For the past 50 years, the US has agreed not to pressure Israel to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty, with the "tradition" going back to President Nixon.

President Joe Biden has reaffirmed the United States' long-held agreement with Israel that Washington will not pressure the Jewish State on its alleged nuclear arsenal, in exchange for which, the latter will not use, test, or threaten the use of their nuclear arsenal, Israeli media reported Wednesday, citing an unnamed official.

The long-held agreement between the two nations was reportedly discussed during the meeting between Biden and Israel Prime Minister Naftali Bennett over the past weekend.

Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roger Pardo-Maurer spoke about the suicide bombing at the Kabul International Airport on Thursday, saying that the "Department of Defense already knew who the bomber was."

The suicide bombing, which took the lives of 13 members of the US Armed Forces, happened while evacuations of Americans and Afghan allies were underway during the final days of the 20-year war in that nation.

Director of MRC Latino, Jorge Bonilla posted the interview with Pardo-Maurer said the Department of Defense also knew "where and when" the attack would happen. He said that "a Predator drone had a lock on him," and that the DOD "refused to grant permission to fire upon that bomber."

Story at-a-glance

• Judy K. Brown's book, "Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story," details the conspiracy of silence surrounding the biggest alleged pedophile and sex trafficking mogul of our time, Jeffrey Epstein, and his network of rich and powerful people, which includes Bill Gates
• Corruption is rampant throughout our public health agencies and medical organizations. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funds the Food and Drug Administration in the U.S. and the Medicine & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency in the U.K.
• The Gates Foundation also owns shares in Pfizer and BioNTech, raising questions about corruption in the FDA and IHMA, both of which appear to have given Pfizer's COVID shot preferential treatment despite overwhelming safety concerns and questionable effectiveness
• The Gates Foundation is also a primary funder of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which was responsible for the grossly inaccurate modeling that led to several governors ordering COVID patients to be sent into nursing homes
• Gates is now calling on the western world to sacrifice itself in order to stave off climate change. But the climate change crisis, like the COVID pandemic, is a red herring, used to justify the implementation of the Great Reset

In the video below, Russell Brand discusses Judy K. Brown's book, "Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story," which details the conspiracy of silence surrounding the biggest alleged pedophile and sex trafficking mogul of our time, Jeffrey Epstein.

The media's refusal to dig into the Epstein story, Brand says, suggests the media are part of a corrupted establishment that protects the rich and powerful, no matter what. One rich and powerful person who enjoys the legacy media's protection is Bill Gates.

Gates and Epstein

Brand cites an article in The Daily Beast,¹ claiming Gates had dozens of meetings with Epstein between 2011 and 2014 alone, typically at Epstein's Manhattan home. When news of Gates' relationship with Epstein emerged in 2019, Melinda Gates reportedly contacted a divorce attorney.

According to The Daily Beast, Gates "encouraged Epstein to rehabilitate his image in the media." If true, this suggests Gates may indeed have been closer to Epstein than he's been letting on. An anonymous source who claims to have been present at several of the meetings has said the two were "very close."

Dominic Raab has said the central assessment of the UK government was that Kabul was "unlikely" to fall in 2021.

The UK foreign secretary also disclosed he had overseen high-level talks between the UK and Pakistan to discuss the Afghan crisis and would be heading to the region imminently.

He told MPs on the Commons foreign affairs select committee:

"The central assessment that we were operating to, and it was certainly backed up by the JIC (joint intelligence committee) and the military, is that the most likely, the central proposition, was that given the troop withdrawal by the end of August, you'd see a steady deterioration from that point and it was unlikely Kabul would fall this year."

He said contingency planning and testing of such an assessment took place, adding: "That was something widely shared by Nato allies."

It is hard to overstate the sociopathy of US national security officials: their casual willingness to blatantly lie about the gravest matters is limitless.

Ever since Edward Snowden received asylum from Russia in 2013, Obama officials have repeatedly maligned his motives and patriotism by citing his "choice" to take up residence there. It has long been clear that this narrative was a lie: Snowden, after meeting with journalists in Hong Kong, intended only to transit through Moscow and then Havana on his way to seek asylum in Latin America. He was purposely prevented from leaving Russia — trapped in the Moscow airport — by the very Obama officials who then cynically weaponized his presence there to imply he was a civil-liberties hypocrite for "choosing" to live in such a repressive country or, even worse, a Kremlin agent or Russian spy.

But now we have absolute, definitive proof that Snowden never intended to stay in Russia but was deliberately prevented from leaving by the same Obama officials who exploited the predicament which they created. The proof was supplied unintentionally in the memoir of one of Obama's senior national security advisers, Ben Rhodes, entitled The World as It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House. It is hard to overstate how dispositively Rhodes' own book proves that Obama officials generally, and Rhodes specifically, lied blatantly and cavalierly to the public about what happened: a level of sustained and conscious lying that can be explained only by sociopathy.

After the events of 2011, when Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was not only overthrown but also brutally murdered, Libya effectively ceased to exist as a single state, continuing to be a tidbit for businesses and outside players. In a struggle between two quasi-states inspired by themselves, these competing outside players have long tried to seize power in the country by using the supposedly legitimate Government of National Accord, led by Fayez al-Sarraj in the West and the military bloc led by Field Marshal Khalifa Belqasim Haftar in the east of Libya. The fighting has gone on for several years with varying success, and it has shown that neither of these two leaders enjoys the serious support of the majority of the Libyan people.

The internal and internecine tensions between the two camps and the multi-tribal composition of the country's population have never allowed the Libyan conflict of the past decade to be resolved. Although, against this background, certain outside players still managed to solve some business interests, the volatility of the internal political situation did not allow anyone to gain a guaranteed foothold in the country, which objectively forced the search for an internal political consensus by holding full-scale elections in Libya.

The US and Ukraine have agreed to deepen military ties by signing a strategic framework for their defense partnership, it was revealed on Tuesday, following a meeting between American and Ukrainian defense ministers in Washington.

The agreement came the day before a scheduled meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his American counterpart Joe Biden, who will convene in the White House on Wednesday.

Writing on Twitter, Zelensky revealed that US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Ukrainian Minister of Defense Andrey Taran had signed the document, which he called an agreement "on the strategic foundations of the defense partnership." The president also noted the importance of Washington's support for "Ukrainian territorial integrity, gaining NATO membership and joint opposition to Russian aggression."

Israel said on Wednesday that a U.S. plan to reopen its consulate in Jerusalem that has traditionally been a base for diplomatic outreach to Palestinians is a "bad idea" and could destabilise Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's new government.

The prior administration of President Donald Trump signaled support for Israel's claim on Jerusalem as its capital by moving the U.S. embassy there from Tel Aviv. It later subsumed the consulate, in west Jerusalem, in that mission. It was among several moves that incensed the Palestinians, who want East Jerusalem as capital of a hoped-for, future state.

President Joe Biden has pledged to restore ties with the Palestinians, back a two-state solution and move forward with reopening the consulate. It has been closed since 2019, with Palestinian affairs handled by the embassy.

"We think it's a bad idea," Foreign Minister Yair Lapid told a news conference when asked about the reopening:

"We think it's a bad idea. Jerusalem is the sovereign capital of Israel and Israel alone, and therefore we don't think it's a good idea.

"We know that the (Biden) administration has a different way of looking at this, but since it is happening in Israel, we are sure they are listening to us very carefully."

Wasel Abu Youssef, a senior Palestine Liberation Organization official, told Reuters that the Israeli rejection of the consulate's opening was expected, adding: "They are trying to maintain the status quo and block any political solution".

Pope Francis has unwittingly backed President Vladimir Putin's condemnation of the American-led invasion of Afghanistan, citing the Russian leader's words in the belief they had been spoken by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

In an interview with Spanish radio station COPE on Wednesday, the head of the Catholic Church was asked his views on the chaos that has unfolded in the region since Kabul fell to the Taliban last month.

According to the pontiff, he had seen wisdom in comments from Merkel, and attempted to translate them into Spanish for listeners:

"It is necessary to put an end to the irresponsible policy of intervening from the outside and building democracy in other countries, ignoring the traditions of the people."

The pope said he "felt a sense of wisdom" in the sentiment, and added that Merkel is "one of the world's great political figures." However, in reality, as Russian news organizations later pointed out, the statement was actually made by Putin at a joint press conference with Merkel in Moscow last month.

Afghan resistance fighters will avoid conflict if the Taliban agree to a "power-sharing deal," the leader of the Afghan resistance movement in Panjshir, Ahmad Massoud, the son of one of the main leaders of Afghanistan's anti-Soviet resistance in the 1980s. He told Foreign Policy magazine:

"If the Taliban are willing to reach a power-sharing deal where power is equally distributed and is decentralized, then we can move toward a settlement that is acceptable to everyone. Anything less than this will be unacceptable to us, and we will continue our struggle and resistance until we achieve justice, equality, and freedom."

The fighters - who call themselves the National Resistance Front - have been holed up in Panjshir valley, north of Kabul, since the Taliban took over the country on August 15. Panjshir is the last remaining Afghan province not under the control of the extremist group.

On August 22, Massoud had told Al Arabiya that Panjshir valley will not be handed over to the Taliban and resistance fighters will be ready to fight back if the extremist group tries to seize it. "We confronted the Soviet Union, and we will be able to confront the Taliban," he said at the time.