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The Pentagon's game of nuclear chicken with Russia and China

Michael T. Klare
TomDispatch.com
Sun, 11 Oct 2020 16:08 UTC
B-52H Stratofortress bombers
The MQ-9 Reaper, a drone armed with Hellfire missiles, has been a workhorse in Washington's forever wars across the Greater Middle East and Africa, but its days could be numbered. According to Air Force Magazine, that service "has grown skeptical that the Reaper could hold its own against advanced nations like Russia and China, which could shoot the non-stealthy aircraft down or jam its transmissions." While more advanced drones may be coming, however, the Reaper's still where it's at. Not so surprisingly, then, that plane is now being repurposed to use not just against Afghans or Iranians or Iraqis or Somalis, but the Chinese.

That fits with the Pentagon's urge to leave those forever wars behind (as TomDispatch regular Michael Klare, author of All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon's Perspective on Climate Change, has been writing at this site for a surprisingly long time). Its top strategists would prefer instead to focus on recreating a nostalgia-filled twenty-first-century version of the Cold War. One sign of this: in recent naval exercises off the California coast in which three Reapers "performed airstrikes during [a] simulated amphibious assault on San Clemente Island," the military unit responsible for those planes sported a dramatic new shoulder patch. It displayed a Reaper over a silhouetted all-red map of... well, yes, I guess it must still be "Red China."

And if you don't consider that ominous, then check out Klare's piece today on the nuclearization -- such a term should exist, if it doesn't already -- of American "diplomacy." Tom

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Health

Former White House doctor says Biden 'not up to the job' mentally

Dave Boyer
The Washington Times
Tue, 13 Oct 2020 00:01 UTC
joe biden
© AP Photo/Patrick Semansky
Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden smiles during the first presidential debate Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2020, at Case Western University and Cleveland Clinic, in Cleveland, Ohio.
Former White House physician Dr. Ronny Jackson said Tuesday that Democratic nominee Joseph R. Biden "does not have the mental capacity" to handle the rigors of the presidency.

"He is not up to the job," Dr. Jackson told reporters in a conference call organized by President Trump's reelection campaign. "I've watched Joe Biden on the campaign trail and I'm concerned that he does not have the mental capacity, the cognitive ability, to serve as our commander-in-chief. He routinely gets lost in the middle of a thought and can't recalibrate."

Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates dismissed the claims, saying, "I refer you to the first debate."
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Attention

Antifa mayoral candidate praises Joe Biden for saying Antifa is just an idea

Mia Cathell
The Post Millennial
Fri, 09 Oct 2020 18:54 UTC
Biden Sarah Iannarone antifa mayor
The Antifa challenger running for Portland mayor regurgitated the Biden-coined phrase: "Antifa is not anything more than an idea."


Comment: See also:

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Info

Democrats don't dare say why they oppose Judge Barrett, so they lie instead


New York Post
Mon, 12 Oct 2020 20:06 UTC
Amy Coney Barrett
© Patrick Semansky - Pool via CNP
The Senate held its first hearing on the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.
Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee devoted their opening statements on the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to repeating a shameless lie. Why can't they share their real reasons for opposing her?

The Democrats, one after another, claimed that confirming Barrett would result in ObamaCare being overturned when the court takes it up Nov. 10, with Americans dying as a result.

It's plainly false: Several conservative justices clearly don't buy the arguments made for striking down the law in this case. And Barrett, based on her overall philosophy, is likely to agree with them.

Comment: See also:

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Syringe

Bill Gates says life will return to normal only after SECOND generation of Covid vaccines rolled out and virus eliminated globally


RT
Mon, 12 Oct 2020 21:54 UTC
bill gates
© Reuters / Jason Lee
Gates, shown speaking last year at an event in Beijing, says Covid-19 vaccines must be made available globally.
Technology tycoon Bill Gates said life can get back to normal only when a second generation of Covid-19 vaccines is widely available and the virus is eradicated worldwide - a higher bar than was set for any disease in history.

"The only way we'll get completely back to normal is by having, maybe not the first generation of vaccines, but eventually a vaccine that is super-effective, and that a lot of the people take, and that we get the disease eliminated on a global basis," Gates said Sunday in an interview on NBC's Meet the Press program. "That is where we can finally start taking all the problems that have been created -- in education, mental health -- and start to build back in a positive way."

According to that standard, Americans might need to live for years, or for life, under social-distancing guidelines and other Covid-19 restrictions. It's certainly gloomier than the assessment Gates gave in a Fox interview last month, when he said progress on vaccines might make it possible for a return to normalcy in the US by the summer of 2021. He said he expects several of the first generation of vaccines to get emergency approval by early next year.

Comment: See also:

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Stock Down

Eurozone to crash by 8.3% in 2020, 'historic and aggressive' financial injections softened blow - IMF


PressTV
Wed, 14 Oct 2020 12:05 UTC
uk covid mask
© AFP
A pedestrian wearing a face mask or covering due to the COVID-19 pandemic, walks past shops in Liverpool, north west England on October 12, 2020, as new local lockdown measures are set to be imposed to help stem a second wave of the novel coronavirus COVID-19.
The eurozone economy will suffer a historic crash in 2020, but not as badly as first expected, IMF data showed on Tuesday as it warned of a slow recovery.

The IMF said the eurozone economy would contract by a staggering 8.3 percent this year, a free fall not seen since the 1930s Great Depression.

However this was an improvement on the 10.2 percent drop predicted in June and before the European economy stirred back into action over the summer months.

Comment: See also:

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Sheriff

UK MP resigns over 'failed lockdowns that are causing pain, suffering and death'

Chris Green
The Spectator
Wed, 14 Oct 2020 09:11 UTC
Chris Green

Chris Green
The Greater Manchester 'local lockdown' and the more extreme economic lockdowns have both failed to control the number of positive tests within the Borough of Bolton, which has inexorably risen.

During the lockdown, Bolton has seen 20,000 fewer GP referrals to hospital when compared to last year, while many others have not accessed vital treatment because they have been too frightened to do so. By taking our current approach to Covid-19, we are creating many other health problems that are leading to pain, suffering and death.

The closure of pubs, restaurants and cafes, combined with the reduction of footfall on our high streets, has brought many family-owned businesses in my constituency to the brink of collapse and pushed others over the edge. While many employees and businesses have received substantial support, a great many business owners have received nothing and will continue to receive no support.

Comment: Evidently there are few in central government that are intelligent and principled enough to recognise what is deadly obvious to many. However, in recent weeks, we've seen a number of brave local leaders from the UK, France, Italy and Spain, push back against their governments' tyrannical lockdown measures: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Blackbox

Coup who? Scaremongering Democrats protest too much.

Mark Hemingway
The American Mind
Fri, 09 Oct 2020 05:02 UTC
trump military briefing
© Shealah Craighead/The White House
President Trump with senior military leaders
In August, two retired military officers published a piece in Defense One which literally encouraged America's top military leadership to have the 82nd airborne to descend on Washington in the event of a disputed election and escort President Trump out of office.

"In the Constitutional crisis described above, your duty is to give unambiguous orders directing U.S. military forces to support the Constitutional transfer of power," they write. "Should you remain silent, you will be complicit in a coup d'état." In other words, the military must prevent a coup by staging one of their own. Thankfully, the Pentagon publicly condemned John Nagl's and Paul Yingling's musings.

In some regards it is unremarkable in a nation with millions of military veterans that two of them would have some kind of Clockwork Orange-style MSNBC viewing party and put crayon to paper long enough to come up with this violent fantasia. However, the problem isn't so much that Nagl and Yingling gamed out this scenario — every election that I can remember for the last 30 years has featured fringe voices expressing concern that the current occupant will refuse to leave.

The real problem is that, for once, a respectable media outlet went ahead and published it. If anything, the Defense One op-ed was just the most explicit example of the anti-Trump coup pornography that's become a staple of mainstreammedia. And when the media is not baselessly fretting Trump will refuse to leave office, they're outrageously and falsely characterizing Trump and his administration in ways that justify his violent removal.
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Eye 1

Boris Johnson confirms draconian three-tier system of local lockdowns for England

Greg Heffer
Sky News
Mon, 12 Oct 2020 03:48 UTC
mask uk
© Reuters / Phil Noble
A new three-tier system of coronavirus restrictions is being introduced in England, Boris Johnson has announced, with Liverpool put in the highest tier.

The Local COVID Alert Levels - "medium", "high" and "very high" - will be implemented in different areas depending on local infection rates.


Comment: Doesn't feel too different from the "terror level threat levels" from the George W. Bush administration after 9/11 does it? All done for the same affect: control the masses.


The move, planned to come into force on Wednesday, is aimed at simplifying the range of different COVID-19 restrictions that were already in place across various parts of England.

There were 13,972 new cases of coronavirus in the UK announced on Monday, with 50 more deaths recorded of people who tested positive within the previous 28 days.

Comment: Critics have rightfully trashed BoJo's plans, calling it a "cure worse than a disease." A Tory MP actually resigned over the new policies.

In France the PM has given the great news to French citizens that the lockdowns will last through the end of 2020. How do politicians know how long a virus will last? The answer is they don't, it's not about health it's about control. France is even hinting at a curfew.

While politicians rub their hands in glee over their enhanced abilities to control the population, a group of 500 scientists in Australia have penned a letter urging the government to reconsider Victoria's "disproportionate and unscientific" strict Covid-19 lockdowns. It will fall on the media's deaf ears of course, because the media's job is to make people afraid and dependent on the state for safety.

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Black Magic

German defence ministry ordered Swedish defence lab to find Novichok in Navalny's blood, or else

John Helmer
johnhelmer.net
Mon, 12 Oct 2020 23:43 UTC
keep calm do what you're told
The German Defence Ministry in Berlin has confirmed as genuine a copy of its request to the Swedish Defence Research Agency to test Alexei Navalny's blood, and a partially redacted report of what the Swedes found — and failed to find.

Blacked out in the Swedish report is the evidence of a Novichok chemical because the Swedes failed to identify it. Instead, they told the German Defence Ministry, which paid for the blood testing, that "the presence [blank blank blank] was confirmed in the patient's blood."

The leak of two pages, the German Defence Ministry letter signed by Ernst-Christoph Meier and a page of the Swedish laboratory report, occurred on Twitter on Friday evening.

Meier's letter, dated September 4 and written in English, told the Swedes exactly what they were expected to report back to Berlin. Navalny was suffering from "symptoms of a poisoning due to a substance belonging to the group of cholinesterase inhibitors", the document declared. So that the Swedish laboratory understood what was requested from them, the Defence Ministry added that the German Army laboratory in Munich had reported that "a nerve agent from the so-called 'Novichok group' could be determined as the source of this poisoning." The word "could", a subjunctive not an indicative, was the German expression. The Berlin ministry then "kindly requests the Swedish Defence Research Agency in order to have another OPCW designed laboratory validating our findings".

The word "designed" was a mistake; the German writer meant "designated". But there was no mistaking what the defence ministry wanted. The Swedes were told to "validate" the Munich laboratory report of "Novichok". Novichok was a German order.
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