Dec 06

Today’s News 6th December 2018

  • Is China Really More "Dystopian" Than The UK?

    Authored by Andrew Korybko via Oriental Review,

    RT reported that the UK’s so-called “National Data Analytics Solution” will see an algorithm process whichever of 30 separate data points have been recorded about a person in local and national police databases in order to predict which members of the population are most likely to commit a crime or be victimized by one, after which the state will dispatch local health and social workers to offer “counseling” to them in an attempt to prevent the computer’s envisioned scenario from transpiring.

    This program is being likened to the 2002 film “Minority Report” and carries with it a vibe of China’s controversial “social credit” system, albeit without any “rewards” being offered for law-abiding behavior. In fact, one can actually make the claim that instead of the UK copying China to a degree, it was actually China that learned from the UK seeing as how the island nation’s mass surveillance system used to be far ahead of the communist nation’s one.

    The problem with “pre-crime” technology, however, is that it straddles the fine line between security and liberty in what is supposed to be a “democracy”, therefore making it uncomfortably out of place in the UK while being much more natural to implement in centrally controlled societies like China’s. While the European country insincerely pretends to be a “democracy” in the Western sense of how this system is commonly assumed to function, the East Asian one makes no such pretenses and is proud of having a different organizational model, which should be doubly disturbing for any British citizen because it means that their “democratically elected government” is actually less forthcoming about its nationwide surveillance strategy than comparatively more centralized China’s is. No value judgement is being made about either country’s governing system, but the purpose of this comparison is to point out the surprising similarities between the two that are usually lost on most observers.

    For as much as China is demonized for taking proactive security measures against Uighurs who the state fears are at risk of succumbing to terrorist ideologies, the UK will essentially be channeling the same spirit of this strategy through its “National Data Analytics Solution” with what can only be assumed are the ethno-socio minority groups in the country that are statistically more at risk of committing crimes or being victimized by them.

    The difference, however, is that drawing attention to this doesn’t serve the US’ geopolitical interests because it has nothing to gain by destabilizing the UK and possibly imposing sanctions against it for supposedly violating these subjects’ “human rights”, unlike its stance towards China in this respect. While many are fretting that “East Asia” is pioneering the way for Orwell’s 1984 to come to life, they’d do well to consider just how much “Oceania” has already done to make this a reality too.

  • How U.S. And Russian Nuclear Arsenals Have Evolved

    On Tuesday, the Russian seizure of three Ukrainian Navy vessels was expected to be the dominant topic at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels. But, as Statista’s Niall McCarty notes, the subject of nuclear weapons dominated the list of topics with U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo intent on drumming up support among NATO countries for the contention that Russia violated the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty).

    Back in October, President Trump announced that the U.S. would pull out of that treaty due to Russia’s lack of compliance. That news was greeted with concern in Europe where NATO has credited the INF Treaty as being crucial in ensuring security over the past 30 years. The agreement eliminated all short and medium-range nuclear and conventional missiles as well as their launchers.

    Even though Trump announced the U.S. would withdraw, questions have been raised about whether he can actually remove the country from Senate-approved treaties without Congressional approval. Despite the uncertainly surrounding the fate of the INF Treaty, a senior State Department official said that the U.S. wants to “stay in sync” with its European allies.

    After Trump made his intentions clear in October, experts warned that it could lead to the most serious arms control crisis since the 1980s. The following infographic uses Federation of American Scientists datato show that those warnings are not unfounded…

    Infographic: How U.S. And Russian Nuclear Arsenals Evolved | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    It provides an overview of U.S. and Soviet/Russian nuclear arsenals since the 1950s. Treaties such as the one signed in 1987 have proven vital in reducing the number of nuclear weapons controlled by the Americans and the Russians.

  • Why Can The CIA Assassinate People?

    Authored by Jacob Hornberger via The Future Of Freedom Foundation,

    Given that we have all been born and raised under a regime that has the CIA, hardly anyone questions the power of the CIA to assassinate people.

    The CIA’s power of assassination has become a deeply established part of American life.

    Yet, the Constitution, which called the federal government into existence and established its powers, does not authorize the federal government to assassinate people.

    If the proponents of the Constitution had told the American people that the Constitution was bringing into existence a government that wielded the power to assassinate people, there is no way that Americans would have approved the deal, in which case they would have continued operating under the Articles of Confederation.

    Under the Articles, the powers of the federal government were so weak, it didn’t even have the power to tax, much less the power to assassinate people. That’s because our American ancestors wanted it that way. The last thing they wanted was a federal government with vast powers.

    In fact, the purpose of the Constitutional Convention was simply to amend the Articles of Confederation. During the 13 years of operating under the Articles, problems had arisen, such as trade wars between the states. The convention was intended to fix those problems with amendments to the Articles.

    Instead, the delegates came out with an entirely different proposal, one that would call into existence a federal government that had more powers, including the power to tax.

    Americans were leery. The last thing they wanted was a powerful central government. They had had enough of that type of government as British citizens under the British Empire. They believed that the biggest threat to people’s freedom and well-being lay with their own government. They believed that if they approved a federal government, it would become tyrannical and oppressive, like other governments had done throughout history.

    They were especially concerned with the power of the government to murder people, including citizens. They knew that state-sponsored murder was the ultimate power in any tyrannical regime. When a government can kill anyone it wants with impunity, all other rights are effectively nullified. And our ancestors were sufficiently well-versed in history to know that tyrannical regimes were notorious for killing their own citizens, especially those people who challenge, criticize, or object to the tyranny.

    The proponents of the Constitution told Americans that they had nothing to be concerned about. The Constitution wasn’t calling into existence a government with general powers to do anything it wanted. Instead, by the terms of the document that would be calling the federal government into existence, its powers would be limited to the few powers that were enumerated within the document. Thus, if a power wasn’t enumerated, it didn’t exist and, therefore, couldn’t be exercised. Since the Constitution wasn’t giving the federal government the power to murder people, it couldn’t exercise that power.

    On that basis, our American ancestors approved the deal, but only on the condition that the Constitution would be immediately amended after approval with a Bill of Rights. To make sure that federal officials understood that they didn’t have the power to murder people, the Fifth Amendment was enacted. It prohibited the federal government from killing people without first according them due process of law. It’s worth noting that the protections of the Fifth Amendment are not limited to American citizens. The Amendment prohibits the federal government from murdering anyone, including people who are not U.S. citizens.

    What is due process of law? It’s a phrase that stretches all the way back to Magna Carta in 1215, when the barons of England forced their king to acknowledge that his powers over them were limited. Magna Carta prohibited the king from killing British citizens in violation of the “law of the land,” a phase that evolved over the centuries into “due process of law.”

    Essentially, due process means notice and hearing. It says to the government: “You cannot kill anyone unless you first give him formal notice of the particular criminal offense that you are claiming warrants killing him.” Then, after notice, there has to be fair trial in which the accused has the right to be heard. The Sixth Amendment ensured that people would have the right of trial by jury because our ancestors didn’t trust judges or tribunals.

    And so it was that the American people lived in a society for more than 150 years in which the federal government lacked the power to assassinate people, which is really just a fancy word for murder. A governmental assassination is the state-sponsored killing of a person without notice and trial — that is, without due process of law.

    The situation changed after World War II, when the federal government, in a watershed event, was converted from a limited-government republic into what is known as a “national-security state,” a type of governmental system that is inherent to totalitarian regimes. U.S. officials maintained that the conversion was necessary in order to confront the Soviet Union, a communist state, which itself was a national-security state. The idea was that in order to defeat the Soviet Union in the Cold War, it would be necessary for the United States to adopt, temporarily, its same type of national-security state system.

    In 1947, the CIA was called into existence as part of this new national-security state. President Truman, the president who was responsible for the federal government’s conversion to a national-security state, intended for the CIA to be strictly an intelligence-gathering agency. But someone slipped a bit of nebulous language into the law that called the CIA into existence, which the CIA seized upon to justify the adoption of omnipotent powers, including the power to assassinate people with impunity, so long as the assassination was to protect “national security.” Needless to say, the CIA had the omnipotent power to make that determination.

    As monumental as the conversion to a national-security state was, it was not done through a constitutional amendment. The Constitution continued to be the supreme law that governed the operations of the federal government, including the CIA. Thus, since the Constitution did not give the federal government the power to assassinate people and since the Fifth Amendment expressly prohibited the federal government from assassinating people, the U.S. Supreme Court and the rest of the federal judiciary had the responsibility to declare the CIA’s power to assassinate people unconstitutional.

    Unfortunately, however, in a national-security state power is everything and especially omnipotent power. Recognizing that as a practical matter, there would be no way that the federal judiciary could keep the CIA from assassinating people in the name of protecting “national security,” the federal courts went silent or even supportive.

    In 1989 the Cold War ended. Yet, we still have a national-security state and we still have a CIA with the power to assassinate people, including Americans. Why is that?

  • PETA Publishes Laughable List Of 'Animal Friendly' Phrases To 'Fight Speciesism'

    If animals could talk, they’d probably ask PETA to kindly mind its own business.

    Hundreds of thousand of cows, pigs and chickens are slaughtered in American factory farms every day (a ‘moral outrage’ that one might expect would occupy more of PETA’s messaging budget), the organization – which has hundreds of celebrity members (not unlike the Church of Scientology) – has instead devoted its latest PR campaign to combating ‘speciesism’. That’s right: PETA is trying to stop people from being ‘racist’ against chickens.

    In a hilarious chart published by PETA this week (the graphic has since gone viral, which, now that we think about it, may have been the point), PETA suggested a few handy ‘PC’ phrases that people can use to combat ‘speciesism’ by replacing a few common idioms with phrases that are more ‘animal friendly.’

    For example: Instead of saying ‘kill two birds with one stone’, people should instead say ‘feed two birds with one scone’. Or in place of the phrase ‘beat a dead horse’, PETA recommends saying ‘feed a fed horse.’

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    PETA’s chart provoked a few ‘thoughtful’ responses on social media, from vegans and non-vegans alike.

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    A few also took issue with PETA’s equating ‘speciesism’ with homophobia, sexism and racism.

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    And after perusing the responses to PETA’s tweet, we’d like to suggest a few additional substitutions for ‘speciesist’ language.

    • Bring home the bacon – bring home the bagels.
    • More than one way to skin a cat – more than one way to sooth a bat.
    • Don’t have a cow – don’t milk a sow
    • Another day at the circus – another hike with the sherpas

    We could go on…and on…

  • China Outraged At Arrest Of Huawei CFO, Warns It Will "Take All Measures"

    So much for a trade war truce between China and the US, or a stock market Christmas rally for that matter.

    Shortly after the news hit that Huawei CFO Wanzhou Meng — also deputy chairwoman and the daughter of Huawei’s founder — was arrested on December 1, or right around the time Trump and Xi were having dinner in Buenos Aires last Saturday, and faces extradition to the U.S. as a result of a DOJ investigation into whether the Chinese telecom giant sold gear to Iran despite sanctions on exports to the region, China immediately lodged a formal protest publishing a statement at its embassy in Canada, and demanding the U.S. and its neighbor “rectify wrongdoings” and free Meng, warning it would “closely follow the development of the issue” and will “take all measures” to protect the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese citizens.

    Full statement below:

    Remarks of the Spokesperson of the Chinese Embassy in Canada on the issue of a Chinese citizen arrested by the Canadian side

    At the request of the US side, the Canadian side arrested a Chinese citizen not violating any American or Canadian law. The Chinese side firmly opposes and strongly protests over such kind of actions which seriously harmed the human rights of the victim. The Chinese side has lodged stern representations with the US and Canadian side, and urged them to immediately correct the wrongdoing and restore the personal freedom of Ms. Meng Wanzhou.

    We will closely follow the development of the issue and take all measures to resolutely protect the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese citizens.

    Meng’s arrest will immediately heighten tensions between Washington and Beijing just days after the world’s two largest economies agreed on a truce in their growing trade conflict. It will, or at least should, also prompt any US execs currently in China to think long and hard if that’s where they want to be, say, tomorrow when Xi decides to retaliate in kind.

    Meng’s father Ren Zhengfei, a former army engineer who’s regularly named among China’s top business executives, has won acclaim at home for turning an electronics reseller into the world’s second-largest smartphone maker and a major producer of networking gear.

    As Bloomberg notes, the CFO’s arrest will be regarded back home as an attack on China’s foremost corporate champions. While Alibaba and Tencent dominate headlines thanks to flashy growth and high-profile billionaire founders, Ren’s company is by far China’s most global technology company, with operations spanning Africa, Europe and Asia.

    “Tencent and Alibaba may be domestic champions and huge platforms in of their own rights, but Huawei has become a global powerhouse,” said Neil Campling, an analyst at Mirabaud Securities Ltd. It is “5G standards that are at the heart of the wider IP debate and why the U.S. and her allies are now doing everything they can to cut to the heart of the Chinese technology IP revolution.”

    At the same time, Huawei’s technological ambitions have also gotten the company in hot water with the US: its massive push into future mobile communications has raised hackles in the U.S. and become a focal point for American attempts to contain China’s ascendance.

    Going back to the arrest, the U.S. Justice Department declined to comment about the circumstances involving the CFO, although the biggest question on everyone’s mind right now is whether Trump was aware of the pending arrest at the time of his dinner with the Chinese president, and why exactly he had greenlighted the move which would certainly result in another diplomatic scandal, promptly crushing and goodwill that was generated at the G-20 dinner.

    Meanwhile, in a statement, Huawei said the arrest was made on behalf of the U.S. so Meng could be extradited to “face unspecified charges” in the Eastern District of New York.

    “The company has been provided very little information regarding the charges and is not aware of any wrongdoing by Ms. Meng,” Huawei said. “The company believes the Canadian and U.S. legal systems will ultimately reach a just conclusion. Huawei complies with all applicable laws and regulations where it operates, including applicable export control and sanction laws and regulations of the UN, U.S. and EU.”

    Tensions between the Chinese telecom giant and U.S. authorities escalated in 2016, when the US voiced concerns for the first time that Huawei and others could install back doors in their equipment that would let them monitor users in the U.S. Huawei has denied those allegations. The Pentagon stopped offering Huawei’s devices on U.S. military bases citing security concerns. Best Buy Co., one of the largest electronics retailers in the U.S., also recently stopped selling Huawei products.

    In August, U.S. President Donald Trump signed a bill banning the government’s use of Huawei technology based on the security concerns. The same month, Australia banned the use of Huawei’s equipment for new faster 5G wireless networks in the country and New Zealand last week did the same, citing national security concerns. Similar moves are under consideration in the U.K. The U.S., which believes Huawei’s equipment can be used for spying, is contacting key allies including Germany, Italy and Japan, to get them to persuade companies in their countries to avoid using equipment from Huawei, the Wall Street Journal reported last week.

    In 2016, the Commerce Department sought information regarding whether Huawei was possibly sending U.S. technology to Syria and North Korea as well as Iran.

    The U.S. previously banned ZTE Corp., a Huawei competitor, for violating a sanctions settlement over transactions with Iran and North Korea.

    The cynics out there may claim that the US response is merely in place to delay the development of the company which in the third quarter overtook Apple as the No. 2 global smartphone maker, shipping more than 52.2 million units according to Gartner Inc.

    “This is what you call playing hard ball,” said Michael Every, head of Asia financial markets research at Rabobank in Hong Kong. “China is already asking for her release, as can be expected, but if the charges are serious, don’t expect the US to blink.”

    The biggest question is what will China do next. One look at futures, which flash crashed earlier when the news of the CFO’s arrest first hit, suggests that whatever it is, Beijing will probably not be happy.

  • Paul Craig Roberts Laments The Disintegration Of Western Society

    Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

    Radical feminists are now being banned by Twitter not because they hate men, which is perfectly OK as far as Twitter is concerned, but because they object to “transwomen.”

    What is a “transwoman?” As far as I can understand, a “transwoman” is a male with a penis who declares himself to be a women and demands his right to use women’s toilette facilities anong with the women who are using them.

    The feminist, Meghan Murphy, twittered a statement and a question:

    “Men are not women.”

    “How are transwomen not men? What is the difference between men and transwomen?”

    Twitter described this as “hateful conduct” and banned Meghan Murphy.

    There you have it. Yesterday it was feminists who were exercising their special society-bestowed privileges to censor. Today it is the feminists who are being censored. As this insanity of “Western Civilization” continues, tomorrow it will be the transwomen who are censored and banned.

    What precisely is afoot?

    My readers, who have partially and some wholely escaped from The Matrix, understand that this is the further fragmentation of American society. Identity Politics has set men, women, blacks, Jews, Asians, Hispanics, and white people against one another.

    Identity Politics is the essence of the Democratic Party and the American liberal/progressive/left. Now, with the creation of “new” but otherwise nonexistent “genders,” although they are honored as real by the controlled whores who masquerade as a “Western media,” we witness radical feminists being silenced by men pretending to be women.

    I sympathize with Meghan Murphy, but she brought this on herself and on the rest of us by accepting Identity Politics. Identity Politics gave Meghan a justification for hating men even, as she failed to realize, it provided the basis for moving her into the exploitative class that must be censored.

    Where does this end?

    It has already gone far enough that the American population is so divided and mutually hostile that there is no restraint by “the American people” on government and the elite oligarchs that rule. “The American people” are no longer a reality but a mythical creature like the unicorn.

    The film, The Matrix, is the greatest film of out lifetime. Why? Because it shows that there are two realities. A real one of which only a few people are aware, and a virtual one in which everyone else lives.

    In the United States today, and throughout “Western Brainwashed Civilization,” only a handful of people exist who are capable of differentiating the real from the created reality in which all explanations are controlled and kept as far away from the truth as possible.

    Everything that every Western government and “news” organization says is a lie to control the explanations that we are fed in order to keep us locked in The Matrix.

    The ability to control people’s understandings is so extraordinary that, despite massive evidence to the contrary, Americans believe that Oswald, acting alone, was the best shot in human history and using magic bullets killed President John F. Kenndy; that a handful of Saudi Arabians who demonstratively could not fly airplanes outwitted the American national security state and brought down 3 World Trade Center skyscrapers and part of the Pentagon; that Saddam Hussein had and was going to use on the US “weapons of mass destruction;” that Assad “used chemical weapons” against “his own people;” that Libya’s Gaddifi gave his soldiers Viagra so they could better rape Libyan women; that Russia “invaded Ukraine;” that Trump and Putin stole the presidential election from Hillary.

    The construction of a make-believe reality guarantees the US military/security complex’s annual budget of $1,000 billion dollars of taxpayers’ money even as Congress debates cutting Social Security in order to divert more largess to the pockets of the corrupt military/security complex.

    Readers ask me what they can do about it. Nothing, except revolt and cleanse the system, precisely as Founding Father Thomas Jefferson said.

    Is Thomas Jefferson Alive and Well In Paris?

    If this report is correct, pray the revolt spreads to the US.

  • Stanford Frat Told To Take Down "Offensive" American Flag, Hangs Much Bigger One

    The Bay Area has always been a bastion of progressive values. But since the election of President Trump, the dominant ideological orientation in a region that’s notoriously prone to groupthink has shifted from questioning conservative values to deliberate anti-Americanism.

    Stanford

    Examples of this trend abound: From the assault of a man carrying an American flag (in an ironic twist, the victim of the vicious beating happened to be a Bernie Sanders supporter) to the internal backlash at Google over the company’s work with the federal government, including the Department of Defense.

    One bizarre incident reported Tuesday by the Stamford Review stands out not just because it happened at Stanford, an elite American University, but also because it was seemingly unprovoked. The paper published a column retelling how a campus administrator had recommended that a fraternity called Sigma Chi (a fraternity that was disbanded following a probationary period last year) remove an American flag flying outside the house. The administrator – identified only as “Mr. Z” – suggested that flying the star-spangled banner could be interpreted as aggressive or jingoistic by some members of the community, and that, if Sigma Chi wanted to ingratiate itself with its neighbors (and presumably the administration) it should consider un-hoisting the flag to help “improve its image” in the community.

    This context of a friendly relationship with Mr. Z made the following incident all the more surprising. One night during Autumn 2017, Lozano recounted, Mr. Z was invited to eat dinner at Sigma Chi. While discussing improving the fraternity’s image with the university, Mr. Z offhandedly suggested that Sigma Chi remove the potentially discomforting symbol outside: the American flag flown in front of the house. Mr. Z urged Sigma Chi to consider the image being presented to the rest of campus by flying the flag out front. He furthered that if Sigma Chi wished to break away from stereotypes that plagued the house and to change its perception on campus, its members should contemplate un-hoisting the American flag.

    While this remark was just one in a larger discussion on rebranding the house, it stands out. Mr. Z’s recommendation insinuated not only that the flag made others uncomfortable but that its being flown tainted Sigma Chi’s reputation and, presumably, worsened its chance of survival. Lozano understood Mr. Z to imply that the American flag, as a symbol, could be intimidating, aggressive or alienating. Mr. Z’s tone further signaled to Lozano that he found the mere sight of the American flag to be offensive.

    The students who spoke with the Review recalled that they were initially confused by Mr. Z’s remark, because they didn’t understand how anybody could interpret hanging an American flag on American soil as an offensive act. The members of the fraternity surveyed the surrounding area and found several buildings – including several owned by the university – where American flags had been hanging. Still reeling from the suggestion, the fraternity decided to double down: Instead of removing the flag, they bought an even larger flag.

    The remark was, according to Lozano, out of the blue and incongruent with the candid rapport they had shared with Mr. Z up and until then. Furthermore, they wondered, since when is an American flag flown at an institution in the United States offensive? Lozano later observed that right down the road from Sigma Chi, an American flag is flown outside Stanford’s Post Office. Similarly, he noted, an American flag is flown outside Green Library’s Bing Wing and was once flown outside Memorial Auditorium, which commemorates fallen Stanford soldiers from WWI onward. According to Lozano’s knowledge, Mr. Z raised no objections to the Dominican flag flown by a student from his bedroom window in Sigma Chi or to the Palestinian flag which was hung across the street at Columbae.

    In protest of Mr. Z’s suggestion, the house declined to remove the flag, instead choosing to replace it with an even bigger one. Some members, of course, abstained from the discussion about and decision to purchase a bigger flag. The following day, by Lozano’s doing, Sigma Chi upgraded from a three-by-five-foot flag to a four-by-six-foot flag. The former flag was then framed and placed on display inside the house. This decision was, in Lozano’s words, a “silent but visible protest” against the classification of the American flag as a potentially stigmatizing symbol by a member of the Stanford administration.

    Though the reasons for its dispersal are unclear, Sigma Chi was banned from the university shortly after the incident.

    While it’s unclear whether the flag gestured had anything to do with the ban, at least the students were able to move on with their dignity intact.

  • U.S. Prepares To Sail Warship Into Black Sea, Citing Kerch Strait Incident

    The potential for major escalation in the Black Sea between the United States and Russia just grew significantly hotter as the US military has formally notified Turkey that it plans to sail a warship into the Black Sea for the first time in a month. 

    US defense officials have told CNN that the request is specifically in response to Russia’s actions against Ukraine during the Nov. 25 Kerch Strait incident. 

    USS Forrest Sherman, via US Naval Forces Europe-Africa

    According to a CNN exclusive Wednesday afternoon:

    The US has begun making the necessary preparations to sail a warship into the Black Sea, a move that comes amid heightened tensions in the region following Russia’s seizure of Ukrainian ships and detention of Ukrainian sailors.

    The US military has requested that the State Department notify Turkey of its possible plans to sail a warship into the Black Sea, three US officials tell CNN, a move they said is a response to Russia’s actions against Ukraine in the Kerch Strait, which connects the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.

    The military has made the request as required under the Montreux Convention — the 1936 agreement which gave Turkey control over the Bosporus Straits and the Dardanelles, including authority to regulate the transit of naval warships.

    A State Department spokesman told CNN, “the United States carries out its activities consistent with the terms of the Montreux Convention. We will not, however, comment on the nature of our diplomatic correspondence with the Government of Turkey.” There was no early indication whether Turkey granted the passage, which could be interesting given recent closer relations between Ankara and Moscow. 

    But two among CNN source’s cautioned that giving Turkey notification would merely provide the Navy “the option” of moving a warship into the area, suggesting that no battleships have necessarily yet to be deployed. 

    A Pentagon naval official sought to downplay the significance of the potential maneuver, saying in a statement: “Our US 6th Fleet is always prepared to respond where called.”

    “We routinely conduct operations to advance security and stability throughout the US 6th Fleet area of operations to include the international waters and airspace of the Black Sea,” Cdr. Kyle Raines, a spokesman for the Fleet, told CNN. “We reserve the right to operate freely in accordance with international laws and norms,” he added.

    However, Pentagon officials also noted that “Moscow lays claim to areas that far exceed the 12 miles from the Russian coastline that is guaranteed by international law,” according to CNN. 

    Also on Wednesday Russia’s Ministry of Defense (MoD) announced it conducted a military drill in eastern Crimea involving Russian troops and Pantsir anti-aircraft missile systems.

    And elsewhere tensions grew in the Sea of Japan, as on Wednesday a US Navy warship passed through waters claimed by Russia. According to FOX:

    A U.S. Navy warship sailed in waters claimed by Russia in the Sea of Japan on Wednesday as tensions increase over the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from a decades-old arms control treaty.

    A spokesperson for the U.S. Pacific Fleet says the guided-missile destroyer USS McCampbell sailed “in the vicinity of” Peter the Great Bay, a body of water off the Russian port city of Vladivostok, “to challenge Russia’s excessive maritime claims and uphold the rights, freedoms and lawful uses of the sea enjoyed by the United States and other nations.”

    Of course, Russia will view any provocative action in the Black Sea as an even greater threat in its backyard at a moment tensions are soaring. 

    Russia has over the past week signaled a build-up of forces in Crimea, including the transfer of more S-400 anti-air defense systems. Should American warships enter the area, along with a British surveillance ship already deployed, it could be a recipe for WWIII.

  • How Poppy Bush's Brother, "Uncle Bucky," Made A Killing Off The Iraq Wars

    Authored by Jeffrey St.Clair via Counterpunch.org,

    Back in 1991, shortly after the depleted uranium-flaked dust had settled some from the first Gulf War, there was a minor tempest in the press over influence peddling by members of President George H. W. Bush’s family, including his son Neil and his brother Prescott, Jr. Both Neil and Prescott, neither of whom had proven to be exceptionally talented businessmen, had made millions by flagrantly trading on their relationship to the president.

    Seeking to distinguish himself from his more predatory relatives, William Henry Trotter Bush, the younger brother of Bush Sr. and an investment banker in St. Louis, gave an interview to disclaim any profiteering on his own part. Indeed, he sounded downright grumpy, as if his older brother hadn’t done enough to steer juicy government deals his way.

    “Being the brother of George Bush isn’t a financial windfall by any stretch of the imagination,” huffed William H.T. Bush.

    Well, perhaps being the brother of the president didn’t generate as much business as he hoped, but having the good fortune to be the uncle of the president certainly appears to have padded the pockets of the man endearingly known to George W. Bush as “Uncle Bucky.”

    A few months before his selection as president, Bush’s Uncle Bucky quietly joined the board of a small and struggling St. Louis defense company called Engineered Support Systems, Incorporated (ESSI). Since Bush joined the team, ESSI’s fortunes have taken a dramatic turn for the better. This once obscure outfit is now one of the top Pentagon contractors. Next year its revenues will top $1 billion, nearly all of it derived from defense contracts with the Pentagon or with foreign militaries financed by US aid and loan guarantees. Even sweeter, most of these contracts have been awarded in no bid, sole source deals.

    True to form, Uncle Bucky claims that ESSI’s amazing transformation has nothing to do with him or his nephew, the president.

    “I don’t make any calls to the 202 (DC) Area Code,” Bush sneered to the Los Angeles Times.

    Uncle Buck’s characteristic modesty was swiftly undercut by statements made by top executives at ESSI, who seemed proud that their foresight in inviting Bush on board had paid off so handsomely for all concerned.

    “Having a Bush certainly doesn’t hurt,” chuckled Dan Kreher, ESSI’s vice president for industrial relations.

    Uncle Bucky Bush is 16 years younger than his brother, the former president. According to Kitty Kelley’s gripping history of the Bush clan The Family, Bucky was raised “almost as an only child” by his aging parents Dorothy and Prescott Bush, the senator who traded with the Nazis. Bucky was a sensitive and precocious kid with a peculiar devotion to choral music. In fact, the highlight of his career at Yale University was his starring spot with Whiffenpoofs, an elite choir.

    While his older brother headed to Texas to make his name in the oil patch, Bucky returned to St. Louis, the Gateway City where the original Bush fortune had been built. He settled into a modest career as an investment banker and corporate consultant. Then, with his nephew poised to seize the White House, Uncle Bucky was offered a seat on the board of ESSI, a military support and defense electronics firm. ESSI’s company prospectus describes it as “a diversified supplier of high-tech, integrated military electronics, support equipment and logistics services for all branches of America’s armed forces and certain foreign militaries.”

    Shortly after the attacks of 9/11, ESSI positioned itself to win a series of lucrative Pentagon contracts that would catapult the diminutive firm into the top ranks of defense contractors. Within a few short months, the company’s shareholders were given the financial ride of their lives.

    By the time of the Iraq war, ESSI was a brawny new player on the defense block. In the spring of 2003, ESSI acquired a military communications company called TAMSCO, whose prime activity was in developing military satellite terminals in the Gulf region and in US bases in Germany in anticipation of a US invasion of Iraq. After the ESSI buy-out, TAMSCO swiftly won contracts from both the Air Force and the Army for more than $90 million for the training of troops in the operation of the system and the installation of radar equipment in Kuwait.

    Then Pentagon awarded ESSI a $49 million contract to remodel military trailers for use in Iraq.

    In 2003, the Defense Department gave ESSI a huge deal to provide the Army with equipment to search for Iraq’s non-existent chemical and biological weapons. Part of this package included a $19 million contract to provide protective tents for US troops from chemical bombs. The tents didn’t arrive in Iraq until after it was evident to nearly everyone that the Iraqi military didn’t have access to such weapons. This didn’t stop the money from flowing into ESSI’s coffers and it didn’t stop ESSI’s executives from playing along in the grand charade. “The potential threat of our troops facing a chemical or biological attack during the current conflict in Iraq remains very real,” huffed Michael Shananan, the company’s former chairman.

    As the invasion transformed into a military occupation of Iraq, ESSI continued to pluck off sweet deals. In late 2003, the Coalition Provisional Authority, whose contracts passed across the Pentagon desk of arch neocon Douglas Feith, awarded ESSI an $18 million deal to engineer a communications system for the CPA offices, barricaded inside Baghdad’s Green Zone.

    Its executives openly clucked at the likelihood for protracted war. “The increasing likelihood for a prolonged military involvement in Southwest Asia by US forces well into 2006 has created a fertile environment for the type of support products and services we offer,” gloated Gerald L. Daniels, the company’s Chief Executive Officer. Rarely has corporate glee over the prospects of war profiteering been expressed so brazenly.

    But Daniels had a point. Even as things began to go sour for the US in Iraq, ESSI stood to make lots of money. One of its biggest no-bid contracts came in 2004 in the wake of mounting causalities in light-armored vehicles hit by roadside bombs. ESSI won a deal to upgrade the armor of thousands of vehicles in or bound for Iraq. The company’s annual report for 2005 forecast that ESSI might make as much as $200 million from this bloody windfall alone.

    As the flood of new contracts poured in, ESSI’s stock soared. In January of 2005, it reached its all-time high of $60.39 per share. A few days before the stock hit this lofty peak, Uncle Bucky quietly exercised his option to sell 8,438 shares of ESSI stock. He walked away from that transaction with at least $450,000. The stock sale occurred a few days after ESSI announced that the Pentagon had awarded it $77 million in new contracts for the Iraq war and a few days before word leaked to the press that the company was under investigation for its handling of older Pentagon contracts. The timing of the trade was perfect.

    In a February 2005 filing with the Securities Exchange Commission, ESSI discreetly disclosed to its shareholders that the inspector general of Pentagon had launched an inquiry into a series of contracts awarded to the company in 2002 for work on the Air Force’s troubled automated cargo loading machine called the Tunner.

    While the company’s chief financial dismissed the probe as “routine” and assured investors that it would have “no effect” on ESSI’s fortunes, the Pentagon held to a more restrained assessment of the potential liability. Michael Wynne, acting undersecretary of Defense, said he had referred ESSI contracts valued at $158 million to the Pentagon’s inspector general because the deals “appear to have anomalies in them.” Many of the contracts were awarded on a no-bid basis and much of the probe appears to focus on the role Pentagon insiders played in steering the contracts to ESSI.

    Much of the thrust behind ESSI’s sudden rise has been fueled by no-bid or source deals with the Pentagon. These no risk deals are part of a corporate strategy cooked up in part by non other than Uncle Bucky himself. In a profitable bit of self-dealing, ESSI hired its board member, Bucky Bush, as a consultant in 2002. Bush, who pulls in about $45,000 a year in director’s fees, was paid an additional $125,000 for his advice on ESSI’s buyout of other military contractors. The acquisition strategy outlined by Bush was to train the company’s appetite on the gobbling up of companies that held no-bid or sole source deals with the Pentagon.

    In January 2005, ESSI spent $37.6 million to buy a New York electronics testing firm called Prospective Computer Analysis, Inc. In defending the purchase to shareholders, executives at ESSI emphasized that the company held “a lot of source contracts.”

    A few months later, ESSI acquired Spacelink, Inc, a Virginia-based defense company, for $150 million. Spacelink, which supplies parts for military satellites and was poised to cash in on the $80 billion missile defense bonanza.

    ESSI isn’t the only defense-oriented company to acquire the services of Uncle Bucky. The banker from St. Louis has also been retained as a trustee for the global investment firm Lord Abbott, one of the primary financial underwriters of Halliburton. Lord Abbott is both one of the top 10 shareholders in Dick Cheney’s former company, as well as one of its top mutual fund holders. It’s all in the family.

    Uncle Bucky didn’t unload all of his ESSI stock. He still retained 45,000 shares valued at more than $2.5 million and used the profits from the sale to purchase a vacation home in Florida near his other nephew nourishing presidential ambitions, Jeb Bush.

    Who knows if the Bucky will finally stop there?

    (Bucky Bush died on February 27, 2018)

    This essay is excerpted from Grand Theft Pentagon.

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