“Colonel Ryan Dillon, spokesperson for the US-led coalition, told Kurdish media on Sunday that American forces would continue to support their Kurdish allies – despite Erdogan’s threats.”
Read more: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01-29/us-turkish-troops-headed-military-showdown-syria
“The documents detailing the FBI investigation into Lesin’s death were just released Saturday morning. In spite of the original cause of death noted as a heart attack, a few months later, the District of Colombia’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) and Metropolitan Police Department said that ‘blunt force injuries of the neck, torso, upper extremities and lower extremities’ contributed to Lesin’s death. ‘The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) has released the cause and manner of death for Mikhail Lesin… Cause of Death: blunt force injuries of the head,’ the statement said.”
Not long after last year’s ‘Nuclear Posture Review’, in which top American officials insisted world peace depended upon a massive nuclear rearmament program, and after two major nuclear strike false alarms in Hawaii and Japan, US media is now instilling further panic with two new rumors: that of a long-range North Korean missile strike, and that of a Russian ‘doomsday’ nuclear torpedo attack on the US coastlines.
This could be surmised from the nuclear paradox. It tells us that nuclear armament incentivizes the nuclear armament of existing geopolitical competitors, while at the same time incentivizing interventionism against non-nuclear states through increasing their perceived costs of resistance.
The beneficiaries in this seemingly zero-sum game? Arms manufacturers, of course, but also US uranium producers, who in a complete coincidence are currently agitating for protection from foreign competition.
“In order to sell in the Russian market, the tech companies let a Russian defense agency scour the inner workings, or source code, of some of their products. Russian authorities say the reviews are necessary to detect flaws that could be exploited by hackers. But those same products protect some of the most sensitive areas of the U.S government, including the Pentagon, NASA, the State Department, the FBI and the intelligence community, against hacking by sophisticated cyber adversaries like Russia.”
“From the United States’ point of view, the National Security Strategy document highlighted how China and Russia are trying to shape a new geopolitical environment in the region, which contrasts sharply from Washington’s aims and interests. It pointed out that while Russia is trying to advance its position as the leading political and military power broker, China is pushing ahead with a ‘win, win’ economic policy.”
Read more: http://www.atimes.com/article/make-trade-not-war-chinas-daring-plan-middle-east/
“The strategy, the first such document to be issued by the Pentagon in roughly a decade, represented an historic shift from the ostensible justification for US global militarism for nearly two decades: the so-called war on terrorism. ‘Great power competition—not terrorism—is now the primary focus of US national security,’ Mattis said in his speech, which accompanied the release of an 11-page declassified document outlining the National Defense Strategy in broad terms. A lengthier classified version was submitted to the US Congress, which includes the Pentagon’s detailed proposals for a massive increase in military spending.”
“Secretary of State Rex Tillerson blamed both Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and Russia for carrying out a purported new chemical attack in the Damascus suburb of East Ghouta. In the same sentence Tillerson leveled the accusation against Russia, while simultaneously pointing the finger at Assad, [thus admitting] that he really doesn’t know much at all about ‘whoever conducted the attacks’.”
“In a secret deal, a French company purchased code from a Kremlin-connected firm, incorporated it into its own software, and hid its existence from the FBI, according to documents and two whistleblowers. The allegations raise concerns that Russian hackers could compromise law enforcement computer systems.”
Read more: https://www.buzzfeed.com/chrishamby/fbi-software-contains-russian-made-code-that-could-open-a
“Should the CIA be allowed to carry on its criminal activities just to protect Seymour Hersh’s sources? Should the truth about germ warfare be buried for ever behind a shield of deniability?”
“‘The United States has admitted that it has created a terrorist force along our country’s border. Our duty is to drown this army of terror before it is born,’ Erdogan said in a speech in Ankara. The U.S.-led coalition declined to comment on Erdogan’s threats.”