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Authored by Timoschuk via TheDuran.com,

The political dispute between Greece and Turkey over the disputed territories continues to escalate…

On Saturday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was forced to fly to Nicosia to discuss the situation in the Mediterranean Sea. The visit took place two weeks after the telephone talks between the presidents of the United States, Turkey and the Greek prime minister.

Donald Trump was unable to effectively resolve the Turkish-Greek controversy. During the talks, Kyriakos Mitsotakis complained about “destabilizing actions of Turkey, threatening peace and stability in the region, as well as testing NATO cohesion.” In response, Erdogan claimed the readiness to conduct a dialogue to resolve contradictions.

Asa result, Ankara sent another geological reconnaissance ship to the Mediterranean Sea. And exacerbated the already tense situation.

The essence of the conflict between Turkey, Greece and Cyprus lies precisely in the fact that Turkey is conducting geological exploration of minerals in the waters that Greece and Cyprus consider their exclusive economic zone.

Asa result of the visit, Mike Pompeo supported Greece and pledged US support for the rights of Cyprus to exploit hydrocarbon reserves in its exclusive economic zone.

The fact that the United States in this situation is against Turkey can be judged by other facts. For example, the US and Cyprus are currently conducting bilateral naval exercises. In addition, a bilateral document was signed on the construction of a Cyprus Center for Land, Open Seas and Port Security (CYCLOPS). The Americans have already allocated the first tranche for its creation and operation. This is a very expressive gesture in support of the Cypriots. Typically, the American president advocates for NATO member countries to build infrastructure at their own expense. Another symbolic gesture of support for Cyprus is the lifting of the embargo on the supply of non-lethal weapons.

Such actions in the political arena are usually considered as a symbol of formal support without a major change in the military-political alignment.The Turkish Foreign Ministry reacted sharply to these US moves, saying they “poison hopes for peace in the Eastern Mediterranean and are incompatible with the spirit of alliance between Turkey and the United States”.

Earlier, Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced Turkey’s readiness to use the Armed Forces to solve the problem. The US steps indicate that Washington believes that the political ambitions of the Turkish president can push him to a military solution to geopolitical conflicts with Greece and Cyprus.

It is worth noting that being members of NATO, Greece and Turkey have  had a bilateral armed conflict. The result was the appearance in 1974 inthe territories of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus taken away from Cyprus.

If we assess the possibility of an armed conflict, then most likely Turkey will win again. Its armed forces are stronger than the Cypriotones and have experience in real combat.

At the same time, the United States, as the leader of NATO, is faced with the task of preventing a military conflict between the two members of the alliance. And this task is no longer only internal relations within NATO. With his behavior, Erdogan is effectively defying America and demonstrating a reluctance to obey. And the whole world is watching the result of the confrontation.

In addition, the conflict between Turkey and Greece calls into question the ability to provide security. If a military clash between the two countries occurs, it will deal a significant image blow to the United States and will certainly shake the partners’ faith in NATO.

Just after Moscow announced Tuesday that Russian force reserve units would be withdrawn from the Lithuanian border, top Russian officials have slammed NATO “flexing its muscle” during the ongoing ‘Tobruq Legacy 2020’ drills in Lithuania. 

A top official, Alexander Kanshin, who heads the Association of Unions of Reserve Officers said that while “alarming,” it’s not expected that NATO will take “any real military action against Belarus,” according to his comments in TASS.

But it was the director of Russia’s foreign intelligence service SVR, Sergey Naryshkin, who issued the most directly provocative comments Thursday. The powerful intelligence chief charged that the United States is “stage managing” the unrest in Belarus, which has since the Aug.9 reelection of President Alexander Lukashenko sought to topple him.

He described that US intelligence, NGOs, and Western state linked media had funded ground protests to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. Over prior weekends protests in the streets of Minsk alone have swelled to 100,000 people according to most estimates. 

“Though publicly Washington tries to keep a low profile, once the massive street demonstrations began, the Americans stepped up funding to the Belarusian anti-government forces bountifully to the tune of tens of millions of dollars,” Naryshkin said, also calling US and Western involvement “obvious” – however, not presenting any specific evidence or intelligence, only outlining the scenario he said is already long in action.

Tweet from a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council and self-described “media trainer”:

#Belarus. Excellent video from today’s March of Heroes in #Minsk.Absolutely peaceful people are demanding justice and democracy,but the authorities are responding with force and repressions.This scale, this consistency are unprecedented in modern Belarus.This can’t be for nothing pic.twitter.com/8337NQPExa

— Hanna Liubakova (@HannaLiubakova) September 13, 2020

“The demonstrations have been well organized from the very outset and coordinated from abroad,” he said. “It is noteworthy that the West had launched the groundwork for the protests long before the elections. The United States in 2019 and early 2020 used various NGOs to provide about $20 million for staging anti-government demonstrations,” Naryshkin alleged.

He said “ostensibly independent bloggers” were organizing social media campaigns at the behest of more powerful interests.

Describing a classic ‘color revolution’ scenario, the SVR director highlighted the involvement of US and EU NGOs which were providing training in eastern European countries and border states with Russia.

“Some of them underwent training in Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine, where experienced US instructors coached them to stage ‘non-violent’ protests,” Naryshkin said.

He also noted that the US is “closely mentoring former presidential candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya and other opposition activists, whom they try to present in the guise of ‘popular leaders’ and future top officials of a ‘democratic Belarus’.”

On Tuesday in a meeting between Putin and the embattled Lukashenko, Putin emphasized in statements to the press that Belarus must resolve its own issues internally, but without any foreign interference. 

However, it’s unclear the degree to which Putin would get more involved on an overt level, so long as any alleged Western meddling remains under the surface. 

Of course, Western intelligence and media no doubt see Russia’s own covert meddling at work in propping up Lukashenko, but at this point it doesn’t appear either side wants to take things toward a costly, full-blown Ukraine scenario. 

Authored by Alexander Zhang via The Epoch Times,

The Chinese regime “poses the greatest threat to world order,” Britain’s Chief of Defence Intelligence told British media this week.

Lt. Gen. Jim Hockenhull, speaking at the first media briefing at the UK’s Defence Intelligence hub based at the Royal Air Force base in Wyton, Cambridgeshire, discussed how “global players such as Russia and China continually challenge the existing order without prompting direct conflict, operating in the expanding grey-zone between war and peacetime,” the Ministry of Defence said in a statement.

While Hockenhull saw Russia as posing “the greatest military and geopolitical threat to European security,” he reserved the starkest warning for China’s communist regime, The Telegraph reported.

People’s Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers take part in a performance during an open day at Stonecutters Island naval base in Hong Kong, on June 30, 2019. (Tyrone Siu/Reuters)

China is “increasingly authoritarian and assertive,” he said. “It poses the greatest threat to world order, seeking to impose Chinese standards and norms and using its economic power to influence and subvert, backed up by massive investment in modernizing its armed forces.”

According to The Sun, Hockenhull said that Beijing had accelerated its modernization of the military since Xi Jinping came to power in 2013.

The Chinese military now boasts “an array of leading-edge weapons systems that are fast eroding Western military advantages,” he said, according to The Sun, adding, “Its growing fleet of Renhai-class destroyers are the most capable of any navy.”

A Chinese navy formation, including the aircraft carrier Liaoning (C), during military drills in the South China Sea, on Jan. 2, 2017. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

The shifting global picture has changed the character of warfare in ways that will challenge the West to keep pace with adversaries who do not play by the rules, Hockenhull said, according to the Ministry of Defence.

He warned that conflict is bleeding into new domains such as cyber and space, threatening Britain’s cohesion, resilience, and global interests.

“Whilst conventional threats remain, we have seen our adversaries invest in Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, and other ground-breaking technologies, whilst also supercharging more traditional techniques of influence and leverage,” he said.

A Long March 3B rocket carrying the Beidou-3GEO3 satellite lifts off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Xichang in southwestern China’s Sichuan Province on June 23, 2020. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

The UK government is conducting a comprehensive review of its foreign, security, and defense policy.

As part of the review, Britain’s Ministry of Defence is planning to pivot away from traditional defense and “operate much more in the newest domains of space, cyber, and sub-sea,” UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said in July.

Both Russia and China have been developing offensive space weapons and upgrading their capabilities, Wallace wrote in The Telegraph.

Cyber-attacks by hostile state actors are also seen as posing a heightened risk to the UK, especially during the pandemic caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus.

Medical workers take swab samples from residents to be tested for the COVID-19 coronavirus, in a street in Wuhan in China’s central Hubei province on May 15, 2020. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

On July 22, UK’s Foreign Minister Dominic Raab said he was “deeply concerned” over evidence that “China is engaged in malicious cyber attacks against commercial, medical and academic institutions, including those working to respond to the coronavirus pandemic.”

A day earlier, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that two Chinese hackers had been indicted for targeting businesses and government agencies in several countries, including the UK, Belgium, Germany, the United States, Australia, and Japan, for stealing millions of dollars worth of trade secrets and other sensitive information, and attempting to steal research on COVID-19.

On May 5, the UK’s National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) and the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security agency (CISA) issued a joint advisory, exposing malicious cyber campaigns targeting international health-care and medical research organizations involved in the coronavirus response.

To counter cyber threats, the UK government announced that health-care businesses will be able to get government-funded training in order to boost their cyber-security and protect sensitive data.

Leaked emails between the senior adviser to Nashville’s Mayor and a health department official reveal a disturbing effort to conceal extremely low coronavirus cases emanating from bars and restaurants, while the lion’s share of infections occurred in nursing homes and construction workers, according to WZTV Nashville.

On June 30th, contact tracing was giving a small view of coronavirus clusters. Construction and nursing homes causing problems more than a thousand cases traced to each category, but bars and restaurants reported just 22 cases.

Leslie Waller from the health department asks “This isn’t going to be publicly released, right? Just info for Mayor’s Office?“

“Correct, not for public consumption.” Writes senior advisor Benjamin Eagles. –WZTV

Four weeks later, Tennessean reporter Nate Rau asked the health department: “the figure you gave of “more than 80” does lead to a natural question: If there have been over 20,000 positive cases of COVID-19 in Davidson and only 80 or so are traced to restaurants and bars, doesn’t that mean restaurants and bars aren’t a very big problem?“

To which health department official Brian Todd scrambled for an answer – asking five health department officials: “Please advise how you respond. BT.”

The response – from an official whose name was omitted from the leaked email: “My two cents. We have certainly refused to give counts per bar because those numbers are low per site,” adding “We could still release the total though, and then a response to the over 80 could be “because that number is increasing all the time and we don’t want to say a specific number.””

According to a metro staff attorney asked by city councilmember Steve Glover to verify the authenticity of the emails, “I was able to get verification from the Mayor’s Office and the Department of Health that these emails are real.”

Glover told WZTV: “They are fabricating information. They’ve blown there entire credibility Dennis. Its gone i don’t trust a thing they say going forward …nothing.”

Glover says he has been contacted by an endless stream of downtown bartenders, waitresses, and restaurant owners. Why would they not release these numbers?

“We raised taxes 34 percent and put hundreds literally thousands of people out of work that are now worried about losing their homes their apartments etcetera and we did it on bogus data. That should be illegal!” he says.

Again, we weren’t told by the mayor’s office this wasn’t true. We were told to file a freedom of information act request. –WZTV

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

In an interview ahead of the signing ceremony for the normalization agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, Trump said he would be willing to sell other countries in the Middle East “the same advanced weapons” the US sells to Israel.

“They’re very wealthy countries for the most part,” Trump told Fox News. Trump also mentioned the UAE’s desire for US-made F-35s and said he would “personally not have a problem” with the UAE acquiring the warplanes.

Since the normalization agreement was announced, there have been reports that the UAE F-35 sale was part of the deal. The treaties that were signed on Tuesday made no mention of F-35s, but the sale is clearly still on the table.

He noted that the UAE wanted to buy some fighter jets, adding: “I personally would have not problem with it. Some people do, they say… maybe they go to war.” — Reuters

President Trump is a big fan of selling weapons to Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia. The president has boasted about the billions of dollars in weapons the Kingdom has purchased and has vetoed efforts by Congress to end such sales.

Congress tried to prohibit arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE in an effort to end US support for the war in Yemen, where the US-backed Saudi-led coalition regularly kills civilians.

Israeli PM Netanyahu with “key to the White House” presented to him by President Trump and Melania Trump pic.twitter.com/uj3TMuvn4F

— Steve Holland (@steveholland1) September 15, 2020

The atrocities in Yemen are so bad that US officials in the State Department fear being arrested overseas for war crimes for their role in facilitating the weapons sales.

Authored by Cynthia Chung via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

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

“MindWar must be strategic in emphasis, with tactical applications playing a reinforcing, supplementary role. In its strategic context, MindWar must reach out to friends, enemies, and neutrals alike across the globe…through the media possessed by the United States which have the capabilities to reach virtually all people on the face of the Earth…State of the art developments in satellite communication, video recording techniques, and laser and optical transmission of broadcasts make possible a penetration of the minds of the world such as would have been inconceivable just a few years ago. Like the sword of Excalibur, we have but to reach out and seize this tool; and it can transform the world for us if we have the courage and integrity to enhance civilization with it. If we do not accept Excalibur, then we relinquish our ability to inspire foreign cultures with our morality. If they can then desire moralities unsatisfactory to us, we have no choice but to fight them on a more brutish level.”

– “From PSYOP to MindWar: The Psychology of Victory” by Col. Paul Vallely and Maj. Michael Aquino, a document written to increase the influence of the “spoon-benders” in the U.S. military.

On Sept 4th, an unprecedented show of force aimed at Russia occurred, with U.S. Air Force B-52H Stratofortress bombers flying from the UK to Ukraine airspace. After arriving in Ukraine airspace they orbited for an extended period right at the edge of the Ukraine-Russian border.

These B-52H bombers are capable of carrying nuclear weapons.

In addition, a number of U.S. and UK aerial intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) assets were operating in the area at the time, including a RC-135V/W spy plane, a RAF Airseeker and a RAF Sentinel R1 radar jet. No doubt to gather information on Russia’s integrated air defense networks and other command nodes.

Last month, Russia announced in their official military newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda that any ballistic missile launched at its territory will be perceived as a nuclear attack that will warrant a nuclear response. In the article, senior officers of the Russian military, General Staff, Maj. Gen. Andrei Sterlin and Col. Alexander Khryapin, stated that in the case of an incoming ballistic missile towards Russia, there would be no way to determine whether it were fitted with a nuclear or conventional warhead and thus Russia is giving forewarning that any missile attack will be perceived as a nuclear attack.

The Krasnaya Zvezda article emphasized that the announcement in June of the new nuclear deterrent policy is intended to unambiguously explain what Russia sees as aggression: “Russia has designated the ‘red lines’ that we don’t advise anyone to cross…If a potential adversary dares to do that, the answer will undoubtedly be devastating.”

Some may consider this an over-reaction on the part of Russia, however, just six months ago the U.S. military conducted a simulation of a “limited” nuclear exchange with…Russia. This was strange news on several accounts. For one, this sort of thing is not typically announced in the candid detail U.S. defense secretary Mark Esper described to journalists, giddy that he got to “play himself” in this war game scenario as if he were preparing for a Hollywood movie doing his best John Wayne impression: “If you got them by the balls their hearts and minds will follow.”

However, the most concerning revelation of this simulated exercise was the announcement to the American people that “it might be possible to fight, and win, a battle with nuclear weapons, without the exchange leading to an all-out-world-ending conflict.”

In other words, throw your cares to the wind, that is, the “spirit wind” known as kamikaze, because we are going for it.

In the transcript of a background briefing on the war game exercise, senior Pentagon officials described their tactic further, explaining that their confident calculation on being “victorious” in this exercise completely relied on the supposition that such a confrontation would remain “limited” in its nuclear exchange.

“It’s a very reasonable response to what we saw was a Russian nuclear doctrine and nuclear capability that suggested to us that they might use nuclear weapons in a limited way,” a senior official stated.

It seems what senior Pentagon officials are really saying here about the predictability of the Russians, is that there seems to be a line the Russians won’t cross in the case of a nuclear conflict…but the Americans sure will.

Hans Kristensen, director of the nuclear information project at the Federation of American Scientists tried to play down the “rodeo circus” and reduce the high profile announcement of the U.S. military exercise as simply a marketing gimmick to “justify” the new nuclear weapons since we are entering the new budget phase. “So all of this has been played up to serve that process.” stated Kristensen.

I don’t know about you but I am getting some serious déjà vu. Didn’t we already go through all of this with the disastrous JIC-502 spookery?

JIC-502 intelligence report titled “Implications of Soviet Possession of Atomic Weapons” drafted in Jan 20th 1950, turned out not to be an intelligence report at all but rather a sales pitch, claiming that a nuclear-armed Soviet Union had introduced the notion that “a tremendous military advantage would be gained by the power that struck first and succeeded in carrying through an effective surprise attack.” For more on this refer to my paper.

It was JIC-502 which would be the first to put forward a justification for the preventive first strike concept, supported by a massive military buildup under the pretence of pre-emptive war.

NSC-68 would be drafted the same year and called for a massive military buildup to be completed by 1954 dubbed the “year of maximum danger,” the year JIC-502 claimed the Soviets would achieve military superiority and be able to launch war against the U.S.

But the Soviets never did launch such a war, and all claims of their capabilities let alone their intentions turned out to be entirely fraudulent… so what was it all for?

Did the U.S. have to put everything into expanding their military, turning away from the concept of a nation at peace made up of citizen soldiers and instead towards a nation in perpetual war made up of the Nietzschean fantasy of Übermensch (Beyond-Man) super soldiers, the very thing that Eisenhower warned against?

Did this all have to happen in defense of “peace and security” of the free world?

Why were the predictions of the JIC-502 completely unfounded? Were the predictions based off of corrupted data? Did the Soviets simply change their mind? Or was it never about a pre-emptive war but rather was always about global dominance.

What would the American people think if they knew the truth, that their entire military industrial complex was never built for the protection of the “free world” in opposition to dictators and despots but rather the very opposite? That it simply thought its ideology the superior one, the only lawful dictatorship that had the right to rule, even if it meant by force.

In the words of Vallely/Aquino: “If we do not accept Excalibur, then we relinquish our ability to inspire foreign cultures with our morality. If they can then desire moralities unsatisfactory to us, we have no choice but to fight them on a more brutish level.”

This may look like just a “rodeo circus” but it is far far worst. As Edgar Poe elaborated in his “The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether”, the asylum is quite literally being run by the lunatics.

What do Jedi Warriors, Spoon-benders, the First Earth Battalion and Men Who Stare at Goats Have in Common?

For those who need a refresher of the film Dr. Strangelove’s synopsis, it is about what could happen if a lunatic had the authority to bypass the U.S. president and cause a nuclear escalation between the U.S. and USSR. In the movie, it is U.S. Air Force General Jack Ripper who initiates a nuclear attack to destroy the USSR under the premise that once the U.S. government is briefed on the situation, they would have no choice but to commit 100% towards a hostile attack against the USSR, in order to prevent nuclear retaliation.

The reason why General Jack Ripper is fully convinced that it is absolutely necessary to destroy the USSR is because he believes that the communists are conspiring to pollute the “precious bodily fluids” of the American people. Gen. Jack Ripper goes on to describe how he first discovered this Soviet ploy, after sexual relations with a woman and how he felt empty inside but that luckily he was astute enough to be able to accurately deduce the cause of this feeling of emptiness as due to being drained of his “life essence”, all part of the communist conspiracy for sure. In other words, Gen. Jack Ripper is unequivocally insane.

Unfortunately, this type of thinking in the U.S. military is not reserved to pure fiction.

Sometime in the late 1980s then Col. Paul Vallely, Commander of the 7th Psychological Operations Group and then Maj. Michael Aquino, PSYOP Research & Analysis Team Leader authored a paper titled “From PSYOP to MindWar: The Psychology of Victory”, which discusses the necessity to wage perpetual psychological warfare against friend and enemy populations alike, and even against the American people. As stated in the paper:

“MindWar must target all participants to be effective. It must not only weaken the enemy; it must strengthen the United States. It strengthens the United States by denying enemy propaganda access to our people, and by explaining and emphasizing to our people the rationale for our national interest in a specific war…There are some purely natural conditions under which minds may become more or less receptive to ideas, and MindWar should take full advantage of such phenomena as atmospheric electromagnetic activity, air ionization, and extremely low frequency waves.”

Of course the terms “enemy” and “national interest” are not elaborated on, nor is the matter of free will even considered but rather that mind control is not only “natural”, it is essential. Besides the overtly fascist and occultist content in the paper, the proposal had a disturbing similarity to the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program launched by the Donald Rumsfeld Pentagon. TIA was a global propaganda and mega-data-mining plan that was supposedly scraped after a series of negative news stories.

On Aug 17th, 2005 The New York Times published an article that discussed how “a military intelligence team repeatedly tried to contact the FBI in 2000 to warn about the existence of an American-based terrorist cell that included the ring leader of the Sept. 11 attacks” as reported by veteran Army intelligence officer Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer.

The information came from the highly classified intelligence program “Able Danger”, which had successfully identified the terrorist ringleader Mohamed Atta and three other hijackers of the 9/11 terrorist attack in mid-2000, well over a year before the actual 9/11 attack.

According to New York Times article, Shaffer learned later that lawyers associated with the Special Operations Command of the Defense Department had canceled the FBI meetings “because they feared controversy if Able Danger was portrayed as a military operation that had violated the privacy of civilians who were legally in the United States.” (Able Danger was linked in its function to the TIA program)

However, this is only part of the truth, the by far uglier truth is that they were already fully aware of the 9/11 terrorist ring and didn’t want a wrench thrown into the gears so to speak.

Gen. Vallely, Lt. Col. Aquino and Col. Alexander (author of “The New Mental Battlefield: Beam Me Up, Spock”) are leading figures within the Special Operations community. In addition, Gen. Stubblebine III, Gen. Schoomaker, Gen. Downing and Gen. Boykin are the four names most often cited as promoters of programs like the “Goat Lab,” “Jedi Warriors,” “Grill Flame,” “Task Force Delta,” (aka the spoon-benders) and the “First Earth Battalion,” and have held top posts within the military intelligence and Special Operations commands.

These were the programs that promoted the idea that one could learn to bend a metal spoon, walk through walls, and burst the hearts of goats with the use of “mind over matter” techniques.

In 1979, Lt. Col. Channon presented a 125 page document called “The First Earth Battalion,” which outlined “non-lethal” techniques that would soon be adopted by the military including the use of atonal noises as a form of combat psychological warfare and widespread experimentation with psychoelectronics and other means of debilitation.

On March 10th, 1991, then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz while serving as chief policy advisor to then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, wrote the memo “Do We Need a Non-Lethal Defense Initiative?” in which he wrote, “A U.S. lead in non-lethal technologies will increase our options and reinforce our position in the post-Cold War world.” Though no mention was made of Col. Alexander, who spear-headed the non-lethal weaponry campaign, Alexander at the time of the memo had retired from active duty and was heading the Non-Lethal Weapons Program at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

In 1990, Col. Alexander published “The Warrior’s Edge” and states its goal as to:

“unlock the door to the extraordinary human potentials inherent in each of us. To do this, we, like governments around the world, must take a fresh look at non-traditional methods of affecting reality. We must raise human consciousness of the potential power of the individual body/mind system – the power to manipulate reality. We must be willing to retake control of our past, present, and ultimately, our future.” (emphasis added)

Investigative journalist Jon Ronson, in his book “The Men Who Stare at Goats”, goes through how ‘psychic warriors’ such as Uri Geller and Jim Channon were called back into government service after 9/11, and that a series of meetings in 2004 were held between Gen. Schoomaker and Jim Channon to start a think tank which would utilise “First Earth Battalion” techniques in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Non-Lethal Techniques of Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and al-Qa’im

According to a 1998 International Committee of the Red Cross presentation before the European parliament intended on evaluating how “non-lethal” the non-lethal technologies promoted by Alexander, Channon et al. actually are in reality, it was found that non-lethal weapons are simply defined as weapons with a less-than 25% fatality rate.

Perhaps this is what the senior Pentagon officials were referring to in their “limited” nuclear exchange scenarios.

Included in the list of non-lethal weapons now widely used in the U.S. military are lasers, extremely low frequency (ELF) weapons, and various chemical, biological and audio stun weapons that can cause permanent damage such as blindness, deafness and destruction of the gastrointestinal system.

According to Ronson and The New Yorker writer Jane Mayer, many of the torture techniques employed at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and the less-well-known al-Qa’im near the Syrian border in Iraq, are based on Channon and Alexander’s non-lethal conceptions. Jim Channon actually confirmed this in an email correspondence with Ronson.

At one point in his investigation, Ronson asks Stuart Heller, friend of Jim Channon, if he could name one soldier who was “the living embodiment” of the First Earth Battalion, to which Heller responds unhesitatingly “Bert Rodriguez.” Ronson continues in his book, “In April 2001, Bert Rodriguez took on a new student. His name was Ziad Jarrah.” Rodriguez taught Jarrah “the choke hold and the kamikaze spirit. You need a code you’d die for, a do-or-die desire.” Rodriguez added, “Ziad was like Luke Skywalker. You know when Luke walks the invisible path? You have to believe it’s there…Yeah, Ziad believed it. He was like Luke Skywalker.” Rodriguez trained Ziad Jarrah for six months.

On Sept 11, 2001, Ziad Jarrah took control of the United Airlines flight 93 as part of the orchestrated 9/11 terrorist attack.

Meet Dr. Strangelove

At the end of the film Dr. Strangelove we are finally confronted with the “top lunatic” so to speak who was really in charge this whole time. For all the “top brass” in the war room, nobody was really in control of the situation this entire time since the entire “war scenario” was set-up as a positive feedback loop within the doomsday plan of a lunatic.

You see, the belief that one can bend spoons, walk through walls, and burst the hearts of goats is not the problem, it is the belief held by top officials within the U.S. military industrial complex that their ideology of appropriate morality is to prevail and that one must use these mind-over-matter techniques to achieve the ultimate goal, “the power to manipulate reality”, that global dominance can be achieved without wiping out the world.

That somehow “it might be possible to fight, and win, a battle with nuclear weapons, without the exchange leading to an all-out-world-ending conflict,” and if not…we may all die for a lunatic’s dream in the process.

One can clearly see the moment the market’s mood reversed today during Powell’s FOMC press conference: it took place just as Powell warned that “more fiscal stimulus is likely to be needed”, noting that while the recovery has been faster than expected in the past 60 days, “there’s certainly a risk” the economy could slow without more stimulus. After all there are about 11 million people still out of work, small businesses are struggling and state and local governments have seen revenues drop (this is the same Fed that claimed that it is doing $120 billion in monthly QE for the benefit of US households).

Yet this is hardly the first time Powell has made that claim, in fact he has said on countless previous occasions that monetary policy alone would be insufficient (even though for the past 10 years until covid, monetary policy was in fact sufficient if nothing else than at least to push stocks higher), and that the Fed desperately needs Congress to unlock trillions in fiscal stimulus.

Why was this time different? Because in a curious schism within the republican party earlier in the day, none other than president Trump split ranks with the “conservative” republican senators when the White House gave a clear indication on Wednesday that it is willing to increase its pandemic-relief offer in talks with Democrats and that Senate Republicans should go along in order to seal a stimulus deal in the next week to 10 days. After all elections are coming, and Trump desperately needs to talk up the economy – what better way than to flood the middle-class with another trillion. Or $1.5 trillion to be exact.

Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said the President is open to the compromise $1.5 trillion stimulus proposal from a bipartisan group of House lawmakers that was an effort to break a months-long deadlock over bolstering the U.S. economy amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump himself took to his favorite medium on Wednesday morning, and when he had a clear message for Senate republicans: “Go for the much higher numbers, Republicans, it all comes back to the USA anyway.”

Democrats are “heartless”. They don’t want to give STIMULUS PAYMENTS to people who desperately need the money, and whose fault it was NOT that the plague came in from China. Go for the much higher numbers, Republicans, it all comes back to the USA anyway (one way or another!).

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 16, 2020

Then on Wednesday evening, during a White House press conference on Wednesday Trump repeated that he liked “the larger numbers” in a compromise $1.5 trillion stimulus proposal from a bipartisan group of House lawmakers that tried (and so far failed) to break a months-long deadlock over bolstering the U.S. economy.

“I agree with a lot of it,” Trump said of the plan. “I heard Nancy Pelosi say she doesn’t want to leave until we have an agreement” and “she’s come a long way.” It’s remarkable how quickly Trump ended up siding with “Crazy Nancy.”

However, even that compromise number – which was about $1 trillion more than the latest official republican proposal – was not be high enough for Nancy Pelosi who called it insufficient, while Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the chamber’s second-ranking Republican, said that large a stimulus would cause “a lot of heartburn” among GOP lawmakers.

After initially proposing a $1 trillion stimulus at the end of July, Senate Republicans attempted to advance a bill providing $650 billion in economic aid, without the direct payments to individuals that the president – and Democrats – want. Naturally, getting thrown under the bus by the president, has left quite a few of the Republicans startled and confused, as Bloomberg reports:

Trump’s new push for a deal highlights continuing divisions among Republicans, some of whom are reluctant to spend more money on stimulus with the national deficit reaching $3.3 trillion this year.

Missouri Republican Senator Roy Blunt said a number higher than $1 trillion could be the basis for an agreement, if it can be done quickly.

“I think there is a deal to be had here,” he told reporters at the Capitol. “My concern is that the window probably closes around the end of this month. And we need to get busy finding out what we can all agree on.”

But other senators resisted the idea.

Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said the Senate GOP bill, which costs about $300 billion when its cuts to Federal Reserve loan authority are counted, is the right amount.

“The president has his opinion. We have ours,” he told reporters.

At the same time, Democrats are understandably playing hardball. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said on Tuesday that Democrats shouldn’t agree to less than $2 trillion. A group of House Democratic chairmen issued a statement criticizing the Problem Solvers proposal as inadequate. Pelosi earlier on MSNBC Wednesday reinforced her demand for $2.2 trillion.

And at this rate, Trump may demand a $2+ trillion stimulus as well.

Yet even as the Democrats continued the charade – knowing well they won’t concede to a major Trump poll-boosting stimulus just 48 days before the election – Pelosi and Chuck Schumer took a victory lap and released a statement saying they were “encouraged” by Trump’s endorsement of higher spending. “We look forward to hearing from the president’s negotiators that they will finally meet us halfway,” they said.

And so did Powell, who by now has realized that the Fed is hopeless in sparking the much needed inflation (that the Fed needs to inflate away the debt), and instead is punting to Congress, whose direct stimulus funds have a far higher chance to spark the much desired reflationary wave.

The problem, as the market made it very clear, is that whereas continued deadlock in Congress – with Trump backing Republicans – would mean more monetary stimulus, another $1.5 or $2 trillion in fiscal stimulus actually stands a good chance of generating a sharp (albeit fleeting) reflationary episode. And since the Fed will be there to monetize all the newly issued debt to pay for all this stimulus it’s win-win (for everyone but the US debt which is now exploding at a record pace that has surpassed World War II). In fact, as Bank of America’s Michael Hartnett said last week, a $1.5-$2 trillion fiscal stimulus deal, coupled with an October vaccine represents the “most dangerous combo for Treasury and equity bulls” and represents “a messy inflection handoff to higher rates, inflation & inflation assets.” In the process, such deflationary assets as tech stocks and Treasurys would get clobbered, something we are already seeing this evening as the Nasdaq slides amid fears that fiscal stimulus-driven inflation may indeed be coming.

As a further reminder, BofA is merely the latest voice to caution that a transition from a Nasdaq-led market to a “value” driven one will not come without major market turbulence, with Morgan Stanley and Goldman both warning previously that a deflation to reflation rotation would lead to turmoil.

But what we find especially paradoxical is that Trump – who has repeatedly touted the repeated records in the stock market as the most objective scorecard of his presidency – is now pushing for precisely the two events, along with an accelerated vaccine, that could catalyze a sharp market correction, if not far worse. In effect, Trump is willing to sacrifice a major market drop in exchange for direct stimulus handouts and the hope that a covid vaccine is here (which is also paradoxical, since most Trump supporters will refuse to be vaccinated).

We doubt that Trump has realized just what the tradeoffs are in his latest position flip-flop, although if the president indeed sided with the Democrats in seeking a far greater stimulus over that proposed by Senate republicans, the November election outcome will almost certainly be the one that Democrats desire as well.

The U.S. Air Force used a hyper velocity projectile (HVP), capable of traveling Mach 7.3, or about 5,600 mph, fired from an Army M109 howitzer tank, to shoot down a fast-moving cruise missile over a missile range in New Mexico. 

“Tanks shooting down cruise missiles is awesome,” Dr. Will Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology, and logistics, told reporters, who was quoted by Asia Times. “Video game, sci-fi awesome.

“You’re not supposed to be able to shoot down a cruise missile with a tank. But, yes, you can, if the bullet is smart enough, and the bullet we use for that system is exceptionally smart,” Roper said. 

Main battle tanks, nevertheless a self-propelled 155 mm howitzer, are not designed to destroy fast-moving cruise missiles, suggests the HVP “smart bullet” is ground-breaking technology that could revolutionize the modern battlefield. 

The successful firing of the HVP was conducted at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, destroyed a “surrogate” Russian cruise missile target using the Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System that’s designed to detect incoming missiles. 

HVP was initially developed in 2013 to fire out of the electromagnetic railgun. However, the Pentagon’s Strategic Capabilities Office has shifted to firing the HVP out of more conventional guns, such as common artillery pieces found on the battlefield. 

The advantage of the HVP over conventional missile defenses is a dramatic decline in cost-per-kill. Each HVP costs around $85,000, opposed to $1.5 million Tomahawk missiles, $155,000 Hellfire rockets, and or $147,000 Javelin shoulder-rocket. 

So what does this mean? Well, the Pentagon can shoot a lot more of these smart bullets and not feel bad they’re robbing taxpayers. There’s also a strategic component to HVP, that is, precision-guided short-range defense at hypersonic speeds to take out enemy missiles.