The eastern Mediterranean gas field that has been put up for tender by Lebanon and is expected to be developed by an international consortium of energy companies, belongs to Israel, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Wednesday. “They [Lebanon] are announcing a tender on the gas field, including Block 9, which is ours by any definition,” Lieberman said at a conference in Tel Aviv.
The Israeli minister said that the respectable companies participating in the tender were making a major mistake, as their involvement in the project contradicts current rules and practices, calling Lebanese actions in the eastern Mediterranean “very, very challenging and provocative conduct here.”
Image via Al Arabiya
Lieberman said further that, “Respectable firms” bidding on the tender “are, to my mind, making a grave error – because this is contrary to all of the rules and all protocol in cases like this.” His remarks were made before an international security conference at a Tel Aviv University national security conference.
In December, the Lebanese government approved provisions for the right to explore two energy blocks, namely Block 4 and Block 9, in Lebanon to the consortium of Russia’s Novatek natural gas producer with France’s Total and Italy’s Eni. Lebanon launched its first oil and gas production licensing auction in January 2017, opening five of ten of its Mediterranean blocks up for international bids.
Lebanon launched its first oil and gas production licensing auction in January 2017, opening five of ten of its Mediterranean blocks (above) up for international bids. Source: Lebanese Petroleum Administration
Disputed area above. Israel announced this week that “Block 9 is ours by definition” in a disputed area which also includes Lebanon’s claims on Blocks 8 and 10. Map source: Tekmor Monitor
Lebanon, together with Israel, Cyprus and Egypt, sits on the Levant Basin in the eastern Mediterranean, where new gas fields have been revealed in 2009. However, two Lebanese offshore blocks now lie within a triangle of maritime territory claimed by Israel.
Meanwhile, Lebanon is standing its ground against Israel after the latter recently indicated its interest in oil and gas exploration in Lebanese territorial waters. “Lebanon will use all available methods to fend off the Israeli aggression that was announced today,” Energy Minister Cesar Abi Khalil said on Wednesday.
Furthermore, Lebanese President Michel ‘Aoun slammed the Israeli threats on Block 9, vowing to defend the country’s territorial waters. The issue about the gas and oil exploration first became public with Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s prior statements claiming Block 9 as Israel’s property. The Lebanese government will likely continue to respond aggressively to this economic threat and has refused to concede the interest to Israel.
And Hezbollah also weighed in on Wednesday, with its media relations wing releasing a statement that condemned the Israeli Defense Minister’s claims that Block 9 oil and gas belonged to Israel.
“The remarks of the Minister of War in the government of the Zionist enemy, Avigdor Lieberman, is a new expression of the continuing Israeli ambitions for Lebanon’s wealth, land and water, and it falls within the framework of the policy of aggression against Lebanon and its sovereignty and legitimate rights,” the Hezbollah statement read.
“We express our support for the positions of Lebanon’s heads of state and other Lebanese officials against this new aggression. We reiterate our firm and unequivocal position to fiercely confronting any aggression on our oil and gas rights, thus defending Lebanon’s assets and protecting its wealth,” the statement concluded.
The recent commissioning of HMS Queen Elizabeth, Britain’s largest ever warship, certainly made waves. Much has been made of the state of the art vessel which will bring a massive leap in capability to the fleet.
However, as Statista’s Niall McCarthy points out, redundancies have left the Royal Navy with only 29,280 personnel and that lack of manpower has created a serious dent in its strength and readiness.
It recently emerged that a trio of Russian naval vessels transiting the English Channel were intercepted by a British mine-hunter rather than one of the fleet’s frigates, due to a shortage in vessels and personnel.
The British Ministry of Defense usually publishes details of such events but on this occasion, HMS Cattistock’s Russian rendezvous was kept away from the headlines.
Today, the service has 73 commissioned ships, 20 of which are major surface combatants, along with 10 submarines.
Its 29,000 personnel pales with numbers historically. In 1945 at the end of Second World War, the Royal Navy has 861,000 personnel, a number that fell to 128,000 in 1955 and 62,000 in 1991 when the Berlin Wall came down. By 2000, naval manpower shrunk to 38,880 before reaching today’s historic low.
“The shield that protects the Earth from solar radiation is under attack from within. We can’t prevent it, but we ought to prepare…” is the ominous sub-headline of a worrisome new report that shows scientists around the world fearing that the earth’s magnetic field is shifting, with potentially disastrous consequences for mankind.
“When next the poles change places, the consequences for the electrical and electronic infrastructure that runs civilization will be dire. The question is when that will happen.”
As SHTFplan.com’s Mac Slavo notes, scientists from the University of Colorado in Boulder are sounding the alarm that the Earth’s magnetic poles are showing signs of reversing. Although the pole reversal, in and of itself, isn’t unprecedented, the solar winds that would take out the power grid and make parts of the globe uninhabitable could cause widespread disasters.
The Earth has a fierce molten core that generates a magnetic field capable of defending our planet against devastating solar winds. This magnetic field is vital to life on Earth and has weakened by 15 percent over the last 200 years. This protective field acts as a shield against harmful solar radiation and extends thousands of miles into space and its magnetism affects everything from global communication to power grids.
Historically, Earth’s North and South magnetic poles have flipped every 200,000 or 300,000 years. However, the last flip was about 780,000 years ago, meaning our planet is well overdue. The latest satellite data, from the European Space Agency’s Swarm trio which monitors the Earth’s magnetic field, suggest a pole flip may be imminent. The satellites allow researchers to study changes building at the Earth’s core, where the magnetic field is generated. Their observations suggest molten iron and nickel are draining the energy out of the Earth’s core near where the magnetic field is generated. While scientists aren’t sure why exactly this happens, they describe it as a “restless activity” that suggests the magnetic field is preparing to flip.
The signs of the Earth’s poles reversing are also apparent to Daniel Baker, who says this would devastate the power grid. If a switch happens, we would likely be exposed to solar winds capable of punching holes into the ozone layer. In a new report, Baker, who is the director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder, claims if this reversal happens, it is likely to render some areas of the planet “uninhabitable” by knocking out power grids.
Baker’s comments were made in an in-depth Undark report written by Alanna Mitchell, who has a new book about the topic titled “The Spinning Magnet: The Electromagnetic Force that Created the Modern World and Could Destroy It.”
“The dangers: devastating streams of particles from the sun, galactic cosmic rays, and enhanced ultraviolet B rays from a radiation-damaged ozone layer, to name just a few of the invisible forces that could harm or kill living creatures,” Michelle writes.
“This is serious business,” Richard Holme, Professor of Earth, Ocean, and Ecological Sciences at Liverpool University told MailOnline.
“Imagine for a moment your electrical power supply was knocked out for a few months – very little works without electricity these days.”
“No lights. No computers. No cellphones. Even flushing a toilet or filling a car’s gas tank would be impossible. And that’s just for starters.”
Researchers predict that in the event of a flip, every year a hundred thousand people would die from the increased levels of space radiation. Radiation at ground level would increase so much that some estimates suggest overall exposure to cosmic radiation would double causing more deaths from cancer. “Radiation could be 3-5 times greater than that from the man-made ozone holes. Furthermore, the ozone holes would be larger and longer-lived,” said D. Colin Forsyth from the Mullard Space Science Laboratory at UCL.
I have been commenting on social justice propaganda for quite some time; long before it was fashionable to do so, and long before there was an organized movement of support to defend commentators who dared to question the insane dictates of the cult of political correctness.
In my article ‘The Twisted Motives Behind Political Correctness’, published in early 2014, I outlined the basic philosophical underpinnings of political correctness and what these beliefs tend to lead to. At the time, the future for champions of individual liberty and reason appeared rather bleak. Today, I am happy to say the backlash against “third-wave feminism” and cultural Marxism has expanded beyond anything I could have dreamed.
I do not want to diminish or underestimate the threat still posed to personal freedom by the adherents of the social justice cult, but at this stage I think it is safe to say that political correctness is effectively a dead movement walking.
Recent statistics without bias are hard to come by. That said, the latest available numbers show that people who agree with “gender equality” are many, but those who identify as “feminist” are slim. In the U.S. this constitutes 1 in 4 or 1 in 5 that identify as feminist depending on which polls you look at, while in the U.K. feminists make up only 7 percent of the population.
According to the CDC, abortion rates from 2008-2014 fell to historic lows post Roe v Wade. Abortion being a primary platform and leverage issue for social justice warriors, I take it as a good sign that even in a time of severe economic instability people are backing away from abortion as an acceptable option.
Just as a general observation, social justice has not been a reliable driver for political success, considering the abject failure of the Clinton Campaign in 2016, which clung tightly to SJW ideologies throughout the election cycle.
And finally, social justice has also not been selling so great in the marketplace. This is most evident in the entertainment world, where movies created by producers with open social justice agendas continually fail to bring in expected box office numbers.
For example, the feminist-produced and-directed Ghostbusters reboot ended with a dismal showing compared to many other blockbuster movies of with the same production costs, ending its run with an estimated $70 million loss.
Feminist action films perpetuating the fantasy of physical parity between the sexes, like the movie Atomic Blonde, though receiving accolades from mainstream critics (like all social justice films do), have had embarrassing showings in theaters.
And finally, perhaps the biggest sign of a sea change against social justice in pop culture, even massive brand names like Star Wars are suffering when social justice propaganda is injected into the franchise. The latest installment, The Last Jedi, with its obvious and heavy-handed social justice messages, had one of the worst second week showings of all the Star Wars movies (adjusted for inflation) and only generated a little over half of the revenues brought in by The Force Awakens. Not to mention the highly critical audience reviews and the complete bomb the movie suffered in the Chinese market, which was supposed to help elevate revenues that were expected to be much higher.
So, what has spurred this societal rush for the exits when it comes to cultural Marxist ideals?
There are many reasons why Americans in particular cannot stand these people. Here are just a few…
Deliberate Deconstructionism Of Root Mythologies
One of the core tenets of cultural Marxism is the destruction of a society’s vital mythologies and symbols. In other words, the very psychological archetypes that make up the collective unconscious are targeted.
This is one of the reasons why SJWs are so obsessed with the entertainment industry. Much of the art and stories that inspire us in modern times are found in film and television. Identity politics has been the premier staple of Hollywood the past decade, so much so that it is no longer even hidden. In fact, despite the reality that the SJW ideology has been proven to be a money loser, production companies are STILL pushing the issue, choosing political messages over profits. Parables are often more powerful than real events and present a tempting tool for mass mind control.
Social Justice deconstructionism is often mistaken as an unintended “business blunder,” but the truth is that these companies are absolutely aware of what they are doing. Cultural Marxists want to dismantle social and biological norms, moral principles and beloved heroes because they hope to create internal chaos within a nation. Once this occurs, they desire to then instill their ownideology on the confused and fearful populace.
Unmitigated Self-Indulgence
Social Justice is also rooted in the notion that self-indulgence and gluttony on every level should be celebrated as healthy and “progressive.” Sexuality is a purely recreational affair without consequence or physical and psychological responsibility. Not only this, but it should be pursued in as many forms as possible, and if a person sees something wrong with this or has a natural inclination to avoid these behaviors, then they are “homophobic,” “transphobic,” racist, fascist, etc.
Obesity is defended as “beautiful” and “wholesome” through the “body positivity movement,” even though it has been proven in every notable study to result in incessant health problems including diabetes, heart disease, birth defects, cancer and clinical depression.
And, perhaps the worst indulgence of all; the psychological indulgence of intellectual isolation is encouraged. “Safe spaces” are enforced as a means to protect the social justice cult from challenging ideas and people. Willful ignorance is applauded as ideological strength and an act of loyalty to the collective. All intellectual opponents are treated as monstrous criminals rather than merely informed adversaries with a different point of view.
The Attempted Erasure Of Masculinity
In my article ‘Will Manliness Make A Comeback In 2018‘ I outlined why masculinity in particular has been so often targeted by SJWs. In fact, masculinity represents an element of unpredictability to a society that is important to individual liberty but dangerous to the establishment. Femininity tends to lend itself far more to collectivism and, by extension, the desire to rely on an outside force like the government as a provider and for security when a masculine presence is not available.
When masculinity is repressed in a society and matriarchy is entrenched, such systems are historically doomed to failure and collapse. Superior production, invention, organization and security are a staple of a masculine foundation within a culture. The war on men is yet another product of cultural Marxist deconstructionism.
By extension, the assertion that masculinity is evil within men is often followed by the assertion that masculine displays by women are empowering and good. In this way, true femininity is also under attack, as women that enjoy and naturally gravitate towards biologically feminine roles are admonished by feminists as being “slaves of the patriarchy” or “breeders” that hold back the social justice movement.
Life Is About Emotional Validation
Validation without merit and demanded empathy without discrimination are time bombs within any culture. Social justice thrives on these disturbing ideals.
It is important to point out that these mindsets are often an extension of narcissism. Narcissists make up about 10% of any given population at any given point in history, which is interesting because latent sociopaths and psychopaths (as well as full blown sociopaths and psychopaths) also make up approximately 10% of any given population. SJWs are liable to display both narcissistic and sociopathic qualities, desiring constant emotional validation from all the people around them while also holding morally relativistic stances on most issues.
This does not mean that SJWs do not appear empathetic. Quite the opposite. Most narcissists and sociopaths are highly adept at hiding their aberrant character flaws behind causes, platitudes and virtue signaling. They have to believe that the things they do and the ideals they seek to enforce are grounded in moral soil, even though the consequences of these ideals are usually destructive. When confronted with reality, that they are the villains rather than the heroes they imagine themselves to be, they can become erratic and violent.
SJWs have effectively turned sociopathy and narcissism into a civil rights movement.
Identity Politics
SJWs see group identity as the defining factor in a person’s personal worth, as well as the worth inherent in their ideas and claims. Now to be fair, SJWs are not the only group guilty of this idiocy. The so-called “Alt-Right,” which is actually a tiny contingent of pretenders that claim to be “conservative,” is rampant with people that think skin color is somehow immediately reflective of mindset. While SJWs see all white people as inherently dangerous, the Alt-Right sees all non-white people as inherently dangerous. This of course ignores all cultural factors and individual factors for the sake of lazy broad brush politics and absurd non-solutions. These groups are basically two sides of the same coin.
That said, it is true that SJWs are the most aggressive and vicious of the two sides so far.
SJWs adore identity politics because they see victimhood as a currency. Victim group status can be used within a socialist/collectivist system to purchase entitlements from the state, which is the only god-figure that these people know or love. The more oppressed you are on the list of victim groups, the more stuff you can get from government, as long as that government is also collectivist in nature.
This helps to explain the sudden explosion in the trans-person fad over the past few years. White people in particular are extremely disadvantaged within the identity politics ladder of oppression, UNLESSthey identify as transgender. This allows them a quick route to victim status and social entitlements, swiftly surpassing other ethnic groups.
Guilty Until Proven Innocent – Trial By The Mob
Whenever I see SJWs in action I am always reminded of Franz Kafka’s The Trial, in which a man is prosecuted for a crime that is never explained to him and sentenced without understanding how or why. As his trial commences, he makes a rousing speech appealing to logic and reason but is laughed at by the hordes and the courts as if what he is asking for is ridiculous.
This is the social justice standard — to attack all opponents as inherently criminal. To label them racist, misogynistic, homophobic or privileged from birth by virtue of their skin color or gender. This argument even extends to “implicit bias” which they claim makes all white people specifically racist and advantaged without them even being consciously aware of it. They also accuse all men of being innately sexist and violent.
This allows SJWs to make indictments without evidence, for how can anyone ever prove or measure such a thing as “implicit bias” and show that they DON’T suffer from it. Proving a negative (a virtual impossibility) becomes the task the accused must perform to purify themselves before the court of social justice. It’s simpler for many to apologize for whatever they are accused of and sublimate in the hopes of redemption.
What many SJWs don’t seem to realize is that by using broad and abstract ideas such as “hate speech” as a means to attack and criminalize their opponents as guilty until proven innocent, they also open the door for governments to do the same using similar justifications.
A recent and horrifying example is the Spanish government’s implementation of “hate speech laws” against eight teachers that are vocal proponents of the Catalan separatist movement! What do Catalan issues have to do with hate speech? It doesn’t matter. As we critics of social justice have been warning for years, literally anything can be labeled “hate speech” without due process, and one day this might even come back to bite cultural Marxists on the ass.
A saying comes to mind which was popularized by Michael Savage, but stated first as far as I can tell in Ecclesiastes 9:10:
Whatsoever thy hand is able to do, do it earnestly: for neither work, nor reason, nor wisdom, nor knowledge shall be in hell, whither thou art hastening.
In other words, hell is a place without reason, and SJWs are seeking to construct hell on Earth.
Are Social Justice Warriors Actually Aliens From Another Planet?
This would help explain a lot, and I wish it were that easy.
SJWs act like they cannot fathom humanity and despise the dictates of human nature. They display elements of moral relativism and lack critical thought. They seem to operate on a completely different set of intellectual and emotional rules. That which has sustained human society for thousands of years and hundreds of generations is not of any value to them. They almost seem to be studying how to dissect humanity rather than participate in humanity.
Unfortunately, these people are indeed entirely human, which is a depressing fact to say the least. They are what Carl Jung describes in his book The Undiscovered Self as an expression of the “collective shadow.” That 10% (and sometimes greater) of a nation that embraces sociopathic tendencies and organizes in the worst of economic and cultural conditions.
Luckily, this “invasion” is being squelched in the U.S., at least in the past couple of years. Before long, the term SJW may be a distant memory of a time that history will consider a brutal hallucination, rife with a mob-based mental illness that almost consumed the world.
One would hope that, after President Donald Trump declined to impose sanctions against a host of Russians with purported ties to the government earlier this week, he would at least receive a temporary reprieve from any provocative behavior.
Unfortunately, that couldn’t be further from the reality. As Reuters reports, Russia’s ambassador to North Korea said Wednesday it was better not to cut deliveries of oil and oil products to North Korea, according to the RIA News Agency. Continuing oil shipments to North Korea would of course violate international sanctions passed by the UN Security Council – sanctions that Russia agreed to at the time.
In recent months, US spy satellites have caught ships with ties to Russia and China delivering badly needed oil to North Korea via ship-to-ship trade.
According to RIA, the ambassador said cutting oil deliveries to the North would be interpreted by Pyongyang as a declaration of war and lead to serious problems, including of a humanitarian nature.
In recent months, Russia has kept up its low-pressure policy of confrontations with US military planes in international airspace. Yesterday, we published a video of Russia’s latest attempt to recreate a scene from the movie “Top Gun”: The video showed a Russian Su-27 fighter jet reportedly performed an “unsafe intercept of a US Navy P-3 Orion surveillance plane” while it was flying in international airspace next to Russia, over the Black Sea Monday. The Su-27 reportedly came within five feet of the US plane.
While most observers labeled the Treasury’s “Oligarch’s List” as little more than a rehashing of a Forbes’ list of wealthy Russians, Russian President Vladimir Putin has denounced its release as a “hostile” act.
While the remarks haven’t made much of a splash outside the Russian media, we imagine this suggestion will warrant some kind of a response from the US, or the UN.
Despite this, Reuters reported Wednesday that Russia will send home all migrant workers from North Korea by the end of 2019 in compliance with the UN sanctions.
In early January rumors started spreading about whether Facebook would either adopt Litecoin or create its own cryptocurrency. On Tuesday, Facebook announced that it would block all cryptocurrency and ICO advertising on its platform.
Coincidence? Let’s look at the details.
Between December 6th and 17th of 2017, Litecoin (LTC) tripled in value, from $102.93 to $360.66 according to CoinGecko. Three days after it started to decline from its all-time-high, Charlie Lee, the founder of Litecoin announced that he sold off all of his LTC. Since then, Litecoin has been on a mostly downward trend and currently sits at $159.50.
There has been some speculation about whether Lee’s sell-off had an impact on the prices of Litecoin, and there have even been accusations of insider trading, given that he was the Director of Engineering at Coinbase. He denies these allegations and explained that his decision to dump his LTC was to remove any sort of conflict of interest between his influence and any potential gains. Taking the financial gains out of the equation, it stands to reason that Lee may now tweet more freely about his thoughts while focusing on his skills as an engineer.
At the time that Lee sold off his LTC, Coinbase announced the appointment of Facebook executive, David Marcus to their board of directors. David Marcus is the Head of Messenger at Facebook, with expertise in mobile-first products. Prior to that, he was President of PayPal, where he accelerated the overall growth of the company. The appointment of Marcus to the Coinbase board of directors sparked some speculation.
Tom Luongo published the story on December 20, which was later picked up by Zero Hedge and various other publications. According to Luongo, Charlie’s announcement prompted a big sell-off in the wake of Coinbase adding Bitcoin Cash (BCH) to its platform. He saw the negative response from the market as temporary, though Litecoin is still on a decline.
From a technology standpoint however, it’s a promising coin. It’s lighter, faster and cheaper than Bitcoin, is fully capable of smart contracts and according to Luongo, it has a “payment processing layer to facilitate point-of-sale convenience while retaining proof-of-work security.” It has the sort of technology built into it that an organization like Facebook might find appealing.
Two weeks after this speculative article came out, Mark Zuckerberg announced that he’s “looking into cryptocurrency.” In his January 5th announcement on Facebook, Zuckerberg said:
“Back in the 1990s and 2000s, most people believed technology would be a decentralizing force. But today, many people have lost faith in that promise. With the rise of a small number of big tech companies – and governments using technology to watch their citizens – many people now believe technology only centralizes power rather than decentralizes it. There are important counter-trends to this – like encryption and cryptocurrency – that take power from centralized systems and put it back into people’s hands. But they come with the risk of being harder to control. I’m interested to go deeper and study the positive and negative aspects of these technologies, and how best to use them in our services.“
This brings us to today. According to a CNBC article by Kurt Wagner, “Facebook is banning all ads that promote cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, in an effort to prevent people from advertising what the company is calling ‘financial products and services frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices.'” In other words, if you launch an ICO, or want to promote a cryptocurrency-related group or business, you’re probably out of luck, no matter how legitimate your business is.
Litecoin founder Charlie Lee previously tweeted that in 2018 there will be “One huge unexpected surprise.”
The Litecoin team has been hard at work working with companies to support Litecoin. Nothing to announce yet, but here’s what’s in the works:
Merchant processor
Popular online wallet
Goods trading platform
One huge unexpected surprise. 😀
If indeed Facebook is looking to tie its business to cryptocurrency and/or blockchain technology, as Zuckerberg himself has suggested, whether it’s by way of Litecoin or some other technology, then it stands to reason that such a ban on advertising would clear out the competition and would allow Facebook to corner the market on this technology, using their tremendous platform to push it out to a massive audience.
It’s only a matter of time before we are able to confidently analyze the motivation behind Facebook’s ban on crypto advertising. It could very well be that they genuinely want to prevent scammers from taking advantage of their audience. On the other hand, it is entirely possible that they are paving the way for a new Facebook coin offering, utilizing the blockchain to facilitate transactions on Facebook to purchase goods, advertising space and other things of value.
Now that the bombshell “FISA memo” has been released to the White House for review – and President Trump said he will allow its public release “100 percent” – despite protests from the DOJ and FBI Director Christopher Wray, efforts are underway to attack the report’s credibility by hinting at collusion between Rep. Devin Nunes, whose office authored the memo, and the White House.
Except then the transcript of Monday’s closed-door session came out… .
The Daily Beast published an inaccurate account of Monday’s closed door House Intel Committee meeting in which the four-page memo was released – suggesting that Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) was backed into a corner and refused to answer a direct question from Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) over whether he had coordinated with the White House while his office compiled the memo which is said to reveal extensive political bias and abuse of the FISA surveillance court against the Trump team by the FBI and DOJ – implying that Nunes worked with the White House on the document.
During Monday’s contentious closed-door committee meeting, Rep. Mike Quigley, a Democrat, asked Nunes point-blank if his staffers had been talking with the White House as they compiled a four-page memo alleging FBI and Justice Department abuses over surveillance of President Trump’s allies in the Russia probe.
According to sources familiar with the exchange, Nunes made a few comments that didn’t answer the question before finally responding, “I’m not answering.” –Daily Beast
Except the 51-page transcript of that meeting came out hours later, revealing Daily Beast (or their House Intel Committee source) to have mischaracterized the exchange.
MR. QUIGLEY: Let me ask you another question with the greatest respect. When you, as the majority, conceived of doing this memo for release to the body and to the public, the preparation, the thought of doing it, the consultation of it, was any of this done after/during conversations or consultations with anyone in the White House? Did they have any idea you were doing this? Did they talk about doing this with you? Did they suggest it? Did you suggest it to them? Did you consult in deciding how to go forward with this before, during , and after this point right now?
THE CHAIRMAN (Nunes): I would just answer, as far as I know, no. And I would also say that we are well aware that the minority has not wanted to conduct this investigation by the public opposition to the subpoenas that we issued back in August that were clearly looking into matters of FISA abuse and other matters.
MR. QUIGLEY: Mr. Chairman, does that mean that none of the staff members that worked for the majority had any consultation, communication at all with the White House.
THE CHAIRMAN (Nunes): The chair is not going to entertain —
MR. QUIGLEY: I yield.
Quigley’s line of questioning alludes to an early 2017 controversy over whether or not Chairman Nunes revealed classified information when he disclosed revelations of major surveillance abuse in March. Nunes temporarily stepped aside from leading the House Intel Committee’s Russia probe last April while the House Ethics Committee investigated the matter. Of note, Nunes did not recuse himself from the probe and remained Chairman of the Committee while under investigation.
Democrats cried foul when it emerged that Nunes had been at the White House the day before announcing that President Trump’s team had been “unmasked” by the Obama administration.
While Nunes denied coordinating with the White House, the Washington Post reported that “at least three senior White House officials, including the top lawyer for the National Security Council, were involved in the handling of intelligence files that were shared with the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and showed that Trump campaign officials were swept up in US surveillance of foreign nationals, according to US officials.”
The House Ethics Committee cleared Nunes in December, following consultation with experts in the classification process.
“While I appreciate the Ethics Committee’s work, I need to reiterate that the allegations against me were obviously frivolous and were rooted in politically motivated complaints filed against me by left-wing activist groups” –Devin Nunes
Deep State In Deep Trouble?
The four-page memo authored by staffers from Nunes’ office is said to name several high ranking FBI and DOJ officials, including former FBI Director James Comey, retiring Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
With over 60 GOP lawmakers calling for its release, the top Democrat on the House Intel Committee believes the FISA memo could lead to the firings of special counsel Robert Mueller and the DOJ’s Rosenstein.
The FBI isn’t taking this whole “calling us out for illegal behavior” thing sitting down – issuing a statement on Wednesday pointing to “grave concerns” over the release of the memo:
Earlier Wednesday, Bloomberg reported that FBI Director Christopher Wray told the White House he opposes release of a classified Republican memo alleging bias at the FBI and Justice Department because it contains inaccurate information and paints a false narrative, according to a person familiar with the matter.
In response, Nunes hit back – twice, issuing statements via the House Intel Committee website:
“Having stonewalled Congress’ demands for information for nearly a year, it’s no surprise to see the FBI and DOJ issue spurious objections to allowing the American people to see information related to surveillance abuses at these agencies. The FBI is intimately familiar with ‘material omissions’ with respect to their presentations to both Congress and the courts, and they are welcome to make public, to the greatest extent possible, all the information they have on these abuses. Regardless, it’s clear that top officials used unverified information in a court document to fuel a counter-intelligence investigation during an American political campaign.Once the truth gets out, we can begin taking steps to ensure our intelligence agencies and courts are never misused like this again.”
In a second statement, Nunes says “After fighting our demands for these documents for months, the FBI and DOJ now seem to be going through a series of ridiculous, increasingly desperate excuses to avoid transparency.”
New: second statement from Devin Nunes, specifically addressing FBI charge that ‘FISA abuse’ memo contains ‘material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy’: pic.twitter.com/GQaNihNflr
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board has called on the Trump administration to release the memo.
The same progressives who demanded accountability for FISA courts after Edward Snowden exposed federal snooping now want President Trump to shut down the House’s limited attempt at transparency. Don’t buy it, Mr. President. Let it all out—the two House Intelligence memos, Senator Chuck Grassley’s referral letter for a criminal investigation of Mr. Steele, and all other relevant FBI or Justice documents that won’t undermine U.S. security. Our democracy can take the transparency, and after the 2016 fiasco it deserves it. –WSJ
And as we reported earlier, Chief of Staff John Kelly revealed in a Fox radio interview on Wednesday that he had seen the memo, and that it will be released “pretty quick.”
Lastly – it has come to light that outgoing Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe is under active investigation by the DOJ’s internal watchdog for sitting on emails related to the Hillary Clinton investigation for several weeks before the FBI reopened its probe right before the election.
“[F]or a period of at least three weeks, according to people involved at the time, nothing much happened, a lag that has sparked the inspector generals questions,” reports the Washington Post.
With the release of the bombshell FISA memo imminent, and its contents set to rock the FBI and the DOJ, it’s only natural that the cornered agencies of the so-called “deep state” and their Democrat supporters in Congress would lash out with claims of collusion in an effort to minimize its impact.
In an act of insane escalation of provocations against Russia, Washington has produced a list of 210 top Russian government officials and important business executives who are “gangsters,” “members of Putin’s gang,” “threats,” “people deserving to be sanctioned,” or however the Western presstitutes care to explain the list.
The absurd list includes the Prime Minister of Russia, the Foreign Minister, the Defense Minister, and executives of Gazprom, Rosneft, and Bank Rossiya. In other words, the suggestion is that the entirety of Russian political and business leadership is corrupt.
The Russians do not seem to understand the purpose of the list. Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the government sees the list as an attempt to interfere in the Russian presidential election. There is no doubt that Washington would like to reduce Putin’s public support so that Washington can use the Western-funded NGOs operating in Russia to present American stooges as Russia’s true voices. However, it is unlikely that the Russian people are stupid enough to fall for such a trick.
Washington’s list has three purposes:
1) To undercut Russian diplomacy by presenting the top echelons of Russia as gangsters.
2) To present Russia as a military threat as per the ridiculous announcement by British defense minister Gavin Williamson on January 26 that Russia intends to rip British “infrastructure apart, actually cause thousands and thousands and thousands of deaths,” and create “total chaos within the country.”
3) To shift American and European attention away from the coming release of the House Intelligence Committee’s report that proves Russiagate is a conspiracy between the FBI, the Obama Department of Justice and the Democratic National Committee against President Trump. Washington’s Russian list will give the presstitutes something else to talk about instead of the act of treason committed against the President of the United States. Expect to hear nothing from the presstitutes except that the House Intelligence Committee report is only a political effort to shield Trump from accountability.
There is likely a fourth reason for the list. Israel wants Washington’s pressure on Russia, because Russia has so far prevented Israel’s use of the US military to create the same chaos in Syria and Iran as has been created in Iraq and Libya. Israel wants Syria and Iran destabilized because they support Hezbollah, which prevents Israel from occupying the water resources of southern Lebanon. The Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, which requires the list, passed the House and Senate by a vote of 517-5. Normally, such unanimous foreign policy votes are associated with demands from the Israel Lobby.
The Russian government and the Russian people need to understand that Washington considers Russia to be a threat because Russia is not under Washington’s thumb. The Zionist neoconservatives control US foreign policy. Their ideology is world hegemony. They do not use diplomacy. They rely on disinformation, threats, and violence. Therefore, there is no American diplomacy with which Putin and Lavrov can engage.
Putin, being a responsible political leader of a great power, does not respond to provocation with provocation. He ignores the insults and continues to wait for the West to come to its senses. But what if the West does not come to its senses?
For the West to come to its senses requires the complete overthrow of the Zionist neoconservatives and/or the breakup of NATO. The overthrow of the neoconservatives would require a rival foreign policy voice, and that voice is very weak as it is shut off from the media, the think tanks, and the universities. The breakup of NATO would require European political figures to give up their Washington subsidies and the career advancement that Washington provides.
As I write the Atlantic Council is holding a members and press call in for a discussion with Atlantic Council members Amb. Daniel Fried and Anders Aslund. The Atlantic Council is a neoconservative propaganda agency. The purpose of the “discussion” is to further undermine US-Russian relations.
The Russian government faces a difficult situation. The foreign policy of the US, and thereby of the Western world, is controlled by neoconservatives who are determined to present Russia in the most threatening light. Russian diplomacy can do nothing to change this. The non-provocative and responsible Russian response has the effect of encouraging more provocations from Washington. At some point Russian passivity might convince the neoconservatives that they can successfully attack Russia. Alternatively, the continual provocations might convince Russia that the country is targeted for attack, thereby causing a Russian pre-emptive action.
Everyone in the world should realize the threat of nuclear war that is inherrent in Washington’s policy toward Russia, and everyone in the world should understand that the only threat that Russia poses is to Washington’s unilateralism.
As the Trump administration has maintained its focus on the North Korean threat, there is another, potentially more severe, crisis unfolding in the Taiwan Strait between China and Taiwan.
Relations between China and Taiwan have deteriorated since President Tsai Ing-wen took office in May 2016, Beijing cut off communications with Taipei, stripped it of its democratic allies, and even conducted naval and air operations around the island in a show of force to ensure the island had minimal participation with international organizations.
In 2017, the Trump administration signaled the traditional U.S. commitment to Taiwan in multiple gestures. For instance, the president allowed for a massive $1.42 billion arms deal, which infuriated Beijing. Another gesture by the Trump was Taipei’s entry into the Global Entry, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) program that allows expedited clearance for pre-approved travelers to the U.S.
While Taiwan shifted closer to the United States in 2017, Chinese diplomat Li Kexin informed U.S. officials in early December that the moment one of its warships visits Taiwan, Beijing will launch an invasion on the island.
Tensions have once again deteriorated this week as Chinese airlines have canceled hundreds of flights to Taiwan as disputes over aviation routes continue. Two major carriers, China Eastern Airlines and Xiamen Airlines, announced Tuesday they canceled the flights because Taiwan’s government refused to approve them.
In conjunction with hundreds of canceled flights before the Lunar New Year, Taiwan troops staged a massive live-fire war drill to simulate an invasion by China on Tuesday.
The military simulated an attack on the island using reconnaissance aircrafts to surveil incoming warships, followed by tanks firing rounds at the “mimicked enemy” landing around the Port of Hualien in eastern Taiwan.
In the air, attack helicopters and F-16 fighter jets launched assaults, supporting ground troops who battled the simulated enemy wearing red helmets.
Taiwan’s ministry did not outright define who the simulated invasion was by, but it is pretty clear with the chart below who that is.
Further, the ministry said the annual drill was to “show determination to safeguard peace in the Taiwan Strait and national security.”
The Taiwan Strait is the waterway that divides the island from China.
Cross-strait relations have turned frosty since the inauguration of Tsai, who refuses to acknowledge self-ruling, democratic Taiwan is part of “one China.” The drill on Tuesday takes place annually prior to Lunar New Year holiday — which lands in mid-February this year — as a way to boost public confidence in Taiwan’s defence capabilities.
“Our combat readiness has no holidays,” Huang Kai-sen, a Taiwanese lieutenant general, told AFP.
“In order for our citizens to feel safe during the Chinese New Year, we are standing by and on guard 24 hours a day,” he added.
California earthquakes are a geologic inevitability. The state straddles the North American and Pacific tectonic plates and is crisscrossed by the San Andreas and other active fault systems. The magnitude 7.9 earthquake that struck off Alaska’s Kodiak Island on Jan. 23, 2018 was just the latest reminder of major seismic activity along the Pacific Rim.
Tragic quakes that occurred in 2017 near the Iran-Iraq border and in central Mexico, with magnitudes of 7.3 and 7.1, respectively, are well within the range of earthquake sizes that have a high likelihood of occurring in highly populated parts of California during the next few decades.
The earthquake situation in California is actually more dire than people who aren’t seismologists like myself may realize.Although many Californians can recount experiencing an earthquake, most have never personally experienced a strong one. For major events, with magnitudes of 7 or greater, California is actually in an earthquake drought. Multiple segments of the expansive San Andreas Fault system are now sufficiently stressed to produce large and damaging events.
The good news is that earthquake readiness is part of the state’s culture, and earthquake science is advancing – including much improved simulations of large quake effects and development of an early warning system for the Pacific coast.
The last big one
California occupies a central place in the history of seismology. The April 18, 1906 San Francisco earthquake (magnitude 7.8) was pivotal to both earthquake hazard awareness and the development of earthquake science – including the fundamental insight that earthquakes arise from faults that abruptly rupture and slip. The San Andreas Fault slipped by as much as 20 feet (six meters) in this earthquake.
Although ground-shaking damage was severe in many places along the nearly 310-mile (500-kilometer) fault rupture, much of San Francisco was actually destroyed by the subsequent fire, due to the large number of ignition points and a breakdown in emergency services. That scenario continues to haunt earthquake response planners. Consider what might happen if a major earthquake were to strike Los Angeles during fire season.
Collapsed Santa Monica Freeway bridge across La Cienega Boulevard, Los Angeles after the Northridge earthquake, Jan. 17, 1994.
Seismic science
When a major earthquake occurs anywhere on the planet, modern global seismographic networks and rapid response protocols now enable scientists, emergency responders and the public to assess it quickly – typically, within tens of minutes or less – including location, magnitude, ground motion and estimated casualties and property losses. And by studying the buildup of stresses along mapped faults, past earthquake history, and other data and modeling, we can forecast likelihoods and magnitudes of earthquakes over long time periods in California and elsewhere.
However, the interplay of stresses and faults in the Earth is dauntingly chaotic. And even with continuing advances in basic research and ever-improving data, laboratory and theoretical studies, there are no known reliable and universal precursory phenomena to suggest that the time, location and size of individual large earthquakes can be predicted.
Major earthquakes thus typically occur with no immediate warning whatsoever, and mitigating risks requires sustained readiness and resource commitments. This can pose serious challenges, since cities and nations may thrive for many decades or longer without experiencing major earthquakes.
California’s earthquake drought
The 1906 San Francisco earthquake was the last quake greater than magnitude 7 to occur on the San Andreas Fault system. The inexorable motions of plate tectonics mean that every year, strands of the fault system accumulate stresses that correspond to a seismic slip of millimeters to centimeters. Eventually, these stresses will be released suddenly in earthquakes.
But the central-southern stretch of the San Andreas Fault has not slipped since 1857, and the southernmost segment may not have ruptured since 1680. The highly urbanized Hayward Fault in the East Bay region has not generated a major earthquake since 1868.
Reflecting this deficit, the Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast estimates that there is a 93 percent probability of a 7.0 or larger earthquake occurring in the Golden State region by 2045, with the highest probabilities occurring along the San Andreas Fault system.
Perspective view of California’s major faults, showing forecast probabilities estimated by the third Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast. The color bar shows the estimated percent likelihood of a magnitude 6.7 or larger earthquake during the next 30 years, as of 2014. Note that nearly the entire San Andreas Fault system is red on the likelihood scale due to the deficit of large earthquakes during and prior to the past century. USGS
Can California do more?
California’s population has grown more than 20-fold since the 1906 earthquake and currently is close to 40 million. Many residents and all state emergency managers are widely engaged in earthquake readiness and planning. These preparations are among the most advanced in the world.
No California earthquake since the 1933 Long Beach event (6.4) has killed more than 100 people. Quakes in 1971 (San Fernando, 6.7); 1989 (Loma Prieta; 6.9); 1994 (Northridge; 6.7); and 2014 (South Napa; 6.0) each caused more than US$1 billion in property damage, but fatalities in each event were, remarkably, dozens or less. Strong and proactive implementation of seismically informed building codes and other preparations and emergency planning in California saved scores of lives in these medium-sized earthquakes. Any of them could have been disastrous in less-prepared nations.
Remington Elementary School in Santa Ana takes part in the 2015 Great California Shakeout.
Nonetheless, California’s infrastructure, response planning and general preparedness will doubtlessly be tested when the inevitable and long-delayed “big ones” occur along the San Andreas Fault system. Ultimate damage and casualty levels are hard to project, and hinge on the severity of associated hazards such as landslides and fires.
Several nations and regions now have or are developing earthquake early warning systems, which use early detected ground motion near a quake’s origin to alert more distant populations before strong seismic shaking arrives. This permits rapid responses that can reduce infrastructure damage. Such systems provide warning times of up to tens of seconds in the most favorable circumstances, but the notice will likely be shorter than this for many California earthquakes.
Early warning systems are operational now in Japan, Taiwan, Mexico and Romania. Systems in California and the Pacific Northwest are presently under development with early versions in operation. Earthquake early warning is by no means a panacea for saving lives and property, but it represents a significant step toward improving earthquake safety and awareness along the West Coast.
Managing earthquake risk requires a resilient system of social awareness, education and communications, coupled with effective short- and long-term responses and implemented within an optimally safe built environment. As California prepares for large earthquakes after a hiatus of more than a century, the clock is ticking.
