 275-pound, high-explosive warhead and has an operational range of more than 100 nautical miles. In a high-profile experiment during the 2018 Rim of the Pacific Exercise, U.S. Army Pacific fired an NSM from a Palletized Load System truck to hit a decommissioned ship off the coast of Hawaii.

But the Air Force had assumed that wouldn’t be a problem — that its then-brand-new twin-seat F-4s would never even get into a close-range dogfight. Instead, the F-4s — and other Air Force and Navy fighters — would always destroy their enemies from long range, using the Sparrow and other air-to-air missiles.

It was a flawed and dangerous assumption that got scores of American aviators shot down over Vietnam. But 49 years later, the Air Force is assuming the same thing … with regards to its new F-35 stealth fighter.

Former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis listed business reforms at the Department of Defense as one of his top three priorities. Acting Secretary Pat Shanahan has supported this focus on reform, including financial reform. Yet, recent business changes threaten to create a serious financial problem at the DoD.

In its latest budget request, the Trump administration is asking for a near-record $750 billion for the Pentagon and related defense activities—an astonishing figure by any measure. If passed by Congress, it will be one of the largest military budgets in American history, topping peak levels reached during the Korean and Vietnam wars. And keep one thing in mind: That $750 billion represents only part of the actual annual cost of our national security state.

There are at least 10 separate pots of money dedicated to fighting wars, preparing for yet more wars, and dealing with the consequences of wars already fought. So the next time a president, a general, a secretary of defense, or a hawkish member of Congress insists that the US military is woefully underfunded, think twice. A careful look at US defense expenditures offers a healthy corrective to such wildly inaccurate claims.

When Canadians support NATO, they are supporting ISIS and al Qaeda. They are also supporting international illicit drug trafficking, a source of covert funding for covert war crimes.

In Syria, the proxies are al Qaeda, ISIS, and their affiliates, commanded and controlled from NATO ships in the port of Alessandretta, plus Western special forces on the ground, beneath the cover of US State Department satellite war propaganda outlets located in Istanbul.[1]

Just as NATO soldiers might falsely believe that they are combating terrorism, NATO’s ISIS/al Qaeda terrorists falsely believe that they are creating a “Caliphate”. But the Caliphate Project[2]has always been a Washington Project, which weaponizes and grows “fundamentalist” ideologies to serve its military agendas. NATO ally Saudi Arabia, a brutal dictatorship that rules by decree and beheads its own people in public, has long been a fountainhead of Wahhabism.

The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Self-Protect High Energy Laser Demonstrator (SHiELD) Advanced Technology Demonstration (ATD) Program, has completed a series of tests last month that successfully shot down "several" missiles with a ground-based laser.

The field training exercise occurred on April 23 at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, reported the 88th Air Base Wing Public Affairs.

The SHiELD program has developed a directed energy weapon that will eventually be molded into an aircraft pod. Fifth-generation fighter jets and drones will soon have the ability to destroy surface-to-air (SAM) and air-to-air (AAM) missiles with laser beams.

"This critical demonstration shows that our directed energy systems are on track to be a game changer for our warfighters," said Dr. Kelly Hammett, director of AFRL’s Directed Energy Directorate.

I haven't posted on this specific subject for some time and, given the upcoming midterm elections and the meeting between the leaders of Russia and the United States, I thought it was time to revisit one of the most powerful groups in the United States, the defence industry. Thanks to Open Secrets, we have ready access to how much the defence sector has contributed to politicians and how much it spends on lobbying. This is particularly pertinent given the hundreds of billions of dollars that are transferred from American taxpayers to a handful of companies every year.

Let's start by looking at the defence industry's contributions to those who are supposed to represent Americans in Washington. Here is a graphic showing the sector's long-term political contributions:

The new rocket motor for the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) new defence system against waves of anti-ship missiles has been successfully tested, Raytheon said in a press release.

"Raytheon Company successfully tested a hot fire rocket motor for DARPA's Multi-Azimuth Defense Fast Intercept Round Engagement System, or MAD-FIRES", the release said on Monday.

The MAD-FIRES interceptor is designed to provide a robust and affordable self-defence capability that defeats multiple waves of anti-ship missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as other threats, Raytheon said.

The 358th Public Affairs Detachment said in a news release that soldiers from the 3rd Battalion, 66th Armored Regiment, 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, conducted a field training exercise with anti-tank weapons amid deteriorating Russia–US relations.

On May 2, American forces gathered at the Johana Range, Poland, to fire the M136 AT4 Light Anti-Armor Weapon, an 84-mm unguided, portable, single-shot recoilless rocket launcher, which is one of the most common light anti-tank weapons in the world.

"Today's training gives the Soldier a familiarization with the weapon system," said US Army Staff Sgt. Larry W. Kirby, a squad leader assigned to Charlie Company, 3rd BN, 66th AR, 1ABCT, 1ID.

A US aircraft carrier group and bomber task force were deployed to the Middle East after a tip-off on a “credible threat” from Iran, which came, conveniently vague and timely, from Israeli spy agency Mossad, it has been reported.
At an April 15 meeting in Washington, Israeli National Security Council chief Meir Ben-Shabbat passed along a warning to US National Security Advisor John Bolton, senior Israeli officials told Axios. The information Bolton received was left vague: the attack could hit a US target in the Persian Gulf, or maybe Saudi Arabia, or maybe the UAE.

President Donald Trump floated the idea of providing a waiver for military athletes who hope to turn pro before their service time is up.
Speaking from the White House Rose Garden, the president suggested that academy athletes could finish their military obligations after any pro career would end.

“They’ll serve their time after they’re done with professional sports,” Mr. Trump said on Monday, the Washington Times reported.

Trump noted that the current rules prevent military schools such as West Point from recruiting the best players.

The United States Army wanted a spiffy new service uniform, one that would stand out in a tough recruiting environment and polish the Army’s image after a generation of grinding and divisive wars.

So it turned the clock back. Way back.

It chose a new uniform that looks almost exactly like the old green gabardine wool field coat and khaki trousers that officers wore in World War II. Probably not by coincidence, that’s what the Army was wearing the last time the nation celebrated total victory in a major war.

After Venezuela’s army decided not to rise up and overthrow Nicholas Maduro, by Sunday night, it was Iran that was in our gun sights.

Bolton ordered the USS Abraham Lincoln, its carrier battle group and a bomber force to the Mideast “to send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force.”

What “attack” was Bolton talking about?

Remember the madcap scene in 'Apocalypse Now', the 1979 film by Francis Ford Coppola about American genocidal rampaging in Vietnam? "I love the smell of napalm in the morning", bellows the psychotic military commander as US choppers strafe and destroy a Vietnamese village.

The same kind of unhinged death-wishing is reminiscent in the Trump administration. President Trump is on an infernal roll and his twisted supporters are loving it.

Once upon a time, deep into the night in selected campfires across the deserts of Southwest Asia, I used to tell a fable about the eagle, the bear and the dragon – much to the amusement of my Arab and Persian interlocutors.

It was about how, in the young 21stcentury, the eagle, the bear and the dragon had taken their (furry) gloves off and engaged in what turned out to be Cold War 2.0.

As we approach the end of the second decade of this already incandescent century, perhaps it’s fruitful to upgrade the fable. With all due respect to Jean de la Fontaine, excuse me while I kiss the (desert) sky again.

Long gone are the days when a frustrated bear repeatedly offered to cooperate with the eagle and its minions on a burning question: nuclear missiles.

Sure. Let’s invade Venezuela. Another jolly little war. It’s full of commies and has a sea of oil. The only thing those Cuban-loving Venezuelans lack are weapons of mass destruction.

This week, leading US neocons openly threatened that if the CIA’s latest attempts to stage a coup to overthrow Venezuela’s Maduro government failed, Washington might send in the Marines.

Speaking on ABC’s “This Week,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo refused to comment on whether the administration would consult Congress before invading Venezuela, saying “I don’t want to speak to that.”

Pompeo shunned all questions about the role of Congress in a potential Venezuelan war, saying he is confident that President Trump has sufficient authority that whatever he decides will be legal.

This is a serious question constitutionally. Lawmakers note that the power to declare war lies exclusively with Congress. Fresh off of the veto of the Yemen War challenge, there is reason to question if the law matches up to the practical reality of US war-making anymore.

Today’s US-NATO sponsored wars are part of a military and foreign policy agenda extending over a period of more than half a century.

What these 1948 State department documents reveal (see below in Annex) is continuity in US foreign policy from “Containment” during the Cold War to today’s doctrine of “Pre-emptive War”.

In this regard, the NeoCons Project for the New American Century’s blueprint formulated in 2000 for global conquest should be viewed as the culmination of a post-war agenda of military hegemony and global economic domination as initially formulated by the State Department in 1948 at the outset of the Cold War.

Needless to say, successive Democratic and Republican administrations, from Harry Truman to George W. Bush and Barack Obama have been involved in carrying out this hegemonic blueprint for global domination, which the Pentagon calls the “Long War”.

People condemn President Trump for his incessant lying and his con games -- and rightly so. But few Americans condemn the Pentagon and the rest of the national security state, even though we’ve been the victims of their long con for decades now. As it happens, from the beginning of the Cold War to late last night, they’ve remained remarkably skilled at exaggerating the threats the U.S. faces and, believe me, that represents the longest con of all. It’s kept the military-industrial complex humming along, thanks to countless trillions of taxpayer dollars, while attempts to focus a spotlight on that scam have been largely discredited or ignored.

Avner Cohen and Bill Burr are two of the best historians on the secret Israeli nuclear program of the 1960s, which made Israel the Middle East’s first nuclear power.

Seal of Mossad – Israeli Foreign Intelligence
It almost didn’t happen. In a brief for the non-profit National Security Archives and an article for Haaretz.com,Cohen and Burr explain that the program was almost shut down. President John F. Kennedy confronted Israeli leaders in the summer of 1963 demanding stringent inspections.

Throughout the spring and summer of 1963, the leaders of the United States and Israel – President John F. Kennedy and Prime Ministers David Ben-Gurion and Levi Eshkol – were engaged in a high-stakes battle of wills over Israel’s nuclear program.

The US military’s F-35 Lightning II stealth aircraft have a problem with spare parts, and it’s keeping the planes out of the sky, according to a new report by a government watchdog.

"F-35 aircraft were unable to fly nearly 30% of the May-November 2018 time period due to spare parts shortages," according to an April report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The report further notes that during that time, the Pentagon "had a repair backlog of about 4,300 F-35 parts."

WHEN ERIK PRINCE arrived at the Four Seasons resort in the Seychelles in January 2017 for his now-famous meetings with a Russian banker and UAE ruler Mohammed bin Zayed, he was in the middle of an unexpected comeback. The election of Donald Trump had given the disgraced Blackwater founder a new opportunity to prove himself. After years of trying and failing to peddle a sweeping vision of mercenary warfare around the world, Erik Prince was back in the game.

China is developing a series of potentially disruptive technologies, including electromagnetic firearms and directed energy weapons, according to a new report by the US Department of Defense on Thursday.

“China is pursuing a number of advanced military capabilities with disruptive potential such as hypersonic weapons, electromagnetic railguns, directed energy weapons, and counterspace capabilities,” the Defence Department said in its 2019 China Military Power Report to Congress.

The report also recalls that China successfully tested hypersonic vehicles last year.