"I'm up against an array of very powerful forces, including the intelligence services and major newspapers ... all of whom confirmed a major lie that was being used for political purposes and a lie that was repeated and repeated in order to undercut our new president." - Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, R-California

Does Dana Rohrabacher really think he's tough enough to take on the combined power of the US Intelligence Community, the Washington political establishment and the mainstream media? Good luck with that.

The California Congressman stepped into the limelight last week when he called White House Chief of Staff John Kelly to request a meeting with President Donald Trump. Rohrabacher, it seems, has some important information to pass along to the president, mainly that he has come across some hard evidence that the Russia hacking story is, to put it mildly, a crock.

Rohrabacher recently met with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange who assured the Congressman that Russia did not hack Democratic emails and give them to WikiLeaks during the 2016 presidential campaign. Of course Assange has made the same claim many times before, the difference now is that he's willing to provide solid evidence to back up his claim, according to the Wall Street Journal, "a computer drive or other data-storage device that Mr. Rohrabacher said would exonerate Russia."

Trump's recent statements are far from those that one would expect from a leader of a global power, Chinese expert Zhou Yongsheng said, commenting on a recent UN speech by the US president, during which he labelled Venezuela and Iran as dictatorial countries and threatened to "totally destroy" North Korea if it doesn't stop its nuclear activities.

Trump's threats against other countries are motivated by his personal grievances and emotions, a research fellow with the Center for International Relations Studies of the Diplomatic Academy of China, Zhou Yongsheng, stated.

"This didn't look like an official speech of the president of a major power on the global political scene," the analyst said, adding that Trump's statements rather resembled a "personal attack devoid of any boundaries."

In addition, the analyst noted that the content of Trump's speech was contradictory from the very beginning until the end. On the one hand, the US president called on the international community to respect the principle of state sovereignty, and on the other he threatened some countries with decisive actions, including total destruction, Yongsheng noted.

"Trump's speech...demonstrates a lack of political culture. A president should always follow the principle of political certainty. He or she is not allowed to give way to the unbridled feeling of hatred or bring personal emotions to the level of state policy. This is extremely irresponsible," the Chinese expert concluded.

Are Turkey, Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands and Italy nuclear powers?

Author's Note

This article was originally published by Global Research in February 2010 under the title: Europe's Five "Undeclared Nuclear Weapons States"

The media, politicians and scientists have remained silent. The focus was persistently on Iran's non-existent nuclear weapons. And now the focus is on North Korea.

Double Standards? All eyes on North Korea

Amply documented, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Turkey are in possession of nuclear weapons which are deployed under national command against Russia, Iran and the Middle East.

Following the failed July 2016 military coup in Turkey, the media reported on Turkey's nuclear weapons stored and deployed at the Incirlik airbase.

The US National Resources Defense Council in a February 2005 report confirmed Turkey's deployment of 90 so-called tactical B61 nuclear weapons, some of which were subsequently decommissioned

The stockpiling and deployment of tactical B61 in these five "non-nuclear states" are intended for targets in the Middle East. Moreover, in accordance with "NATO strike plans", these thermonuclear B61 bunker buster bombs (stockpiled by the "non-nuclear States") could be launched "against targets in Russia or countries in the Middle East such as Syria and Iran" ( quoted in National Resources Defense Council, Nuclear Weapons in Europe , February 2005, emphasis added)

In 2016, press reports including Deutsche Welle confirmed the deployment of Turkey's 50 B61 nuclear weapons out it Incirlik air force base. But this has been known for years. It took the media ten years to acknowledge that Turkey (a non-nuclear State) possesses a sizeable nuclear arsenal.

There was however some confusion in the media reports as to the nature of the nuclear bombs stored and deployed at Incirlik. They are B61 gravity bombs [of the bunker buster type] with nuclear warheads, with an explosive capacity of up to 170 kilotons (up to 12 times a Hiroshima bomb).

The accuracy of the numbers of bombs quoted in the media reports remains to be ascertained. Some of the bombs were decommissioned. Some of them may have been replaced with a more recent version including the B61-11.

It should be emphasized that in the last few years, the Pentagon has developed a more advanced version of the B61, namely the B61-12, which is slated to replace the older versions currently stored and deployed in Western Europe including Turkey.

Nuclear weapons are on the table: A trillion dollar nuclear weapons is now being contemplated by the Pentagon.

The notion of deterrence has been scrapped These so-called mini-nukes are intended to be used.

Under The Pentagon's so-called Life Extension Program, the the B61 nuclear weapons are intended to "remain operational until at least 2025."

Are these five countries undeclared nuclear powers?

Should we be concerned?

The number of nuclear bombs deployed is far greater than those of the DPRK, which is object of economic sanctions and war threats.

Turkey, Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany and Italy possess B61 nuclear bombs, deployed under national command and targeted at Russia, Iran and the Middle East.

Michel Chossudovsky, July 30, 2016, minor revisions, September 17, 2017

The Minister of Defense of Ukraine Stepan Poltorak last week filed a report on his resignation, out of fear of a future war.

Former Verkhovna Rada deputy Vladimir Oleinik spoke about it to TV channel "Russia 1."

"According to our information, last week he (Poltorak - Ed.) made a statement on his resignation to Poroshenko. "Why? Because they are made orally, 'You are preparing for war,'" Oleinik said.

"There is no ammunition, the mood in the army is Humpty-Dumpty," said the former deputy.

A US European Command spokeswoman is knocking down reports that the US opened a military base in Israel just days after US officials attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony to commemorate a new building cluster in the country.

The new buildings located on the Israeli installation are not a US military base," Meghan Henderson, a media operations official at EUCOM, told The Times of Israel Wednesday.

"On September 18, senior leaders from the US military participated in a ribbon-cutting ceremony ... to commemorate the opening of a new building on an Israeli Air Force base," the spokeswoman said.

On Monday, Israeli Defense Forces Brig. Gen. Zvi Haimovitch declared "the base is here to stay," noting that "this is the first time that we have an American flag flying in an IDF base."

But according to the Israeli publication, shortly afterward, the Israeli Defense Forces scrubbed all references to a US military "base" from its website, calling the new endeavour instead a "facility."

An Israeli military source verified to The Times of Israel that US military representatives had contacted the IDF to ask for the change in phrasing. US officials reportedly felt obliged to correct their Israeli counterparts because of an apparent legal discrepancy: A "military base" is subject to different legal statutes than a "military facility."

A federal appeals court will hear a case brought by Judicial Watch on Friday to make public draft indictments of Hillary Clinton from the Whitewater scandal in the 1990s.

Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group that files Freedom of Information Act requests, wants copies of the documents that the National Archives and Records Administration has declined to release. It filed a FOIA request for the documents in March 2015 and in October 2015 the group sued for the 238 pages of responsive records.

According to Judicial Watch: "The National Archives argues that the documents should be kept secret, citing grand jury secrecy and Clinton's personal privacy."

Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters has called for Trump's impeachment for the second time in a week, and urged her fellow representatives and the black community to join her in pushing for Trump's ouster.

"There is no law that can dictate impeachment," Waters told members of the Congressional Black Caucus on Thursday. "What the Constitution says [about impeachment] is, 'high crimes and misdemeanors' and we define that."

"Bill Clinton got impeached because he lied," she added.

"Two diesel submarines - The Kolpino and the Veliki Novgorod - on the way from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea Fleet have entered the Mediterranean," he said.

The submarines will be part of the Russian Navy's permanent group in the Mediterranean.

The submarines are moving in the surface position. They are escorted by a salvage tug of the Baltic Fleet.

The Kolpino and The Veliki Novgorod are the fifth and sixth in a series of six submarines of project 636.3 built at the Admiralty Shipyards for the Black Sea Fleet.

Another project 636.6 submarine - the Krasnodar - was redeployed from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea earlier. It performed a number of tasks as part of the Russian Navy's group in the Mediterranean. On June 23, as the Defense Ministry said, it launched Kalibr cruise missiles against facilities of the Islamic State (outlawed in Russia) in Syria.

A Russian submarine has destroyed several targets in Syria with a barrage of Kalibr cruise missiles, the Russian Defense Ministry reported. The missiles hit the assets of jihadists, who attacked a unit of Russian Military Police earlier this week, it said.

The 'Veliky Novgorod' attack submarine of the Varshavyanka class (designated "Improved Kilo" by NATO) fired the missiles on Friday from the Mediterranean Sea, the ministry said in a statement. The barrage targeted command points, training camps and military hardware of a terrorist group based in the Idlib governorate, which had earlier attacked Russian troops stationed in the neighboring Hama governorate, it said.


The attack started on Tuesday morning, with incoming fire from territory controlled by various militant groups opposing the government of Syria. Russia said it was conducted by the group previously known as Al-Nusra Front and was aimed at capturing three dozen Russian Military Police troops, who were deployed north-west of the city of Hama to monitor a ceasefire in the area.

The issue of when a global reserve currency begins or ends is not an exact science. There are no press releases announcing it, and neither are there big international conferences that end with the signing of treaties and a photo shoot. Nevertheless we can say with confidence that the reign of every world reserve currency has to come to an end at some point in time. During a changeover from one global currency to another, gold (and to a lesser extent silver) has always played a decisive role. Central banks and governments have long been aware that the dollar has a sell-by date as a reserve currency. But it has taken until now for the subject to be discussed openly. The fact that the issue has been on the radar of a powerful bank like JP Morgan for at least five years, should give one pause. Questions regarding the global reserve currency are not exactly discussed on CNBC every day. Most mainstream economists avoid the topic like the plague. The issue is too politically charged. However, that doesn't make it any less important for investors to look for answers. On the contrary. The following questions need to be asked: What indications are there that the world is turning its back on the US dollar? And what are the clues that gold's role could be strengthened in a new system?

The mechanism underlying today's "dollar standard" is widely known and the term "petrodollar" describes it well. This system is based on an informal agreement the US and Saudi Arabia arrived at in the mid-1970s. The result of this deal: Oil, and consequently all other important commodities, is traded in US dollars - and only in US dollars. Oil producers then "recycle" these "petrodollars" into US treasuries. This circular flow of dollars has enabled the US to pile up a towering mountain of debt of nearly $20 trillion - without having to worry about its own financial stability. At least, until now.