"WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - Former US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson described an encounter at a Washington restaurant in which White House Adviser Jared Kushner conducted foreign diplomacy for the Trump administration behind his back, a transcript of Tillerson's congressional hearing revealed on Thursday.
Tillerson, who was fired by Trump in March 2017, recounted an awkward encounter with Kushner and Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs Luis Videgaray during the hearing.
The former secretary of state said he "could see the colour go out" of Videgaray's face when Tillerson greeted them at their table.
"I smiled big, and said, 'Welcome to Washington,'" Tillerson recalled. "I said, 'I don’t want to interrupt what y’all are doing. ... Give me a call next time you're coming to town.' And I left it at that."
Tillerson also said he later found out that the Mexican foreign secretary was operating under the assumption that everything he talked about with Kushner had been run through the State Department..."
"The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has withdrawn large numbers of troops from the embattled country of Yemen allegedly in fear of escalating tensions between the United States and Iran.
The withdrawal took place because Abu Dhabi wanted to have forces and equipment "on hand" following recent tensions in the Persian Gulf region, Reuters cited four unnamed Western diplomats as saying on Friday.
The tensions come after the United States ratcheted up its rhetoric against Iran, announcing the deployment of additional troops to the Persian Gulf region in order to counter an unspecified "threat" from Iran in early May.
A week later, four oil tankers were sabotaged in the UAE sea-port of Fujairah. Earlier this month, two other oil tankers were damaged by explosions in the Gulf of Oman.
On Wednesday, the UAE said there is no "clear, scientific and convincing" evidence to assign blame for the attacks, splitting with the United States and Saudi Arabia which held Iran responsible without any foundation..."
"Elements tied to Western spy agencies hacked into online search engine firm Yandex – the Russian equivalent to Google -- late last year to embed a malware designed to snoop on its user accounts, a report has revealed.
The malware, identified as Regin, is known to be deployed by the so-called “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing alliance of the US, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, Reuters reported Friday, citing four people with knowledge of the matter.
According to the report, Regin became known as a Five Eyes tool in 2014 after revelations by former US National Security Agency (NSA) contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden, who defected to Russia after becoming the target of an international manhunt ordered by Washington.
The report noted that spy agencies of those countries refused to comment on the case.
The hacking attack, directed at Yandex’s research and development unit, was intended for espionage purposes rather than to disrupt or steal intellectual property, said the sources, adding: “The hackers covertly maintained access to Yandex for at least several weeks without being detected.”
Western cyber attacks against Russia are rarely confirmed or talked about publicly, and it could not be determined which of the five Western governments was behind the attack on Yandex, which took place between October and November 2018, added the sources, who the report said were from “Russia and elsewhere, three of whom had direct knowledge of the hack.”
Yandex spokesman Ilya Grabovsky confirmed the cyber attack but refused to elaborate further on the case.
Attack 'fully neutralized' before causing damage
Meanwhile, Yandex said that it had "fully neutralized" the attack before the hackers were able to cause any damage or access sensitive data..."
"NATO defence ministers met in Belgium this week to discuss key security challenges, progress on burden sharing, defence and deterrence posture, and new technologies as the alliance strives to achieve greater integration.
Government officials from Germany and the Netherlands have signed an agreement this week to build the first-ever joint military internet, dubbed TEN (Tactical Edge Networking), reports ZDNet.
The corresponding accord was penned on Wednesday in Brussels, Belgium, against the backdrop of NATO defence ministers' meeting there this week.
In what is being viewed as a trial test for unifying other NATO members' military networks in the future, this is a debut project between the two nations to agree to integrate parts of their military network.
Koblenz, Germany, has been selected as the headquarters for TEN, to be complemented by a design and prototype centre at Bernard Barracks in Amersfoort, the Netherlands..."
"Relations between Ottawa and Beijing were soured by the arrest of a top Huawei executive in Canada last December. Tensions have recently spilled beyond diplomacy to trade, with China blocking all Canadian meat imports and an agricultural product.
A Canadian warship has been buzzed by Chinese fighter jets monitoring out its movements in the East China Sea off Shanghai, the Canadian Global Affairs Institute reports citing one of its fellows, Matthew Fisher.
HMCS Regina, a Halifax-class frigate, and support ship Asterix, were sailing from Vietnam through the disputed waters of the South China Sea, the Strait of Taiwan and the East China Sea.
“The formidable twin-tail Russian-built strike aircraft flew within 300 metres of the Canadian ship’s bow, screaming past about 300 metres above the water,” Fisher said.
He added that Chinese fighters and Canadian warships have never been that close to each other. Regina's captain, meanwhile, was quoted as saying that it wasn't a "dangerous scenario" but was still worth being paid close attention.
Both Canadian ships are in the region as part of Operation Neon, an initiative led by a cluster of Western nations, including the US, the UK, France and France, to enforce trade sanctions against Pyongyang.
In the days leading up to the incident, those aboard Regina had observed a dozen other Su-30 fighters flying several kilometres away from the vessel.
Fisher claimed the Canadians tracked China-flagged tankers origins that could be transporting fuel to North Korea in violation of UN sanctions that ban ship-to-ship transfers of fuel and other commodities. Beijing has not commented on the allegations so far.
According to Fisher, someone aboard those tankers beamed green lasers at the pilots of Regina’s surveillance helicopter that flew some 80 kilometres off the Chinese coast, though no injuries were sustained as a result.
This echoes claims by American servicemen stationed at a military base in Djibouti, who accused Chinese personnel at a nearby military outpost of beaming ground-based lasers at American pilots. Beijing in response called the accusations groundless.
Canada has been taking part in so-called Freedom of Navigation Operations, along with the United States and its allies, which are aimed at defying Beijing’s extensive claims to the South China Sea.
These countries sail their warships past the Taiwan Strait, which separates mainland China and Taiwan, which Beijing claims as part of its territory but doesn’t control..."
"The US Air Force has proposed piggybacking nuclear command and control onto the growing network of commercial satellites, floating the idea as a money-saving possibility as its nuclear infrastructure decays into obsolescence.
“One of the areas that I think we're going to be able to leverage significantly is…the rapid and exciting expansion of commercial space and bringing low-earth orbit capabilities that will allow us to have the resilient pathways to communicate,” Air Force Chief of Staff David Goldfein told an audience at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies on Wednesday. “Whether it's Silicon Valley or commercial space, there are unlimited opportunities ahead right now for us in terms of how we think differently on things like nuclear command-and-control.”
"The FBI is urging American universities to help the agency spy on Chinese students and scholars from Chinese research institutions, particularly those working in tech, science, math, engineering, and anything defense-related.
Universities are being asked to shoulder some of the burden of surveillance regarding the 340,000 or so Chinese students attending school in the US last year as tensions between the two countries continue to mount. FBI officials have made the rounds of at least 10 major universities in the last year, warning the schools that students and scholars associated with any entities on the agency's list of suspect Chinese companies and research institutions should be monitored, according to three administrators at three of the schools who spoke to NPR.
“It's not a question of just looking for suspicious behavior — it's actually really targeting specific countries and the people from those countries,” Indiana University VP of Research Fred Cate told NPR, adding that the agents were particularly interested in learning which labs Chinese students were working with and “what information they are being exposed to.” Specifically, they’re being told to look at research that might have defense applications, the administrators said.
Washington lives in ‘perverse state’ of self-induced panic – China on Huawei scare
The intrusion of government spooks into the hallowed halls of academia has many university administrators skeptical, whether because they don't believe their Chinese students truly represent a threat or because the FBI's recommendations are unspecific and difficult to implement. But “many of them receive US government research money” and don't have a choice, a participant in a March intelligence briefing of 70 college administrators from the American Council on Education told NPR. Admins were told to avoid taking money from Huawei and other Chinese firms and to increase their oversight of Chinese researchers. Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University are among the schools that have severed research collaborations with Huawei.
The National Institutes of Health, the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world, has cracked down hard on Chinese visiting scholars in recent months, according to Bloomberg, which investigated one such probe into a top Chinese-American scientist railroaded out of the University of Texas' MD Anderson Cancer Center on technicalities once overlooked as standard operating procedure for scholarly collaboration. But what was once innocent sharing of work is now potential spying.
“Threats to the integrity of US biomedical research exist,” NIH director Francis Collins warned more than 10,000 research institutions in an ominously vague memo sent in August. “Foreign entities have mounted systematic programs to influence NIH researchers and peer reviewers and take advantage of the long tradition of trust, fairness, and excellence of NIH-supported research activities.” Collins advised the institutions to schedule their own meetings with the FBI to learn the latest on the Chinese threat.
Other schools have become squeamish about accepting federal grants for research projects that could eventually include Chinese scholars, wary of running afoul of increasingly stringent government regulations. Huawei is the only one of the entities the FBI has warned universities about that is currently on a trade blacklist, meaning the schools have to comb through records manually to find individuals who might be involved with the others, since no software exists to automatically exclude or disqualify them.
But some schools have pushed back against what they see as government overreach. Yale University president Peter Salovey has insisted the feds “clarify concerns they have about international academic exchanges,” urging his colleagues in the Association of American Universities to make use of “the tools already in place, such as export controls, while affirming the principle of open academic exchange for basic research.”
By turns a mining entrepreneur, art collector, and protector of endangered animal species, the Swiss-American billionaire Thomas Kaplan is becoming an ever-closer associate of Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan (MbZ). In early 2019, Kaplan has been showing his collection of Dutch art at the Louvre Abu Dhabi museum, only two years after Mohammed bin Zayed personally appointed him to head the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Areas (ALIPH). This organisation, dedicated to protecting artefacts at risk of destruction by Islamic State (ISIS) and its allies, currently active in the Iraqi city of Mosul, was set up by the Emirati strongman and by former French president François Hollande.
In the shadow of this alliance with Mohammed bin Zayed lurk much more strategic issues. Over the years, Kaplan has built up a mining empire through his investment firm Electrum Group - named after the alloy of gold and silver from which the first ever coins were struck - in which the UAE sovereign wealth fund Mubadala has invested. At the same time, the billionaire has set up extremely well-connected philanthropic and lobby groups which mostly operate in the Middle East. Kaplan thus boasts a significant arsenal of influence, focussed on Iran and its neighbours, and, to a lesser degree, China. This has not escaped the interest of western spy chiefs. To achieve this, Kaplan, whose father Jay Kaplan was an entrepreneur based in New York, then Florida, relies on an influential entourage cultivated since his earliest years as a pupil at the prestigious – and expensive – Swiss boarding school, Le Rosey. Kaplan counts among these close friends several powerful clans, including his wife's Israeli family, the Recanatis, the Saudi Khashoggis and the German industrialist Thyssens..." at https://www.intelligenceonline.com/insiders/united-arab-emirates_united-states_iran/2019/03/04/thomas-kaplan-the-billionaire-pushing-abu-dhabi-s-interests-in-the-middle-east/108347124-be1
"Paris is hoping that France's heavily overstretched special forces in Africa will receive some help from allied commandos. [...]"
at https://www.intelligenceonline.com/government-intelligence/2019/06/26/special-forces-in-africa-french-armed-forces-minister-florence-parly-appeals-to-european-allies,108363089-art
"With the world waiting for the first headlines from the Trump-Xi meeting, the most important and unexpected news of the day hit moments ago, when Europe announced that the special trade channel, Instex, that will allow European firms to avoid SWIFT and bypass American sanctions on Iran, is now operational.
Following a meeting between the countries who singed the Iran nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was ditched by US, French, British and German officials said the trade mechanism which was proposed last summer and called Instex, is now operational.
As a reminder, last September, in order to maintain a financial relationship with Iran that can not be vetoed by the US, Europe unveiled a "Special Purpose Vehicle" to bypass SWIFT. The mechanism would facilitate transactions between European and Iranian companies, while preventing the US from vetoing the transactions and pursuing punitive measures on those companies and states that defied Trump. The payment balancing system will allow companies in Europe to buy Iranian goods, and vice-versa, without actual money-transfers between European and Iranian banks.
The statement came after the remaining signatures of JCPOA gathered in Vienna for a meeting that Iranian ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi called "the last chance for the remaining parties...to gather and see how they can meet their commitments towards Iran."
Until today, Tehran was skeptical about EU's commitment to the deal and threatened to exceed the maximum amount of enriched uranium allowed it by the deal after US had imposed a series of sanctions on the country.
Meanwhile, opponents of Instex - almost exclusively the US - have argued that the mechanism is flawed because the Iranian institution designated to work with Instex, the Special Trade and Finance Instrument, has shareholders with links to entities already facing sanctions from the U.S.
The announcement sent oil sharply lower, with crude futures falling about $1/bbl in closing minutes before settlement, extending daily loss, as it means Iran now has a fully functioning pathway to receive payment for oil it exports to anyone it chooses.
The announcement will likely send president Trump off the rails, because in late May Bloomberg reported that as part of Trump's escalating battle with "European allies" over the fate of the Iran nuclear accord, he was "threatening penalties against the financial body created by Germany, the U.K. and France to shield trade with the Islamic Republic from U.S. sanctions" including the loss of access to the US financial system.
According to Bloomberg, the Treasury Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, Sigal Mandelker, sent a letter on May 7 warning that Instex, the European SPV to sustain trade with Tehran, and anyone associated with it could be barred from the U.S. financial system if it goes into effect.
“I urge you to carefully consider the potential sanctions exposure of Instex,” Mandelker wrote in an ominous letter to Instex President Per Fischer. "Engaging in activities that run afoul of U.S. sanctions can result in severe consequences, including a loss of access to the U.S. financial system."
Germany, France and the U.K. finalized the Instex system in January, allowing companies to trade with Iran without the use of U.S. dollars or American banks, allowing them to get around wide-ranging U.S. sanctions that were imposed after the Trump administration abandoned the 2015 Iran nuclear deal last year.
“This is a shot across the bow of a European political establishment committed to using Instex and its sanctions-connected Iranian counterpart to circumvent U.S. measures,” said Mark Dubowitz, the chief executive officer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington.
Here is a simpler summary of what just happened: this was the first official shot across the bow of the USD status as a global reserve currency, and not by America's adversaries but by its closest allies. And once those who benefit the most from the status quo openly revolt against it, the countdown to the end of the USD reserve status officially begins.
When asked to comment on the letter, the Treasury Department issued a statement saying “entities that transact in trade with the Iranian regime through any means may expose themselves to considerable sanctions risk, and Treasury intends to aggressively enforce our authorities.”
The US ire was sparked by the realization - and alarm - that cracks are appearing in the dollar's reserve status, opponents of Instex argue - at least for public consumption purposes - that the mechanism is flawed because the Iranian institution designated to work with Instex, the Special Trade and Finance Instrument, has shareholders with links to entities already facing sanctions from the U.S.
Separately, during a visit to London on May 8, Mike Pompeo also warned that there was no need for Instex because the U.S. allows for humanitarian and medical products to get into Iran without sanction.
“When transactions move beyond that, it doesn’t matter what vehicle’s out there, if the transaction is sanctionable, we will evaluate it, review it, and if appropriate, levy sanctions against those that were involved in that transaction,” Pompeo said. “It’s very straightforward.”
In conclusion, one month ago we said that "In 2018, Europe made a huge stink about not being bound by Trump's unilateral breach of the Iranian deal, and said it would continue regardless of US threats. But now that the threats have clearly escalated, and Washington has made it clear it won't take no for an answer, it will be interesting to see if Europe's resolve to take on Trump - especially in light of the trade war with China - has fizzled. "
The answer, it appears is that Europe felt unexpectedly emboldened, just hours before Trump's meeting with Xi, and that it is ready and willing to call Trump's bluff; it goes without saying, that if the US does indeed retaliate and proceed with sanctions against European banks, than the global trade war is about to turn far, far uglier..."
Will bitcoin appear on this chart of global reserve currencies in the future?
Could a non-state cryptocurrency like bitcoin become a global reserve currency? I first proposed the idea back in November 2013, long before bitcoin's rise to $19,000, decline to $3,200, recent ascent to $13,000 and current retrace..."
De-globalization is deepening, and its roots run much deeper than the trade war. In fact, it was early 2016 when we explained that de-globalization had been going on for years. While ECRI does not offer policy prescriptions, de-globalization has important implications, and reports from sources ranging from the Council on Foreign Relations to the Bank for International Settlements have since echoed our findings.
To reiterate, there are cyclical and structural components to globalization.ECRI’s measure of globalization is the difference between the growth rates of world trade and GDP (chart), which experiences cyclical swings associated with global growth cycles. This is because, during an upturn in global growth, global trade growth tends to outstrip global GDP growth, while the opposite is true during a global growth downturn.
Quite separately, structural globalization or de-globalization occurs when this measure is substantially positive or negative, respectively, for extended periods. A wave of structural globalization dominated the 1990s and early 2000s, boosted by the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and China’s 2001 entry into the World Trade Organization, unleashing what we dubbed “the globalization tsunami” at the time. The cyclical component of global trade overwhelmed structural globalization only around recessions, with our globalization measure going deep into negative territory around the 2001 U.S. recession and the Global Financial Crisis (GFC).
Since the GFC, however, structural de-globalization has emerged as the dominant force, as our measure has been almost exclusively negative since 2011,with a brief foray into positive territory due to the cyclical upturn in global growth around 2017 – which we correctly forecast in 2016.
As the ongoing cyclical global growth downturn has taken hold, de-globalization has expanded sharply, subsequently being exacerbated by the trade war. In turn, our globalization measure has plunged to its lowest reading since the GFC, and its worst reading on record away from recessions.
However, the pains of de-globalization are not shared equally. Exports account for only 12% of GDP in the U.S., and less than 20% of GDP in the major Asian economies of China, Japan and India. Meanwhile, in the Eurozone, exports account for roughly 30% of GDP in France, Italy and Spain, and a whopping 50% of German GDP.
Therefore, in the longer run, the ebb tide of globalization is more likely to leave the major European economies high and dry, while hurting, but not wrecking, the big Asian economies, and posing a modest headwind to U.S. growth. And,as de-globalization predates the trade war, any resolution to the trade war may offer a relatively small boost, but not enough to offset structural de-globalization..."
"Up to a dozen US F-22A Raptor Stealth Jets have touched down at the US Air Base Al-Udeid in Qatar amid soaring tensions with Iran, and as the Pentagon continues to bolster its forces in the gulf after the recent prepared military attack called off by President Trump at the last minute.
The aerial defense analysis site, The Aviationist, confirmed the new US stealth jet deployment and noted, "While it’s still not confirmed that the deployment of the Raptor was just a pre-planned rotation to the region (rather than part of a build up of forces around Iran), according to rumors, more tactical assets are being moved to the Gulf area in the following days."
The moral bankruptcy of Western powers was exposed – inadvertently – with the recent publication of three separate news reports. Taken together the reports out last week illustrate the rank hypocrisy of Western governments.
Also, the way that the reports were prioritized or left disconnected demonstrates how the Western mainstream media serves as a dutiful propaganda service for state and corporate power.
First there was the Dutch-led inquiry into downing of the Malaysian MH17 airliner, which put the finger of blame on Russia for the disaster in 2014 when all 298 people onboard were killed.
That nearly five-year investigation has never provided any credible proof of Russian culpability, yet the Dutch-led investigators known as the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) continually level allegations that Russia supplied an anti-aircraft missile to Ukrainian rebels who purportedly blasted the Boeing 777 out of the sky.
Despite its evident failures of due process, nonetheless Western governments and media have lent the JIT allegations (slanders) undue credibility. The US, Britain and other NATO members last week called on Russia to comply with the JIT “investigation”, smearing Moscow as guilty of causing the MH17 deaths.
However, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad denounced the report as “ridiculous hearsay” aimed at “scapegoating Russia”. Tellingly, his comments were not widely reported in Western media.
For its part, Russia has vehemently rejected allegations of involvement in the MH17 disaster, as have pro-Russian Ukrainian rebels. Russia’s repeated offers of contributing information to the probe have been rebuffed by the Dutch-led JIT. By contrast, Russia’s own investigation has uncovered credible radar and forensic evidence that an anti-aircraft missile fired at the passenger jet actually came from military forces under the Kiev regime’s command. Russia’s evidence has been steadfastly ignored by Western media reports.
The credible suspect party – Kiev political and intelligence authorities – have been allowed to participate in and frame the JIT probe to inculpate Russia. The US, European Union and NATO back the Neo-Nazi dominated regime in Kiev, financially and militarily, since it seized power in a violent coup d’état back in 2014. That should be the real focus of scandal in the MH17 story.
On the back of the MH17 imbroglio, as well as other slanders, Western governments have continued to impose economic sanctions on Russia. These sanctions have cost the Russian economy an estimated $50 billion. On top of that, Western states and their media portray Russia and President Putin as a rogue regime and pariah.
Now contrast the undue priority given to the above dubious JIT claims with two other reports also out last week.
One was on the horrific death toll among civilians in Yemen inflicted by the Western-backed Saudi-led war on that country. It is estimated that over 90,000 people have been killed in violence over the past four years, with most of the civilian victims caused by indiscriminate Saudi air strikes.
It is an indisputable fact that the US, Britain, France, Germany and other NATO powers have been arming the Saudi regime with warplanes, helicopters, missiles and logistics to carry out this slaughter of Yemeni civilians. The Western states are complicit in war crimes.
President Trump continues to defy US lawmakers by ordering multi-billion-dollar arms sales to Saudi Arabia, despite the carnage. The British government and wannabe prime minister Boris Johnson claims that its weapons exports are not involved in killing Yemeni civilians, in blatant denial of the facts.
A British court last week ruled that UK weapons exports were in breach of its own supposed ethical codes protecting civilian lives in conflicts. The British government is set to appeal the court ruling and will likely ignore it anyway given the systematic relationship of Britain arming Saudi Arabia – the UK’s biggest weapons export market – year after year.
Western media last week, as usual, gave only minimal reporting on the shocking human suffering in Yemen. The whole barbarity and Western governments’ culpability is largely hushed-up and omitted by the media.
The third report we refer to was on the conclusions of the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur investigating the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last October. His tortured body is believed to have been cut up and dumped by his killers. Special Rapporteur Agnes Callamard made a damning assessment that the Saudi state was responsible for Khashoggi’s murder. And she called on Western states to impose sanctions on the Saudi monarchy.
Despite mounting evidence of Saudi regime guilt in the journalist’s murder and in the deaths of tens of thousands of Yemeni civilians, Western governments have not imposed any sanctions against Riyadh. Indeed, they continue to ply this regime with billions-of-dollars-worth of killing machines.
Admittedly, Western media did give some coverage to the UN report on the Khashoggi murder. But in proportion to the gravity of the crime, the response of media as well as of Western governments is woefully lacking.
Western media do not put the last two mentioned reports in the context of Western state relations with Saudi Arabia. The oversight is for a good reason. Because to delve into the issues would expose criminal complicity..."
"Authored by Dagny Taggart via Our Organic Prepper blog,
In these Orwellian times, when it is revealed that yet another government agency is spying on us in yet another way, most of us aren’t one bit surprised. Being surveilled nearly everywhere we go (and even in our own homes) has become the norm, unfortunately..."
"Authored by Vijay Prashad via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,
In 2017, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) created a special unit — the Iran Mission Center — to focus attention on the U.S. plans against Iran. The initiative for this unit came from CIA director John Brennan, who left his post as the Trump administration came into office. Brennan believed that the CIA needed to focus attention on what the United States sees as problem areas — North Korea and Iran, for instance. This predated the Trump administration.
Brennan’s successor — Mike Pompeo, who was CIA director for just over a year (until he was appointed U.S. Secretary of State) — continued this policy. The CIA’s Iran-related activity had been conducted in the Iran Operations Division (Persia House). This was a section with Iran specialists who built up knowledge about political and economic developments inside Iran and in the Iranian diaspora.
It bothered the hawks in Washington — as one official told me — that Persia House was filled with Iran specialists who had no special focus on regime change in Iran. Some of them, due to their long concentration on Iran, had developed sensitivity to the country.
Trump’s people wanted a much more focused and belligerent group that would provide the kind of intelligence that tickled the fancy of his National Security Adviser John Bolton.
To head the Iran Mission Center, the CIA appointed Michael D’Andrea. D’Andrea was central to the post-9/11 interrogation program, and he ran the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center. Assassinations and torture were central to his approach.
It was D’Andrea who expanded the CIA’s drone strike program, in particular the signature strike. The signature strike is a particularly controversial instrument. The CIA was given the allowance to kill anyone who fit a certain profile — a man of a certain age, for instance, with a phone that had been used to call someone on a list. The dark arts of the CIA are precisely those of D’Andrea.
What is germane to his post at the Iran Mission Center is that D’Andrea is close to the Gulf Arabs, a former CIA analyst told me. The Gulf Arabs have been pushing hard for action against Iran, a view shared by D’Andrea and parts of his team. For his hard-nosed attitude toward Iran, D’Andrea is known—ironically—as “Ayatollah Mike.”
D’Andrea and people like Bolton are part of an ecosystem of men who have a visceral hatred for Iran and who are close to the worldview of the Saudi royal family. These are men who are reckless with violence, willing to do anything if it means provoking a war against Iran. Nothing should be put past them.
The initiative for this unit came from CIA director John Brennan, who left his post as the Trump administration came into office. Getty Image.
D’Andrea and the hawks edged out several Iran experts from the Iran Mission Center, people like Margaret Stromecki — who had been head of analysis. Others who want to offer an alternative to the Pompeo-Bolton view of things either have also moved on or remain silent. There is no space in the Trump administration, a former official told me, for dissent on the Iran policy.
D’Andrea’s twin outside the White House is Thomas Kaplan, the billionaire who set up two groups that are blindingly for regime change in Iran. The two groups are United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) and Counter Extremism Project. There is nothing subtle here. These groups — and Kaplan himself — promote an agenda of great disparagement of Muslims in general and of Iran in particular.
Kaplan blamed Iran for the creation of ISIS, for it was Iran — Kaplan said — that “used a terrible Sunni movement” to expand its reach from “Persia to the Mediterranean.” Such absurdity followed from a fundamental misreading of Shia concepts such as taqiya, which means prudence and not — as Kaplan and others argue — deceit. Kaplan, bizarrely, shares more with ISIS than Iran does with that group — since both Kaplan and ISIS are driven by their hatred of those who follow the Shia traditions of Islam.
It is fitting that Kaplan’s anti-Iran groups bring together the CIA and money. The head of UANI is Mark Wallace, who is the chief executive of Kaplan’s Tigris Financial Group, a financial firm with investments — which it admits — would benefit from “instability in the Middle East.” Working with UANI and the Counter Extremism Project is Norman Roule, a former national intelligence manager for Iran in the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Roule has offered his support to the efforts of the Arabia Foundation, run by Ali Shihabi — a man with close links to the Saudi monarchy. The Arabia Foundation was set up to do more effective public relations work for the Saudis than the Saudi diplomats are capable of doing. Shihabi is the son of one of Saudi Arabia’s most well-regarded diplomats, Samir al-Shihabi, who played an important role as Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Pakistan during the war that created al-Qaeda.
These men — Kaplan and Bolton, D’Andrea and Shihabi — are eager to use the full force of the U.S. military to further the dangerous goals of the Gulf Arab royals (of both Saudi Arabia and of the UAE). When Pompeo walked before cameras, he carried their water for them. These are men on a mission. They want war against Iran.
Evidence, reason. None of this is important to them. They will not stop until the U.S. bombers deposit their deadly payload on Tehran and Qom, Isfahan and Shiraz. They will do anything to make that our terrible reality.
This article was produced by Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute."
"Authored by Federico Pieraccini via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
One of the most important energy battles of the future will be fought in the field of liquid natural gas (LNG).Suggested as one of the main solutions to pollution, LNG offers the possibility of still managing to meet a country’s industrial needs while ameliorating environmental concerns caused by other energy sources. At the same time, a little like the US dollar, LNG is becoming a tool Washington intends to use against Moscow at the expense of Washington’s European allies..."
As if we aren’t being tracked, recorded, and monitored enough, the Pentagon now has a laser that can identify a person by their heartbeat. Your heartbeat is going to be a lot harder to hide than your face...
So when is enough surveillance enough? Apparently, there’s no line the government can cross that will rile up the masses. We’ve got facial recognition in airports and schools, cars that can be unlocked just by looking at them, technology that can detect a person’s unique way of walking, and of course the ubiquitous fingerprint, used for everything from smartphones to event ticketing. Next on the agenda…Your heartbeat, according to an article written by Engadget.
As MIT Technology Review reports, the Pentagon has developed a laser that can identify people from a distance by their heartbeat alone. The technology, known as Jetson, uses laser vibrometry to identify surface movement on the skin caused by a heartbeat, and it works from 200 meters away.
Everyone’s cardiac signature is unique, and unlike faces and fingerprints, it can’t be altered in any way. As with facial recognition and other biometrics which rely on optimal conditions, though, Jetson does have a few challenges. It works through regular clothing such as a shirt, but not thicker garments, such as a winter coat. It also takes about 30 seconds to collect the necessary information, so right now it only works if the target is sitting or standing still. And, of course, its efficiency would also depend on some kind of cardiac database. Nonetheless, under the right conditions, Jetson has over 95 percent accuracy. –Engadget.
This would mean the Pentagon’s goal is to create a cardiac database of everyone’s heartbeat in order to monitor, track, and surveil all of us. Orwell’s future looks better than what we’re going to be experiencing. Official documents from the Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office (CTTSO) suggest this has been in the works for some time. However, it could have other applications as well.
Proponents say that this could help doctors wirelessly monitor patients, and it may very well be sold to the public as such using propaganda. However, if history is any indication, this will be used as a tool of mass surveillance just like our smartphones are now..."
"By now, most people in the "free" European democracies and in the US have accepted that we now live in a de facto surveillance state, as government agencies like the NSA (in the US) and MI5 and GCHQ (in the UK) hoover up reams of personal data - everything from our log logs, texts and browser history - and dump it in a giant database.
This week, a civil rights group is making the latest effort to try and hold this vast and unchecked government bureaucracy accountable by challenging MI5, the British domestic intelligence service, in the country's high court, accusing it of violating data collection and storage privileges by storing private citizens’ information in bulk without proper protections.
The suit, brought by the human rights organization Liberty, alleges that MI5 has no control of its storage of vast volumes of people’s calls, messages, web browsing history, as well as other personal data that the agency has managed to obtain on the basis of surveillance warrants, which were often issued under false pretext, according to RT.
Furthermore, MI5 routinely violates privileges obtained by the Investigatory Powers Act (IPA), which allows the security services to hack individuals computers and phones under the pretext of national security. And though the suit alleges that the agency has been aware of the breaches, it has purportedly done nothing to address them.
Liberty claims that the MI5 persistently violates privileges obtained by the Investigatory Powers Act (IPA), which allows the security services to hack individuals' computers and phones in the name of national security.The agency’s failures have been identified by the head of the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office (IPCO), Sir Adrian Fulford, who is tasked with safeguarding the storage and timely deletion of bulk data. A series of 10 documents and letters from MI5 and IPCO have been shared with the court in support of the claims.
The spy agency has been aware of breaches of compliance with the IPA for at least three years but has “kept the failings secret,” according to the evidence presented. The MI5 handling of people’s data was found to be “undoubtedly unlawful”by Fulford, who accused the intelligence service of “historical lack of compliance” with IPA safeguards.
When applying for warrants to search people's data, the MI5 lied and assured the British government that the proper precautions would be taken to safely store said data, when the agency knew this wasn't the case.
"MI5 have been holding on to people's data - ordinary people's data, your data, my data - illegally for many years," Megan Goulding, a lawyer for Liberty, said. "Not only that, they've been trying to keep their really serious errors secret - secret from the security services watchdog, who's supposed to know about them, secret from the Home Office, secret from the prime minister and secret from the public."
To be clear: The issue here isn't the collection of the data - that's all legal - it's the way the data are stored that creates problems for the company.
"The storage of the data exceeded the time it was allowed to be stored, which means that the whole exercise can be rendered unlawful," Yair Cohen, a social media lawyer and the author of the book ‘The Net is Closing: Birth of the e-police.'
Specifically, the agency's unwillingness to erase the bulk data once it is no longer needed could "endanger people whose data MI5 possessed," Cohen claimed, adding that hundreds of people without authorized access to the data might easily be able to view it.
"This type of data has been kept in an insecure manner. It means that it was perhaps open for hundreds of people to view it...maybe there would have been leaks of the data to all sort of organizations that shouldn't really be accessing the data for national security reasons,” Cohen explained..."
"Russian lawmakers have said the new US-Poland joint declaration unveiled yesterday, which will see 1,000 more US troops sent to Poland from Germany along with military drones, will force the Kremlin to take"retaliatory steps"against what the Russian parliamentary statement called US “further large-scale deployments”.
One lawmaker went so far as to say the Russian military "would make Poland a target in the event of a conflict," according to Reuters.
One Russian official, identified as the deputy head of the upper house of parliament’s international affairs committee, told the Interfax news agency: “In the event of any conflict, God forbid, the territory of Poland would become a clear target for a retaliatory strike, if there was suddenly an attack on us,” as cited in Reuters, while others warned of a new Cuban missile crisis scenario but this time on Russia's border...."
Withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal was a top campaign priority for President Trump, one he accomplished in 2018. In a May 8 speech from the White House, he said the agreement was “a horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made.” He also claimed in a tweet the agreement increased Iran’s military budget, which CNN called misleading. When reporters from The Washington Post asked the source of the claim, the White House provided a Forbes article by an Iranian writer named Heshmat Alavi.
Alavi is described in his Forbes contributor biography as “an Iranian activist with a passion for equal rights.”His byline also appears in The Hill, The Daily Caller and The Federalist. The problem, however, is not only that President Trump may be using a misleading claim to support his decision to withdraw from an international nonproliferation agreement, but that the person who wrote about the claim may not exist,according to new reporting from The Intercept.
“Alavi’s persona,” Murtaza Hussain writes in The Intercept, “is a propaganda operation run by the Iranian opposition group Mojahedin-e-Khalq, which is known by the initials MEK.”
Hassan Heyrani, a high-ranking defector from the MEK and one of Hussain’s sources, told The Intercept that Alavi’s persona is a group effort “run by a team of people from the political wing of the MEK,” who are based in Albania. According to Heyrani, the group writes under a pseudonym partly because MEK abhors individuality. As Heyrani told The Intercept, “… the leader is the first man in the organization, and everything should be under their shadow.”
MEK, Hussain explains, is “deeply unpopular” in Iran, and is now looking to English-speaking audiences in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. These are all places, Hussain writes, “whose foreign policies are crucial nodes in the MEK’s central goal of overthrowing the Iranian regime.”
Creating a writer persona isn’t the MEK’s only attempt at disinformation. Reza Sadeghi, a former MEK member now living in Canada, told The Intercept, “We were always active in making false news stories to spread to the foreign press and in Iran.” MEK also donated money to various politicians and paid them to make speeches favorable to MEK.
Concentrating its campaigns outside of Iran is part of MEK’s strategy. As Massoud Khodabandeh, a former member of MEK’s intelligence department, told The Intercept, “The group barely produces content in Farsi. They seem to have given up on having a domestic audience in Iran. Their point now is to influence people in the English-speaking world. … Their online strategy works in Washington; it doesn’t work in Tehran.”
Hussain elaborates:
The MEK conducts relentless online information campaigns, using an army of bots to flood online debates about Iran with the group’s perspective. One of the goals of the MEK team that manages the Hesmat Alavi account, Heyrani said, is to get articles under Alavi’s name published in the American press. The Intercept’s requests for comment to the MEK’s political wing, along with interview requests to the alleged operators of Alavi’s persona, went unanswered.
Alavi was a successful creation, particularly in Forbes, which published 61 articles with his byline between April 2017 and April 2018. Many of the articles combined denunciations of the current Iranian regime with suggestions that MEK’s leader should be the leader of Iran. According to The Intercept, none of the outlets that published Alavi’s byline were able to confirm that they ever spoke with him. The Daily Caller said it stopped publishing him due to quality concerns. Forbes said it ended the relationship in 2018.
Before MEK’s articles influenced U.S. policymaking, MEK was listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. State Department, due to its violent history, a classification that was removed as part of the Iran deal.
The US has officially blamed Iran for Thursday's attacks, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters during a Thursday press briefing. The secretary of state and longtime Iran hawk said Iran's unprovoked attacks are part of a campaign to escalate tension in the region and disrupt the flow of the international oil trade (if we can't be sell our oil, nobody can, would appear to be the logic). He also said that Tehran rejected Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's outreach for diplomacy.
The US is planning to raise concerns about Iran at the UN Security Council, Pompeo said.
For many years leftist billionaire George Soros has used his wealth to remake our society.
His latest area of focus is criminal justice. From Texas to Philadelphia to Virginia, Soros has reportedly spent millions in backing candidates for district attorneys or prosecutors.
“Philadelphia is the laboratory where this experiment of Soros funded prosecutors is playing out,” said William McSwain the US Attorney for Eastern District of Pennsylvania on Tucker Carlson Show.
“Now the returns are in. Larry Krasner, the Philadelphia District Attorney has been in office for about a year and half, funded by Mr. Soros, and we can look at the data and we can see what is happening to Philadelphia, where homicides have skyrocketed, shooting have skyrocketed, the worst types of violent crimes have really gone up. And in addition to that some of the low level and mid level crimes have also gone up but they aren’t being reported. And the reason they are not being reported is that DA has said that he is not going to prosecute them.”
Withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal was a top campaign priority for President Trump, one he accomplished in 2018. In a May 8 speech from the White House, he said the agreement was “a horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made.” He also claimed in a tweet the agreement increased Iran’s military budget, which CNN called misleading. When reporters from The Washington Post asked the source of the claim, the White House provided a Forbes article by an Iranian writer named Heshmat Alavi.
Alavi is described in his Forbes contributor biography as “an Iranian activist with a passion for equal rights.” His byline also appears in The Hill, The Daily Caller and The Federalist. The problem, however, is not only that President Trump may be using a misleading claim to support his decision to withdraw from an international nonproliferation agreement, but that the person who wrote about the claim may not exist, according to new reporting from The Intercept.
“Alavi’s persona,” Murtaza Hussain writes in The Intercept, “is a propaganda operation run by the Iranian opposition group Mojahedin-e-Khalq, which is known by the initials MEK.”
Hassan Heyrani, a high-ranking defector from the MEK and one of Hussain’s sources, told The Intercept that Alavi’s persona is a group effort “run by a team of people from the political wing of the MEK,” who are based in Albania. According to Heyrani, the group writes under a pseudonym partly because MEK abhors individuality. As Heyrani told The Intercept, “… the leader is the first man in the organization, and everything should be under their shadow.”
MEK, Hussain explains, is “deeply unpopular” in Iran, and is now looking to English-speaking audiences in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. These are all places, Hussain writes, “whose foreign policies are crucial nodes in the MEK’s central goal of overthrowing the Iranian regime.”
Creating a writer persona isn’t the MEK’s only attempt at disinformation. Reza Sadeghi, a former MEK member now living in Canada, told The Intercept, “We were always active in making false news stories to spread to the foreign press and in Iran.” MEK also donated money to various politicians and paid them to make speeches favorable to MEK.
Concentrating its campaigns outside of Iran is part of MEK’s strategy. As Massoud Khodabandeh, a former member of MEK’s intelligence department, told The Intercept, “The group barely produces content in Farsi. They seem to have given up on having a domestic audience in Iran. Their point now is to influence people in the English-speaking world. … Their online strategy works in Washington; it doesn’t work in Tehran.”
Hussain elaborates:
The MEK conducts relentless online information campaigns, using an army of bots to flood online debates about Iran with the group’s perspective. One of the goals of the MEK team that manages the Hesmat Alavi account, Heyrani said, is to get articles under Alavi’s name published in the American press. The Intercept’s requests for comment to the MEK’s political wing, along with interview requests to the alleged operators of Alavi’s persona, went unanswered.
Alavi was a successful creation, particularly in Forbes, which published 61 articles with his byline between April 2017 and April 2018. Many of the articles combined denunciations of the current Iranian regime with suggestions that MEK’s leader should be the leader of Iran. According to The Intercept, none of the outlets that published Alavi’s byline were able to confirm that they ever spoke with him. The Daily Caller said it stopped publishing him due to quality concerns. Forbes said it ended the relationship in 2018.
Before MEK’s articles influenced U.S. policymaking, MEK was listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. State Department, due to its violent history, a classification that was removed as part of the Iran deal.
