May 21

Today’s News 21st May 2017

  • Trump Inks Largest Arms Deal in U.S. History with Country He Said Funded ISIS

    There was a lot of pomp and circumstance upon Trump’s arrival in Saudi Arabia. It’s important to note, after 8 years of Iranian friendly Obama, the Saudis have strong motives to curry the favor of the new American President.

    The visit to Saudi Arabia is historic. It marks the first time in American history a President had chosen to make Saudi Arabia his first international visit. Upon landing in the oil rich gulf state, the President signed a massive arms deal — which could swell to more than $350b over the next decade. The deal includes blackhawk helicopters, a modified version of the Freedom-variant Littoral Combat Ship, thousands of precision guided weaponry, cargo helicopters, transport helicopters, 115 M1A2s tanks, anti-ballistic missile systems (THAAD), and ‘maritime assets.’

    The theory behind arming Saudi Arabia is that it would permit them to handle Iran in the Persian Gulf, granting us license to throw a few logs on the fire and doze off a bit while they do all the work for a change. All that sounds well and good, especially since the money will be spent with our weapons manufacturers, who employ thousands of Americans. But what about all of the stuff Trump said about Saudi Arabia during the campaign? Does that count for anything, or was it just election time shit talking?

    Here’s Trump chastising Clinton for accepting Saudi money, a country that ‘kills women’ and ‘treat women horribly.’

    Or what about the time Trump told The Morning Shill that Saudi Arabia was arming ISIS?

    This is the “if, then” logic I want to put on the table for you to think about. If Saudi Arabia funds radical Islam and ISIS, like Trump said, then should we be selling them advanced weaponry?

    One minor detail that is vexing me today. All of the conservatards are out in force, praising Melania Trump for not wearing a headscarf, which she’s 100% right for doing.

    But Michelle Obama didn’t wear one either. I don’t know why people are saying she did wear one.

    As a matter of fact, President Trump actually had the stones to criticize Michelle for doing so back then, calling it an insult.

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    If we’re gonna talk about this ‘historic trip’, let’s be honest about it then.
    Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

     

  • 10 Crazy Conspiracy Theories That Became Conspiracy Facts

    Authored by Jake Anderson via TheAntiMedia.org,

    Generally speaking, conspiracy theories form where there is a vacuum of verifiable facts associated with a controversial, usually tragic event. The concept has evolved over the years and is a part of our popular culture. There are legions of conspiracy theorists and “truthers” who have devoted their lives to certain theories, and there are legions of skeptics who have devoted their lives to debunking those theories. All the while, conspiracy theories of every stripe and variety festoon the footnotes of history. Even the origin of the phrase itself is subject to conspiracy theory, as some researchers have argued that the CIA invented and promulgated the term in order to marginalize fringe thinkers and neutralize investigations.

    The internet has obviously had a profound effect on conspiracy theories, simultaneously helping and hurting the cause. While a world of information is at people’s fingertips, so too are alternate worlds of manufactured propaganda. While the Internet may appear to be a democratized, unfiltered path toward facts and truth, it is easily manipulated. Powerful corporations pay a lot of money to have their dirty laundry buried in the search results underneath contrived puff pieces.

    With nearly the entire mainstream media apparatus at their disposal, the government is a maestro at this practice. As we learned from so-called Operation Mockingbird — a conspiracy theory fact discussed in my first post on the subject, “Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out to Be True,” — hundreds, if not thousands of news organizations have been conscripted into working with the CIA to support pro-government narratives. That was in the 1960s. One can only imagine how vast the network is now. Not to mention the fact that a single proprietary algorithm owned by Google dictates the vast majority of the population’s exposure to a subject.

    In Part 1, I noted that the list had been meticulously whittled down to focus only on conspiracies that have been irrefutably proven to be fact. There are hundreds of conspiracy theories I think are likely to be true that are not on this list because there simply isn’t enough hard evidence yet to confirm it 100%. I also aimed for a good mixture of old conspiracies and new conspiracies. With groups like Wikileaks and Anonymous out there, the last decade has witnessed a dam burst of new data and documents. Thanks to intrepid journalists, whistleblowers, hacktivists, and leakers, the human race continues to tear down the wall of lies erected by the corporatocracy.

    Without further ado, let’s get to it….ten more conspiracy theories we can start calling conspiracy facts.

    1. Operation Ajax, the CIA’s Iranian Coup

    In Iran it was called 28 Mordad coup; the United Kingdom contributed under the name Operation Boot. However you refer to it, Operation Ajax was an Iranian coup that in 1953 deposed the democratically elected Muhammad Mossadeq and reinstalled the monarchical power of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. The primary cause of the coup was Mossadeq’s attempt to nationalize the Iran’s oil fields, which threatened the oil profits of Britain’s Anglo-Persian Oil Company (AIOC). The U.S. — in addition to protecting its ally’s petroleum monopoly — viewed Mossadeq’s move as communist aggression and therefore helped plan the return to power of one the world’s more insidious dictators, the shah. Operation Ajax resulted almost directly in 1979 Iranian revolution that created an anti-West Islamic republic led by the Ayatollah Khomeini.

    Though it was long considered an open secret, the U.S. government kept the truth behind Operation Ajax concealed from the American people until very recently. The CIA declassified various documents on the 60th anniversary of the coup.

    Because of the recent declassification, much information relevant to this CIA-sponsored coup is now available in the CIA’s archives.

    In describing Operation Ajax, the CIA itself has become rather oddly self-reflective:

    “The world has paid a heavy price for the lack of democracy in most of the Middle East. Operation Ajax taught tyrants and aspiring tyrants that the world’s most powerful governments were willing to tolerate limitless oppression as long as oppressive regimes were friendly to the West and to Western oil companies. That helped tilt the political balance in a vast region away from freedom and toward dictatorship.”

    In a recent interview on Democracy Now, Bernie Sanders remarked to Amy Goodman that this seminal chapter in the history of U.S./Middle East relations is almost entirely ignored by mainstream media. “Have you seen many shows about that on NBC?” he asked the crowd.

    2. “Nayirah,” the False Pretext for the first Gulf War

    It’s now commonly believed that the second Iraq War was sold to the American people — and their congressional representatives — based on an elaborate web of lies and manipulated intelligence. What is less commonly known is that the first Iraq War came about in a very similar fashion. While, surprisingly, there is broad agreement that “Operation Desert Storm” was a worthwhile war, many people overlook the role of a fifteen-year-old girl named “Nayirah,” whose 1990 testimony to the Congressional Human Rights Caucus is credited with cementing the idea of Iraqi war crimes in the American popular consciousness. Nayirah testified to having witnessed Iraqi troops tearing babies from their incubators in Kuwaiti hospitals and leaving them to die on the floor. It’s a profoundly disturbing image….and one that was entirely fictitious.

    After a lengthy investigation, Amnesty International and other independent watchdog groups discovered that the situation described by Nayirah was fabricated by a PR firm named Hill & Knowlton (the largest in the world at this time), which was hired by the group Citizens for a Free Kuwait in order to create propaganda that would galvanize pro-war sentiment. The man overseeing the campaign was Bush political confidante Craig Fuller. This was a massive project utilizing 119 H&K executives in 12 offices across the United States and even involved casting Nayirah, who turned out to be Nayirah al-Sabah, daughter of Saud bin Nasir Al-Sabah, Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. The Justice Department, which could have investigated the entire effort under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, turned a blind eye, allowing the Bush administration to pull off a massive “Wag the Dog”-style ideological false flag. Others call it “atrocity propaganda,” a form of psyop (psychological operation).

    The “Nayirah” story is just another example of the government falsifying a narrative in order to manipulate the public into supporting war. This kind of psychological propaganda continued all through the second Iraq War and the War on Terror. Just recently, it was revealed that the Pentagon paid PR firm Bell Pottinger $540 million to create fake terrorist videos in Iraq.

    3. Operation Paperclip

    Originally called Operation Overcast, Operation Paperclip was the codename of the secret American plan to conscript Nazi scientists into U.S. intelligence services at the end of World War II. This ushered in and shielded about 1,500 Germans, including some engineers and technicians. Ostensibly, the purpose of this redeployment by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) was to prevent Nazi scientific intelligence from helping reconstitute a new German government; it was also a tactic meant to ensure the Soviet Union didn’t acquire any new technology.

    Whatever strategic mindset might have lived inside Operation Paperclip, at its core, the project gave American identities to some of the most ruthless war criminals the world has ever seen.

    According to Ynet, the new Nazi CIA scientists helped develop chemical weapons for the U.S. and worked alongside American scientists to develop LSD, which the CIA viewed as a ‘truth serum.’

    4. Operation Gladio: Anti-Communist False Flags in Italy

    Operation Gladio was the post-World War II love-child of a CIA/NATO/M16 plot to battle communism in Italy. The operation lasted two decades and used CIA-created “stay behind” networks as part of a “Strategy of Tension” that coordinated multiple terrorist attacks from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. Authorities blamed these attacks on Marxists and other left-wing political opponents in order to stigmatize and condemn communism. The operation involved multiple bombings that killed hundreds of innocent people, including children. The most notable attack was the August 2, 1980, bombing of the Bologna train station, which killed 85 people.

    In an Anti-Media piece written about five confirmed false flag operations (which includes Operation Gladio, I wrote:

    “How do we know about Operation Gladio in spite of its incredibly clandestine nature? There are two principle sources. One, the investigations of Italian judge Felice Casson, whose presentation was so compelling it forced Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti to confirm Gladio’s existence. The second source is testimony from an actual Gladio operative, Vincenzo Vinciguerra, who is serving a life sentence for murder. In a 1990 interview with the Guardian, Vincenzo stated that Gladio was designed to psychologically coerce the Italian public to rely on the state for security.”

    Operation Gladio is a textbook modern “false flag.” It used terror and violence to discredit an ideology (communism). And to think, this came at a time before the internet when the CIA didn’t have a fully entrenched mainstream media to trumpet, echo, and build consensus around every little nuance (though they were working on it with COINTELPRO and Operation Mockingbird). Nowadays, the CIA has multinational propaganda machines — the news networks — to make sure all terrorist attacks fit into the carefully scripted narrative that manufactures consent around our wars for oil, natural gas, and other resources.

    5. Government uses insect and rodent drones to spy

    It’s somewhat of a cliche to jokingly refer to a surrounding insect or bird as a clandestine spy deployed by the government to watch you. While we lack certain specifics on the ubiquity of the technology, we know definitively that the government has the technology to surveil citizens using insects and other small animals, and they use this technology in military applications.

    There is some evidence to suggest that insect drones are used domestically to spy on citizens. In 2007, this theory conspiracy theory took shape when anti-war protesters reported strange buzzing insects. Written off as tin foil material, officials dismissed the suggestion that the government used insect drones to spy. Multiple witnesses reported erratic dragonfly-type objects hovering in the sky. The very next year, the U.S. Air Force announced their intended use of insect-sized spies ‘as tiny as bumblebees’ to infiltrate buildings in order to ‘photograph, record, and even attack insurgents and terrorists.‘ The government has come clean about its use of drones to spy on American citizens, so it’s difficult to believe they wouldn’t have at least tried insect drones.

    While we can’t say with 100% certainty that there are insect drones spying on American citizens, though it’s exceedingly likely, what is irrefutable is the use of micro air vehicles (MAVs) and “spy animals” as war-time tools. DARPA launched its Stealthy Insect Sensor Project in 1999 as an effort to deputize bees as bomb locators in war zones. This was just the first phase in an ongoing project. In her book The Pentagon’s Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America’s Top Secret Military Research Agency, journalist Annie Jacobsen revealed that the agency’s near-future trajectory is to introduce “biohybrids” — part animal, part machine cyborgs — into the United States’ military arsenal.

    In an interview with Coast to Coast AM, Jacobsen said:

    “DARPA has already succeeded in creating a rat that will be steered by remote control by implanting an electrode in its brain.

    “And it’s done the same thing with a moth which is really remarkable because the scientists implanted the electrodes in the pupa stage of the moth when it was still a worm! And then it transformed into having wings, and those tiny little micro-sensors transformed with the moth and the DARPA scientists were able to steer that moth.”

    This section references information from The Pentagon’s Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America’s Top Secret Military Research Agency by Annie Jacobsen. Details not linked to external sources are cited in this book.

    6. CIA assassinations and coups in foreign countries

    When operatives for the Democratic Party claim the 2016 United States presidential election was tampered with by a foreign entity, it’s hard not to cringe at the irony. Firstly, they’ve presented no evidence, except to claim that government intelligence agencies believe it to be true. Sorry, that’s not actually evidence. That’s like the police saying they have DNA evidence but never actually scientifically presenting it in court. It’s kind of unnerving that we even have to point that out. Secondly, our own government and intelligence agencies, namely the CIA, have actively and aggressively subverted countless foreign elections over the last century and, in some cases, have outright funded the assassinations of candidates.

    This subject could easily fill a multi-volume book, and countless authors have worked over the years to uncover the role of the CIA in foreign coups. Using every tool in their arsenal — including white, grey, and black psychological operations, counterinsurgencies, and brutal coups aimed at repressing and destroying radically democratic candidates — the CIA has subverted the “will of the people” across the world.

    The most commonly noted instances of the CIA meddling in foreign elections and governments include the following: South Korea (late-1940s); Italy (1948-mid-1970s); Guatemala (1954); Congo (1960), Dominican Republic (1961), South Vietnam (1963), Brazil (1964); Uruguay (1969); Bolivia (1971); Chile (1970-1973); Argentina (1976); Australia (1975); El Salvador (1980); Iran (late-1970s); Grenada (1983) Haiti (1986); Panama (1990) Nicaragua (1990); Czechoslovakia (1990); Peru (1990-2000) Yugoslavia (2000). This is but a small sampling of countries where even mainstream news outlets and, in many cases, the CIA itself, admits calamitous U.S. involvement. There are literally dozens more and, of course, this is restricting the conversation to soft coups — otherwise, we could certainly include the complete military decimation of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and other Middle Eastern countries during the War on Terror, as well as the myriad imperial wars against perceived communist threats.

    ‘A foreign government hacked and subverted our election!’

    The irony is thick with this one. Payback’s a bitch…..which, of course, isn’t giving our intelligence agencies, who have proven themselves to be pathological liars, the benefit of the doubt regarding their claims of Russian collusion during the 2016 presidential election. It’s just to kind of say…..you reap the harvest you have sown. When you look at the track record of the United States government, it’s a wonder the average citizen is safe traveling abroad.

    7. Mainstream media is the propaganda branch of the State Department

    People have long accused the media of being a proxy branch of the State Department, a highly sophisticated and well-produced form of manufactured consensus and controlled opposition all rolled into one. In ostensibly democratic nations, a free and independent press is of paramount importance. But in the U.S., we find a cohesion of the state and corporate news networks that do not constitute ‘state-run media’ in the traditional sense — but it’s close.

    Our first solid documentation that the media is an echo chamber for the government came with the disclosure of what has come to be called Operation Mockingbird. This nefarious and far-reaching conspiracy was documented in Part 1 and involved the CIA essentially conscripting journalists, American news agencies, and major broadcasters to become domestic propagandists and spies. Eventually, this CIA/media symbiosis included journalists from all the top news organizations. Literally, thousands of people were involved.

    This infiltration of the American media and press took place during the 1950s, at the start of the Cold War, and was carried out under the auspices of fighting communism. The CIA began to restrict its use of journalists in the Operation Mockingbird program in 1976, but many people believe it has since transmogrified into something far more powerful, nefarious, and ubiquitous today. We’re still in the early stages of proving to the masses that mainstream media is little more than a mouthpiece and propaganda machine for the government and its various agencies, but the evidence is accumulating.

    During the 2016 presidential election, Wikileaks exposed a number of disturbing revelations showing collusion between the media and political operatives. This included collusion between the media, the Democratic National Committee, and the Hillary Clinton campaign. But it wasn’t just about swaying the election. New revelations showed that the government actively infiltrates powerful media corporations in order to shape their content and narratives. One of the best examples of this was the State Department’s role in affecting a CBS 60 Minutes interview with Julian Assange.

    A more comprehensive list of examples of the Orwellian symbiotic relationship between the press and the government can be found here.

    Perhaps the most disturbing recent addition to this chapter was the “Countering Disinformation Act” that President Obama slipped into the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on Christmas Eve of last year. In the context of the still-festering narrative of foreign interference in the 2016 presidential election, the act’s putative goal was to fight “fake news,” which many believe is actually a campaign to silence and dismantle alternative media on the Internet.

    In order to accomplish this, the government is establishing a Global Engagement Center for managing disinformation and propaganda. Since we already know our government routinely performs psychological operations (psyops, or as they’ve been recently rebranded, Military Information Support Operations [MISO]), it should come as no surprise that manipulating the civilian population is a permanent goal. In fact, in the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act, the government formally legalized the use of psyops on U.S. citizens. So how does this Global Engagement Center factor in?

    The new law states:

    “The Center is authorized to provide grants or contracts of financial support to civil society groups, media content providers, nongovernmental organizations, federally funded research and development centers, private companies, or academic institutions for the following purposes:

    • To support local independent media who are best placed to refute foreign disinformation and manipulation in their own communities.
    • To collect and store examples in print, online, and social media, disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda directed at the United States and its allies and partners.
    • To analyze and report on tactics, techniques, and procedures of foreign information warfare with respect to disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda.
    • To support efforts by the Center to counter efforts by foreign entities to use disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda to influence the policies and social and political stability of the United States and United States allies and partner nations.”

    While it may not immediately strike one as sinister, this codification of repressing journalists and voices the government deems to be disinformation while creating an even more centralized infrastructure to control “fact-based narratives” in the media should be highly alarming to anyone who cares about a free press. It would seem that while the State already has a steel grip on corporate news networks, they are struggling to control the influence of online independent media. This new law may be the start of this century’s Operation Mockingbird — a new full-scale infiltration of the local news and a war against anti-establishment narratives on the Internet. This is already taking the form of algorithmic censorship through Facebook and Google, as well as a weaponization of the “fake news” narrative.

    8. The Deep State (or the conspiracy theory formerly known as The New World Order)

    I describe the Deep State in depth in an article entitled “Forget the New World Order — Here’s Who Really Runs the World.” In it I wrote:

    “For decades, extreme ideologies on both the left and the right have clashed over the conspiratorial concept of a shadowy secret government often called the New World Order pulling the strings on the world’s heads of state and captains of industry.

    “The phrase New World Order is largely derided as a sophomoric conspiracy theory entertained by minds that lack the sophistication necessary to understand the nuances of geopolitics. But it turns out the core idea — one of deep and overarching collusion between Wall Street and government with a globalist agenda — is operational in what a number of insiders call the “Deep State.”

    In the wake of the 2016 election, the concept of the Deep State has grown into somewhat of a common phrase in the lexicon of alternative media theorists, crossing political boundaries and resonating across the ideological spectrum. Everyone from alt-left socialists to alt-righters now agrees there is an unelected cabal of elite neo-conservative corporatists and crony lawmakers running the geopolitical show.

    Because it’s such a complex subject and permeates so many different academic, economic, and state apparatuses, it’s virtually impossible to issue a single, simple definition of the Deep State. If I were to hazard one, I would call it “the nexus of Wall Street and the national security state — a relationship where elected and unelected figures join forces to consolidate power and serve vested interests.” But even that is vague. We could also call it “the failure of our visible constitutional government and the cross-fertilization of corporatism with the globalist war on terror.”

    Former Republican congressional aide Mike Lofgren gets more specific with who is involved:

    “It is a hybrid of national security and law enforcement agencies: the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department. I also include the Department of the Treasury because of its jurisdiction over financial flows, its enforcement of international sanctions and its organic symbiosis with Wall Street.”

    In his writing, Lofgren emphasized the role of FISA international surveillance courts. This was confirmed in a very interesting way when President Donald Trump accused former President Obama of tapping his phones, a charge Obama aides deflected by saying that if such a warrant had been issued, it would have been done through a FISA court. This shows how presidents are able to skirt the constitution by outsourcing surveillance requests. It also shows the interconnectedness of these agencies.

    However you want to describe it, it’s the natural conclusion of Operation Mockingbird and most certainly a reality that the elites would have rather kept under the radar. Fortunately for the people of the Earth, revelations from Wikileaks and other whistleblowers have, over the last couple decades, made it abundantly clear that the Deep State (the New World Order) not only exists, but also that it’s far more sinister and powerful than early conspiracy theorists could have ever imagined.

    9. CIA used psychics to infiltrate the Soviet Union during Cold War

    It’s a plot in a science fiction movie or TV show we’ve all seen: a psychic being leveraged by a law enforcement agency to track down a criminal. The concept of a government psychic program was popularized by the film The Men Who Stare at Goats, which lampooned the mythical STARGATE program supposedly run by the CIA. Most people scoffed at the reality of this and considered it a wacky conspiracy theory, but a recently declassified trove of hundreds of thousands of CIA files finally confirmed not only that psychics are regularly used by police and other law enforcement agencies, but also that the government actually weaponized psychics during the Cold War to try to infiltrate the Soviet Union and gain information.

    The documents, made publicly available thanks to the activist group Muckrock, confirm there were top-secret CIA and Defense Department programs to use remote viewing to infiltrate Soviet military installments. There were also programs developing ways to engage in “psychic warfare,” including the development of a “psychic shield” to block Soviet psychics.

    10. CIA monitors U.S. citizens via their smart devices

    Early in 2017, the organization Wikileaks began releasing their first post-2016 election cables with a series of explosive data dumps regarding the CIA’s cyber hacking abilities and exploits. It is called Vault 7. Updated serially in “Year Zero,” “Dark Matter,” “Marble,” “Grasshopper,” “HIVE,” “Weeping Angel,” and “Scribbles,” the documents show the unprecedented collection of cyber vulnerabilities, exploits, and hacking abilities consolidated within the agency that many believe constitute wide-ranging breaches of civil liberties.

    Chief among these breaches is domestic surveillance and extrajudicial cyberhacking, which the Wikileaks documents confirm are taking place in an abundance of forms. The Vault 7 documents confirm that: The CIA can break into Android and iPhone handsets and all kinds of computers; the agency has the ability to hack into Apple iPhones and Android smartphones and actually assume full remote control of the device; the CIA can access consumer smart TVs to listen in on surrounding conversations; the agency looked into ways to hack into cars and crash them, allowing ‘nearly undetectable assassinations’ (an assertion that may be relevant to the Michael Hastings case); the CIA concealed vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers from other countries or governments.

    This is just the beginning. Early in the release, Julian Assange said the documents released represented only a tiny fraction of the total data that was forthcoming. Wikileaks’ episodic data dumps on the CIA’s cyber hacking programs are nothing less than stunning. The establishment’s reaction to the ongoing releases verifies how big of a deal they are. One congressman went so far as to refer to Julian Assange and his whistleblowing outfit as a “foreign terrorist organization.” This isn’t new or unexpected, as the group’s slow but inexorable drips of revelations about government malfeasance continue to confound and disturb private citizens, consumer rights activists, tech companies, and international leaders alike.

    Conclusion

    Of course, not all conspiracy theories are true. In fact, there are hundreds, even thousands, that have been roundly debunked. Unfortunately, there are those who seek to lie and invent fictions for monetary gain and fame. Disinformation, propaganda, and dishonesty exist at all levels of society.

    However, sometimes conspiracy theories turn out to be true. Therefore, it’s worth assessing them, even if their claims appear wholly outlandish. Especially if their claims appear wholly outlandish.

    The conspiracy theory is a tool in a larger tool kit used by those who wish to decode the grossly imperfect and fluid narrative describing our world. When investigated responsibly, conspiracy theories function as part of a conceptual spectrum of analysis with which we can investigate government and corporate abuses of power and the manufacturing of ‘consensus reality.’ In the 21st century, when the very transmission of information can be considered criminal, being a responsible conspiracy theorist just means you practice due diligence and hunger for the truth.

  • The Arctic Doomsday Seed Vault To Save The World… Has Flooded Thanks To Global Warming

    Having first been used in 2015 to save Syrian biodiversity, the Arctic stronghold for the world’s seeds – designed to rescue humanity in case of doomsday – has flooded after permafrost melts due to global warming. While no seeds were lost, The Guardian writes that the ability of the rock vault to provide failsafe protection against all disasters is now threatened by climate change.

    As a reminder, on a remote island that is just 800 miles (1,300 km) from the North Pole, the Norwegian government has built a failsafe in the freezing cold that protects thousands of the most vital crops from extinction.

    Officially called the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, it already holds close to a million samples of crops around the world, with each sample holding about 500 seeds. The following infographic, from Futurism, has more on this Doomsday Vault that could one day help to save civilization:

    Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

    However, as The Guardian reports, while it was designed as an impregnable deep-freeze to protect the world’s most precious seeds from any global disaster and ensure humanity’s food supply forever, the Global Seed Vault has been breached after global warming produced extraordinary temperatures over the winter, sending meltwater gushing into the entrance tunnel.

    When it was opened in 2008, the deep permafrost through which the vault was sunk was expected to provide “failsafe” protection against “the challenge of natural or man-made disasters”.

    But soaring temperatures in the Arctic at the end of the world’s hottest ever recorded year led to melting and heavy rain, when light snow should have been falling. “It was not in our plans to think that the permafrost would not be there and that it would experience extreme weather like that,” said Hege Njaa Aschim, from the Norwegian government, which owns the vault.

    “A lot of water went into the start of the tunnel and then it froze to ice, so it was like a glacier when you went in,” she told the Guardian. Fortunately, the meltwater did not reach the vault itself, the ice has been hacked out, and the precious seeds remain safe for now at the required storage temperature of -18C.

    But the breach has questioned the ability of the vault to survive as a lifeline for humanity if catastrophe strikes. “It was supposed to [operate] without the help of humans, but now we are watching the seed vault 24 hours a day,” Aschim said. “We must see what we can do to minimise all the risks and make sure the seed bank can take care of itself.”The vault’s managers are now waiting to see if the extreme heat of this winter was a one-off or will be repeated or even exceeded as climate change heats the planet. The end of 2016 saw average temperatures over 7C above normal on Spitsbergen, pushing the permafrost above melting point.

    “The question is whether this is just happening now, or will it escalate?” said Aschim. The Svalbard archipelago, of which Spitsbergen is part, has warmed rapidly in recent decades, according to Ketil Isaksen, from Norway’s Meteorological Institute.

    Aschim said there was no option but to find solutions to ensure the enduring safety of the vault: “We have to find solutions. It is a big responsibility and we take it very seriously. We are doing this for the world.”

    “This is supposed to last for eternity,” said Åsmund Asdal at the Nordic Genetic Resource Centre, which operates the seed vault.

     

  • Kim Dotcom Goes All In: 'I Knew Seth Rich… I Was Involved'

    Kim Dotcom; hacker, serial entrepreneur – and for a while the #1 ranked Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 player in the world – may be the key to the entire Seth Rich saga. From testimony in the Wikileaks investigation to Rich’s still unsolved murder – and facing extradition – Dotcom is ready to go nuclear…

    To bring you up to speed

    Last week, Private Investigator Rich Wheeler appeared on Fox5 news in DC with an update in the unsolved murder of DNC IT expert Seth Rich, claiming proof exists on Rich’s laptop proving he was Julian Assange’s source for leaked DNC emails during the 2016 election – an account in direct conflict to the Russian hacking narrative based on a discredited IT firm’s report.

    Wheeler walked back his statements the next day, however the fuse was already lit… Weaponized autists on Reddit and 4chan began furiously digging back into the Seth Rich case for clues in the still unsolved murder – and they went deep.

    Among the findings were Seth Rich’s Reddit account, email addresses, and Twitter accounts – one of which was in support of candidate Bernie Sanders. As an aside – before joining the DNC, Rich moved to Washington DC to take a job with polling and research firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner – whose founder Stanley Greenberg was a senior advisor to President Bill Clinton.

    Reddit’s the_donald goes dark

    As Seth Rich posts reached a crescendo Friday night – dominating the front page of /r/The_Donald, the Conde Nast-linked website shut the ‘subreddit’ down for around 12 hours following a moderator’s unrelated declaration of war on the rest of Reddit over censorship – completely killing the Seth Rich momentum. When The_Donald was reopened, ‘officially’ to aid the Seth Rich effort – the offending moderator had been banned and two other mods were removed from their positions. Seth Rich posts, however, are notably sparse. Oh, and Reddit edited Seth Rich’s account during the lockout.

    Meanwhile in New Zealand

    Kim Dotcom is pissed – and has been plotting revenge against Hillary Clinton, Obama, and Hollywood after being targeted in the biggest copyright infringement case in history – which included a massive illegal (and then legal) raid on his New Zealand mansion by 76 armed officers and two helicopters.

    Also seized were giant screen TVs and works of art, US$175m (NZ$218m) in cash, the contents of 64 bank accounts world-wide, including BNZ and Kiwibank accounts in New Zealand, Government bonds and money from numerous PayPal accounts.

    Police said last night up to $11m in cash was restrained in various accounts. –stuff.co.nz

    Dotcom was arrested and thrown in prison for almost two months, and has been fighting ongoing court battles and pressure to extradite him to the USA ever since. In December of 2016, New Zealand’s district court announced Mr. Dotcom was eligible for extradition – a decision upheld on appeal by NZ’s High Court.

    The Mega founder has stepped forward to offer proof that Seth Rich was one of Wikileaks’ sources during the 2016 presidential election.

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    Sean Hannity has offered Dotcom a national platform (which Kim retweeted)

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    Dotcom’s offer to Congress

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    And he’s crystal clear on why he’s doing this

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    Turning back the clock – hinting at hacks

    In December of 2014, Dotcom kicked off a series of tweets foreshadowing events to come – beginning with the claim that he was going to be “Hillary’s worst nightmare in 2016.” In a subsequent Bloomberg article from May of 2015 which used Kim’s threat in the headline, Dotcom revealed that Julian Assange was about to unleash hell on Hillary Clinton – with Dotcom clearly involved;

    “I have to say it’s probably more Julian,” who threatens Hillary, Dotcom said. “But I’m aware of some of the things that are going to be roadblocks for her.”.

    Assange has access to information, Dotcom said –Bloomberg, May 2015



    Now take a look at a few of Dotcom’s tweets from December 2014 on…

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    (p.s. for all the anons looking for digits, the above tweet’s ID is: 539567677732171777)

    Kim was confident Hillary was going to lose back in May of 2015

    (dubs in twitter ID)

    Around two months later, Kim asks a provocative question

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    Dotcom responds to an article from July of 2016 about classified info found on her server – directly hinting at upcoming leaks.

    First, let’s review part of the timeline:

    July 4th, 2016: Wikileaks tweets a link to a bunch of Hillary emails obtained legally under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

    July 22nd, Wikileaks releases around 20,000 emails related to the DNC.

    October 7th, The Podesta emails begin to leak, which included emails to and from Hillary Clinton and associates.

    October 17th, Wikileaks announced a ‘state party’ had severed Julian Assange’s internet connection at the Ecuadorian embassy.

    The day after Wikileaks released the 20,000 DNC emails, Dotcom referred it as “Episode 1”

    //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Kim goes into his beef with Hillary…

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    Kim reaches out to Google employees

    In light of this week’s Reddit / 4chan investigation turning up Rich’s email addresses (which Reddit scrubbed during the blackout), Dotcom is urging Google employees to submit Rich’s email contents to Wikileaks.

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    Questions remain

    Why did Seth Rich do it?

    11 days after Seth Rich’s death, his girlfriend made a Facebook post in which she said Seth found out that Hillary Clinton was rigging the election through fake polling stations whereby Bernie Sanders ballots were shredded and replaced with Hillary ballots.

    Others think Rich became enraged after learning how Hillary and the DNC stole the election from Bernie Sanders – who Rich supported. Furthermore, Rich worked closely with to the players involved in a suspected setup to make it appear that Bernie Sanders had ‘hacked’ Hillary Clinton.

    How long was Rich working against Hillary Clinton?

    Kim Dotcom began alluding to Hillary’s downfall in December of 2014, six months after Seth Rich joined the DNC. Was Rich feeding Wikileaks information since then – or did Julian Assange have other sources? What made Kim Dotcom so confident? Recall that prior to working for the DNC, Seth Rich worked for Bill Clinton advisor Stanley Greenberg’s polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner. Is it possible Rich discovered things about the Clintons and/or Clinton Foundation which turned him off?

    Seth Rich only accounts for the DNC emails, not John Podesta’s

    Ex-Kissinger official and CIA operator Dr. Steve Pieczenik went on record in November of 2016 to assert that rogue elements within US Intelligence agencies – not Russians – passed the information to Julian Assange.

    Now consider the official story that the Podesta emails were obtained via phishing email scam, in which John Podesta fell victim to a fake email claiming to be a Google password reset.

    Did that even happen? Or were Podesta’s emails in fact obtained by ‘rogue elements’ within US Intelligence who passed them to WikiLeaks in conjunction with Seth Rich’s email dump from the DNC?

    I am hopeful the truth will emerge in the fullness of time.

    Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com * Follow on Twitter @ZeroPointNow

  • Schlichter Warns "This Is A Coup Against Our Right To Govern Ourselves"

    Authored by Kurt Schlichter via Townhall.com,

    The blizzard of lies and distraction blowing through Washington is not just any routine stuffstorm, but a calculated attempt to bring down a president – our president, not the establishment’s president. And more than that, it’s an attempt to ensure that we never again have the ability to disrupt the bipartisan D.C. cabal’s permanent supremacy by inserting a chief executive who refuses to kiss their collective Reid.

    This is a coup against us. It’s a coordinated campaign by liberals and their allies in the bureaucracy and media to once and for all ensure their perpetual rule over us. We need to fight it, here and now, so we don’t have to fight it down at the bottom of this slippery slope.

    It’s brazen. It’s bold. It’s insulting to our intelligence. They aren’t even trying to hide their lies anymore. Truth is irrelevant; this is a choreographed dance routine and everyone has his moves. Call it Breakin’ 2: Electric Leakaroo, except instead of trying to save the community center they’re trying to save their power and prestige.

    To buy the media narrative on this latest Russian nonsense, you must believe:

    1. That whatever was revealed was super-secret, though we don’t know exactly what it was. When in doubt, assume it’s on par with the nuclear codes!

     

    2. That there was no good reason to share this info with Russia, like coordinating our fight against our joint enemy or to prevent another Russian airliner massacre. Because why would we want another power fighting ISIS or civilians not to be blown out of the sky?

     

    3. That LTG McMaster, who literally wrote the book on soldiers standing up to misbehaving civilian leaders and displayed immense personal courage in battle, turned chicken and sat there silently as Trump monologued about this unknown mystery info of doomsday-level import.

     

    4. That LTG McMaster lied on camera. Twice. And that Secretary of State Tillerson lied too.

     

    5. That random anonymous sources in an intelligence community that hates Trump with a burning passion must be believed without question, though we don’t know their identities or their motives.

     

    6. That these anonymous randos must be believed, even though they were not actually in the room to, you know, actually hear what happened. The traditional bar on hearsay is apparently now just a bourgeois conceit.

     

    7. That when the Washington Post and the rest of the media publishes classified stuff (including intelligence provided by allies) leaked by anyone not named “Donald Trump,” it’s awesome.

     

    8. That the Washington Post and the rest of the media, which has been wrong over and over again in their reporting, are not wrong again.

     

    9. That the Washington Post and the rest of the media are objective and have no anti-Trump bias, even though they are literally cheering the hits on the president.

     

    10. That there are unicorns.

    The latest pseudo-scandal is that Trump doesn’t think Mike Flynn did anything wrong, and told James Comey so back in February. So basically, Trump expressed the same view he had of the whole Flynn nonsense to Comey as he has expressed to every interviewer. Comey did nothing, and said nothing (even when testifying to Congress) for nearly three months, because it was nothing. The Russian snipe hunt continued throughout unabated. That off-hand comment was a pretty poor attempt at obstruction of justice since it didn’t obstruct anything – to the limited extent these Russian witch hunts can be confused with “justice” at all.

    So the Menschian thinkers who usually scream “Treason!” are now screaming “Obstruction of Justice!” It’s adorable when they learn new terms and try to use them correctly; they’re so proud of themselves and their vocabulary building that you almost feel bad having to point out that they sound like idiots.

    It is nice, though, to have liberals finally come out against the abuse of executive power, misuse of classified material, and Russians. Welcome to the party, except we know you’re full of Schumer.

    It’s all lies, and they know it and we know it. Normal people just shake their heads and wonder why Washington is so consumed with political nonsense instead of solving problems. But then, Washington does not produce solutions. It produces only political nonsense.

    This is a concentrated, coordinated effort by elite insiders to take down not this president – Trump’s not the point here – but to take down us, the normal American they seek to rule. Someone came to Washington who wasn’t part of the club, and that’s intolerable. So they are desperate to expel him, and by extension, us.

    Every day will be a crisis, every action he takes will be the worst thing that has ever happened, and every step towards keeping his promises a crime.

    Repeal Obamacare? TRUMP’S SENTENCING MILLIONS TO DEATH!

    Talk to Russians? IT’S TREASON!

    Telling Comey he wishes this nonsense would stop? OBSTRUTION OF JUSTICE EVEN THOUGH NOTHING WAS OBSTRUCTED!

    Now, this campaign isn’t aimed at us. Normal people, people who don’t live in DC or NYC or LA, just tune it out. After all these years, and with the help of the web, we normals know the game. We’re woke, as the dorky leftists say.

    The target of this constant barrage is the soft and the stupid, the smug and the sanctimonious, the wusses and the surrender flunkies. That’s why you get the girlish-handed likes of David Brooks writing dainty columns that give Trump such a pinch! That’s why David Frum starts using words like “courage” to impugn actual men who have done actual man-things, like LTG McMaster. That’s why Kasich spews his bilious funk of sanctimony and submission, among other funks. It’s all to appeal to the Fredocons, the soft-headed RINOs who are smart, not dumb like everyone says, who just want something for themselves – attention, approval, and media pats on their pointy little heads.

    So these fussy ninnies, fresh from having some v-capped crone screeching at them that they will vote to take away her right to have taxpayers fork cash over to kill the baby no man will ever give her, wander outside into a wall of mics and cameras and pause. Then they talk, and when what they say trashes Trump sufficiently, the smiles from the press come, and the nods, and then the faux respect. Now they are no longer mean old Rethuglicans but dauntless heroes, at least in Georgetown, because they are willing to dance and caper to the tune of the establishment.

    This tsunami of baloney isn’t aimed at us. It’s aimed at them, the Republicans who are foolish enough to believe their new friends when they whisper words like “honor” and “patriotism.” Some of the marks are real patriots who fall prey to these liars when they couch their bogus narrative in national defense terms. But the majority of the marks are just morons.

    When targeting the dummies, the goal is simple. Draw off enough weak, attention-addicted RINOs to make it impossible for the President to govern. Then, hopefully, us normals will shrug, and slink away, having relearned our place. After all, we’re deplorable.

    And when the liberal establishment retakes power, and the mavericks and goody-goodies get tossed aside, the bureaucracy, media and the Democrats will conspire to ensure that no one can ever take their power from them again. But they haven’t considered the consequences. We’ll object.

    So we have to fight against this cable network coup. Because, if we don’t fight now, we all may end up fighting later.

  • Is Trump About To Flip-Flop On "Radical Islamic Terrorism"?

    With the President's base already turning against him (after appearing to flip-flop on five core campaign promises), Trump may be able to do the biggest reversal yet as The Hill reports that White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster suggested that President Trump may abandon the phrase "radical Islamic terrorism" in a scheduled speech in Saudi Arabia on Sunday.

    As The Hill points out, Trump frequently used the phrase "radical Islamic terror" on the campaign trail to describe Islamist extremists and militant groups, but the term has historically been avoided by presidents, including George W. Bush and Barack Obama.  In fact, McMaster himself has urged the president to refrain from using the phrase, arguing that violent extremists, such as ISIS militants, push a perverse view of Islam and that the phrase "radical Islamic terror" ultimately hinders U.S. goals, according to CNN.

    McMaster said on ABC's "This Week"…

    "The president will call it whatever he wants to call it. But I think it's important that, whatever we call it, we recognize that [extremists] are not religious people. And, in fact, these enemies of all civilizations, what they want to do is to cloak their criminal behavior under this false idea of some kind of religious war."

     

    "But I think what the president will point out is the vast majority  – the vast majority of victims from these people are Muslims. And of course the Muslim world is very cognizant of that, having born witness to and experienced directly this humanitarian catastrophe that's going on across the greater Middle East and beyond."

     

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    In his speech on Sunday, Trump is expected to cast the fight against extremism as a "battle between good and evil," rather than a religious war, while calling for unity with allies in the Islamic world.

  • "An Empty Lot, An Idle Backhoe And Pieces of Rubble": NYC Real-Estate Market Is Imploding

    The stringent capital controls adopted by Chinese authorities on Jan. 1, some of which were specifically designed to curb foreign real-estate purchases, appear to have had their desired effect. To wit: First-quarter property sales plummeted 58% to $4.3 billion, compared with a year earlier, Bloomberg reported, citing data from real-estate brokerage Cushman & Wakefield Inc.

    And nationwide, the picture wasn’t much better: Sales dropped 18 percent, research firm Real Capital Analytics Inc. found.

    Here's a rundown of the new capital controls, as reported by Bloomberg:

    • Customers must pledge money won’t be used for overseas purchases of property, securities, life insurance or investment-type insurance. While such rules aren’t new, citizens previously didn’t have to sign such a pledge
    • Customers must give a more detailed account of the planned use of funds, such as business travel, overseas study, family visits, medical treatment, merchandise trade or purchases of non-investment insurance policies, including the timing, by year and month
    • Violators of foreign-exchange rules will be be added to the currency regulator’s watch list, denied foreign-exchange quota for three years and subjected to anti-money-laundering investigations
    • Customers must confirm compliance with restrictions on money laundering, tax evasion and underground bank dealings
    • Customers must now confirm they aren’t lending or borrowing quotas to or from other citizens

    But the capital controls were just the spark: For months we've been warning that real estate markets in NYC and San Francisco, among others, are getting ready to rollover as the market is squeezed by already-high valuations and a flood of new luxury apartments (see here and here).

    As we reported back in December: With a substantial amount of capacity expected to come online over the next several quarters and a growth cycle that is entering its 8th year, one Chinese real estate investor admits "you get a sense now that it’s peaking."

    Of course, the mainstream media would be remiss if it didn't find some way to blame it all on Trump:

    As Bloomberg reports:

    Much of the slowdown has nothing to do with Trump. Concern is mounting that real estate prices have peaked following six years of record-shattering growth, and there are signs of overbuilding in large cities such as New York and San Francisco—the biggest beneficiaries of the recent boom.

    Some of this hesitancy, however, can be traced to Trump’s gilded door. Real estate investors worry that Trump’s industry-friendly tax cuts will fail to pass. At the same time, others figure that lower taxes and higher spending could spark inflation and rising interest rates—a liability in the debt-driven business.

    In fact, "uncertainty about the fate of Trump’s entire economic agenda is holding up deals across the country. Buyers and sellers “need to have shared expectations” before signing on the dotted line, said Jeff Friedman, a principal at Mesa West Capital, a Los Angeles-based real estate investment firm," Bloomberg reported.

    If investors are worried about rising interest rates, they should stop paying attention to the Federal Reserve's dubious projections. Remember, Trump wants to keep interest rates low; the dot are just a distraction.

    But that doesn't change the fact that the New York market is sagging as developers struggle with a glut of hotels, condos and apartment complexes following a multiyear construction boom. Now, landlords are slashing rents, and lenders are tightening loand requirements.

    Bloomberg uses Louis Ceruzzi, a developer who, like Trump, got his start outside Manhattan, as an example of how major projects have ground to a halt in the city. Two years ago, Ceruzzi and a Chinese partner bought a plot at 520 5th Avenue, paying $275 million – doubled the price paid for it in 2011. In late 2015, Ceruzzi told the Commerial Observer that construction would begin the following Spring.

    But more than a year later, theere's only "an empty lot, an idle backhoe and scattered piles of rubble," Bloomberg notes.

    Ceruzzi, for his part, didn't respond for comment. A picture of his land can be seen below.

     

  • And The Winner Of The 2017 Pulitzer Prize For Journalism Goes To…

    “unknown”

     

    Source: Townhall.com

  • Why Is The Trump Administration Rewarding Saudi War Crimes With More Weapons?

    Authored by Kristine Beckerle op-ed via The Hill,

    Last October the Saudi Arabia-led coalition bombed a funeral hall in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, killing and wounding hundreds of people.

    “The scene was catastrophic,” one survivor told me.  “Beyond what I can explain to you or describe … There were burned bodies and dead bodies all over the hall.”

    Soon after that unlawful bombing, the Obama administration suspended the sale of nearly $400 million in weapons to Saudi Arabia.

    It was a recognition, a long time in coming, that the coalition’s military campaign in Yemen had devastated the country, killed thousands of civilians, and brought it to the brink of famine.

    After the funeral bombing, unlawful airstrikes continued, but the decision to suspend arms sales sent an important message to the Saudis. President Donald Trump, in his first trip abroad as president, is going to send an alternative, deeply troublesome message.

    While in Riyadh this weekend, Trump reportedly plans to announce more than $100 billion in arms deals to Saudi Arabia – nearly as much as Barack Obama authorized during his eight years in office.

    The deals  include Raytheon bombs, Lockheed Martin missile defense systems and BAE combat vehicles, and some  of the weapons whose sales had been suspended.

    The scars of unlawful airstrikes can be found across Yemen, where the Saudi-led coalition has carried out scores of attacks that hit homes, schools, markets, and hospitals since March 2015, when it began its military campaign against the Houthi armed group and forces loyal to the former longtime president Ali Abdullah Saleh. 

    Human Rights Watch has documented 81 apparently unlawful coalition attacks over the last two years, many possible war crimes. In almost two dozen of these cases, including the attack on the funeral hall, we were able to identify the US weapons that were used. 

    According to the United Nations, at least 4,773 civilians have been killed and 8,272 wounded since this conflict began, the majority by coalition airstrikes. The war has driven Yemen, already the poorest nation in the Middle East, toward humanitarian catastrophe. 

    Both the coalition and Houthi-Saleh forces have blocked or restricted critical relief supplies from reaching civilians. Seven million people face starvation, and cholera ravages parts of the country.

    Trump should be urging the Saudis to shift course by abiding by the laws of war and holding those responsible for past abuses to account. Instead he will effectively be telling them to continue as before and not to worry – the flow of US weapons will not stop.

    Trump will also be putting Americans at risk. Continued U.S. arms sales to a country that has repeatedly violated the laws of war exposes US officials to legal liability for aiding and abetting coalition war crimes.

    Some lawmakers in the U.S. are pushing back, introducing a bill intended to limit US arms transfers to Saudi Arabia. It would require the White House to certify that Saudi Arabia is taking all feasible precautions to minimize civilian casualties in Yemen, and stipulate that the White House must brief Congress on whether Saudi Arabia has used US weapons in previous unlawful attacks in Yemen. Other lawmakers have pledged to try to prevent future US arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

    Earlier this month, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said: “If we condition too heavily that others must adopt [our] value[s]… it really creates obstacles to our ability to advance, our national security interests, our economic interests.” The Trump administration needs to recognize instead that protecting civilians in armed conflict is part and parcel of enhancing US national security.

    The U.S. cannot quietly hope that the coalition will take the blame for past and future atrocities like the funeral hall bombing. Yemeni civilians suffering from unlawful airstrikes know the US supports the coalition and that U.S. weapons have been used against them. This is the national security problem the administration should be paying more attention to.

    If the Trump administration won’t try to curtail war crimes by Saudi Arabia and the rest of the coalition, Congress should step in and make clear – by using its own power to stop weapons sales – that the lives of Yemeni civilian can no longer be disregarded.

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