More Obvious Evidence that Deep State is Running America

Trump’s ‘favorable’ policy instincts obstructed by neocons,

foreign interests & the arms lobby at every turn – Ron Paul

©  Global Look Press / DPA / Saeid Zareian

Despite President Trump’s periodic calls to scale back some of America’s “endless wars,” they continue unabated thanks to pressure from an elite sect of pro-war interests in Washington and beyond, former lawmaker Ron Paul told RT.

While the president “wants to back away from some of the interventions that have been dragging [on] for many, many years,” Paul said there are “different factions in our country” that put up fierce resistance to even the prospect of non-intervention.

If [Trump] does move in this direction, there are neocons here who would get hysterical over it and they do not think that we should give an inch. It is a battle.

In addition to the neocons – who wield a powerful network of influential think tanks and media organizations – Paul pointed to a number of other forces that come together to propel Washington’s lust for war, singling out “pressure from Saudi Arabia” and Israel, as well as arms manufacturers who profit immensely from continued conflicts overseas.

Arms manufacturers who profit immensely from continued conflicts overseas

It is difficult because of all the warmongers and people who like to sell weapons – they have to have an enemy and all that nonsense – they believe that they could make a lot of money out of it.

It is absolutely necessary for the USA to continue to support Israel. The moment they abandon her, Islam will attempt again to annihilate her. I believe God requires us to support Israel and judgment will be swift and terrible if we should fail.

Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, is using the USA to help fight its sectarian wars and proxy wars with Iran. All the better for Deep State arms manufacturers and sellers. Not so good anyone else.

Even with the president’s “favorable” foreign policy instincts, his decisions have been erratic under the influence of the Washington establishment, Paul said, citing Trump’s premature Syria withdrawal announcement, which has largely been reversed since it was made in October for the sake of defending oil fields.

Defending oil fields for whom? For Syria? Or, are they stealing Syria's oil?

“That is a confusing and unpredictable position,” Paul said. “I would like him to stick to his guns when he says that it is time to leave Syria and for us to just leave.”

On Afghanistan, too, the president’s rhetoric has been encouraging for those seeking an end to America’s longest war – stuck in mission creep for nearly two decades – but beyond mere lip service, his policies there have ultimately served the hawks.

“He talked about leaving Afghanistan – so often his talk does not match his actions, and his actions are what is important,” Paul said. “We are still building up our forces over there.”

Talks with the Taliban resumed last week after President Trump scrapped nearly a year of negotiations with the group in September, perhaps the closest the United States ever came to finally ending the conflict. The fresh round of talks was announced just as a trove of internal government documents were published in a report at the Washington Post, detailing how senior officials spun lies and falsehoods about the war for years, at times even fabricating data to suggest “victory” was within reach.

Insisting the United States can no longer be a “global policeman,” threatening the rest of the planet with everything from sanctions to drone strikes, Paul called for a clean break in foreign policy thinking in Washington and urged for a total withdrawal of American soldiers from the Middle East.

“So our position is: stay out of it, there is nothing to be gained and nobody from that part of the world is going to come and bomb or attack us, so we do not see any benefit in staying there,” he said.

What a crazy idea! How can you keep the war inventory moving? Next thing he'll be say they can reduce the military and get out of NATO! What heresy! 

As I wrote in the story immediately below this one, Deep State is running America. It has been since Nov 22nd, 1963. And if they can't get Trump in line, they will get rid of him one way or another. But there is no possibility of another 4 years as President.

Congress Must Investigate Why America Was Lied To About Afghanistan for All These Years – Gabbard

A sustained effort by several US administrations to mislead the American public

on the engagement in Afghanistan

NYPD officers salute during the funeral of officer Joseph Lemm, who was killed during a deployment in Afghanistan in 2015. ©REUTERS / Carlo Allegri

Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard pledged to seek a congressional inquiry into the Afghanistan war after a damning report said US officials have been lying about what has been happening there since the US occupation began.

Gabbard, a military veteran who runs for the Democratic nomination on an anti-war platform, said there has to be “accountability for the lying” and the lives and taxpayer money lost in the longest military operation in the US history.

“The cost of this war and regime change wars and the nation-building that follows is immeasurable in many ways but it’s measurable in the ways that have been detailed in that Washington Post report,” she told Hill.TV on Tuesday.

The Washington Post expose is based on documents it obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests and paints a picture of a sustained effort by several US administrations to mislead the American public on the engagement in Afghanistan.

This is simply proof that it doesn't matter whether Republican or Democrats are in charge, it is really Deep State that is running the show. Donald Trump, for all his faults, and they are many, is not Deep State, but it is they who are attempting to control him, and because they are finding that very difficult, they are behind the impeachment process. It's that simple; you get in line with Deep State, or you're out! Just look at John and Bobby Kennedy. Tulsi Gabbard is walking a very dangerous road, taking them on so publicly.

The report states that, while publicly reporting progress and being on the verge of success, behind closed doors US officials admitted they were “devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan” and what they were doing there, according to Ret. Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, who served as a top adviser on the war during the Bush and Obama administrations.

This is also simple, Gen Lute, you were there to use up the inventory of war so the military industrial complex can sell the country billions of dollars of weapons they wouldn't otherwise need.

That's what America is all about and why we are getting farther and farther from peace on earth.

“We’ve known for so long that it was the military-industrial complex, contractors, consultants like McKinsey, who are profiting off of this scam, who have ripped off the American taxpayer dollars of over a trillion dollars just in Afghanistan alone,” Gabbard added, making an apparent jab at her competitor in the race, Pete Buttigieg. The mayor of South Bend, Indiana used to work for McKinsey & Company and did consulting work in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Think It's Hot in NSW? Climate Change? It's Tepid Compared to 1896

And you thought it was hot now? How a 24-DAY heatwave on Australia's east coast in January 1896 saw temperatures climb to 49 degrees and killed 437 people

An extreme 24-day heatwave in January 1896 saw temperatures hit 49C
It saw people fleeing cities and killed 437 people including many children
The maximum temperature was above 38.9 degrees for over three weeks
Hospitals were overcrowded and people were dropping dead in the streets 

By FREYA NOBLE FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA 

Temperatures above 38 degrees for nearly a month, bushfires burning across the country and people dropping dead in the streets.

This was the grim reality of a 24-day heatwave which killed 437 people in Australia in January 1896.

The extreme weather event was described as feeling 'like a furnace' and recorded much higher temperatures than the east coast is set to swelter through this week.

An extreme Australian heatwave in January 1896 killed over 400 people and hospitalised many more.

Pictured is Wilcannia Hospital in 1986

A heatwave across Australia's east coast at the weekend has been described as one of the worst in living memory

Many children were among those who died                                 There were temperatures above 119F (48C)

Newspapers at the time reported temperatures above 119F (48C), and that many children were among those who died

It was a hot start to 1896 and by January 14, newspapers were reporting people were dying from a range of complications brought on by the extreme temperatures.

By the third week of the year, 12 infants had died from heat-related illnesses in Goulburn, NSW, alone, a report on JoNova about the heatwave revealed.

People were fleeing the cities on trains to seek refuge in the mountainous regions of the country, and one child escaping the heat 'died at the moment the train arrived'.

Hospitals were at breaking point, and the death toll was rising. 

By January 17 the mercury had climbed to 48.9C in Bourke, in north-west NSW. However there has been some dispute about the accuracy in temperature recordings due to changing methods over time.

'The hospital is crowded, and a number of people are dangerously ill. More deaths are hourly expected,' a newspaper article from January 18, 1896 read.

The heat was sending people 'insane', leaving them helplessly wandering the streets before collapsing.

Cattle died by the hundreds, water tanks dried up and the death toll continued to rise as the heatwave entered its fourth week. 

The historic heatwave saw temperatures climb to 49 degrees and forced people to flee to the mountains

in search of reprieve. Pictured is Brewarrina in 1900

At the weekend the regional town of Urarby in NSW's central-west was wiped out by bushfires

Trains leaving Sydney's west for the mountains were packed and the government ran extra services at discount prices for those seeking relief from the heat.

By January 24 the heatwave was declared 'an unprecedented record', and the death toll in Bourke alone had risen to 35.

'The residents are really panic-stricken, and hundreds are leaving for cooler climates', one report in the newspaper revealed.

Most businesses across NSW had closed their doors by this point, except for hotels, as residents laid low waiting for the streak to break.

In other parts of the country temperatures had not dropped below 37 degrees since late 1895.

More than 120 years later, Sydney and other parts of Australia sweated through one of the worst heatwaves in living memory last week, recording four days over 40 degrees.

The 1896 heatwave saw people dropping dead in the streets as the stifling heat stretched on for 24 days.

In Bourke (seen here in 1893) temperatures were nudging 50C

Sydney's Bondi Beach is seen here during one of the hottest summers on record

Fortunately, Aussies have air-conditioners now, where there is power, unlike the poor sots in 1896.

I wonder what caused that heatwave more than a century ago? Climate change? If that had been attributed to climate change, what madness might it have resulted in?

There were widespread blackouts, bushfires continue to burn around the country, and while this week will bring temporary reprieve, the mercury is set to climb once again.

About 60 fires were still burning on Monday night, including 19 uncontained blazes, and a Watch and Act alert remained in place for the Sir Ivan fire in central west NSW.

Despite a relief for NSW residents, hot temperatures are set to climb again from Wednesday, with a top of 28C forecast for Sydney before reaching 34C by Saturday.

Western suburbs are expected to endure a three-day heatwave, with temperatures set to soar 38C from Thursday. 

Meanwhile, heavy rain, strong winds and hailstorm hit southeast of Queensland overnight.

More than 20,000 homes across the state have been left without power as damaging winds and heavy rainfall continue to move east.

Sir Anthony Hopkins Reveals his Journey From Atheist to Believer in God

"Being an atheist must be like living in a closed cell with no windows."

Sir Anthony Hopkins recently spoke about his belief in God, at the 11th annual LEAP Conference in July. He was a well-known atheist and alcoholic for many years. However, in 1975 he went to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting where a lady asked him: “Why don’t you just trust in God?”

This question intrigued him so much that he started a personal soul search. He was saying that from the point, his insatiable desire for alcohol vanished. He has been on a spiritual quest since while acting and winning Academy Awards throughout his career.

According to ABC News, while discussing his movie role of Methusaleh in Noah, Hopkins said that the older he gets, the more he falls deeper into belief. Hopkins said, “I feel every day, as I get older, anyway, that it’s all a miracle…I mean, my heart beats, my lungs breathe. That is an extraordinary — an extraordinary phenomenon.”

Hopkins has also said, “I was hell-bent on destruction,” he recalled. “It was like being possessed by a demon, an addiction, and I couldn’t stop. And there are millions of people around like that. I could not stop, but I just asked for a little bit of help and suddenly, pow. It was just like, bingo.”

In an article in 2011, Hopkins was noted as saying he, couldn’t live with being an atheist. “It must be like living in a closed cell with no windows!”

He said, “I’d hate to have to live like that, wouldn’t you? We see them, mind you, on television today, many brilliant people who are professional atheists who say they know for a fact that it’s insanity to have a God or to believe in religion.

Being an atheist must be like living in a closed cell with no windows!

“Well, okay, God bless them for feeling that way and I hope they’re happy… But I couldn’t live with that certainty, and I wonder about some of them: why are they protesting so much? How are they so sure of what is out there? And who am I to refute the beliefs of so many great philosophers and martyrs all the way down the years?”

Billy Hallowell wrote in a Pureflix article, that Hopkins also discussed the topics of money and success at the LEAP Conference. He said, “If you chase the money, it’s not gonna work. And if you chase success, it’s not gonna work…You just have to chase whatever you want to be, but live it as if it is happening now. Act as if you’re already there, and it’ll fall into place.”

Newsweek Reporter Resigns After Accusing Outlet of Suppressing Story About OPCW Leak that Undermines Syria ‘Gas Attack’ Narrative

Yet another piece of evidence that Mainstream

Media is run by Deep State

They have no interest in the truth, only in their determined narrative

© REUTERS/Yves Herman

What is their determined narrative? To demonize several countries so that NATO countries and the USA can use their military inventory and keep making the military industrial complex filthy rich. And I mean filthy.

A reporter for Newsweek says he has quit his job after his editor allegedly refused to publish an article about an internal email that raises serious questions about the OPCW’s findings on an alleged gas attack in Douma, Syria.

“Yesterday I resigned from Newsweek after my attempts to publish newsworthy revelations about the leaked OPCW letter were refused for no valid reason,” Tareq Haddad tweeted out on Saturday.

Tareq Haddad
@Tareq_Haddad
 · Dec 7, 2019
Yesterday I resigned from Newsweek after my attempts to publish newsworthy revelations about the leaked OPCW letter were refused for no valid reason.


Tareq Haddad
@Tareq_Haddad
I have collected evidence of how they suppressed the story in addition to evidence from another case where info inconvenient to US govt was removed, though it was factually correct.

The recently-leaked document contradicts key conclusions in a report by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), about the April 2018 chemical weapons attack in Douma. The incident was blamed on Damascus and was used by the US and its allies to justify airstrikes against Syrian military installations.

The email, sent by an OPCW inspector who participated in the Douma probe, outlines several instances in which facts discovered by his team had been distorted or suppressed in the OPCW’s draft report, resulting in “an unintended bias” in the resulting text.

'Unintended bias' - Sure!

In a series of follow-up tweets, the former Newsweek journalist said that he had “collected evidence of how they suppressed the story,” adding that he also had evidence that the outlet had cut material, in a separate incident, because the information was “inconvenient to the US government” – even though it was factually correct.

Haddad claims that he was threatened with legal action after he’d asked his editor why his story about the damning leak had been refused.

So, who is his editor working for? Why is he quashing the truth? There was a time when this would have been a block-buster of a story; now it is buried! Curious!

Since making the announcement, the reporter has received accolades for his journalistic integrity. His story has also caught the attention of several prominent journalists, including Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens, who has been a fierce critic of western media’s coverage of the Douma attack.

Peter Hitchens✔
@ClarkeMicah
@newsweek .  @newsweekuk Do you have any comment on this tweet from your former reporter @Tareq_Haddad?  Mr Haddad, please contact me at the Mail on Sunday in London. https://twitter.com/Tareq_Haddad/status/1203274308811993088 …

Tareq Haddad
@Tareq_Haddad
Yesterday I resigned from Newsweek after my attempts to publish newsworthy revelations about the leaked OPCW letter were refused for no valid reason.


While media outlets rushed last year to blame Damascus for the attack, the leaked email – as well as some troubling revelations from an OPCW whistleblower – have been almost completely ignored by the western press.

Corruption, Clientelism and Murder - Malta Emerges as the EU's Next Problem Child

Two years after the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, Malta's vast cesspool of corruption has become impossible to ignore. The EU's smallest member state is on the brink of failure.

By Frank Hornig and Juan Moreno

Michael Vella, father of late Daphne Caruana Galizia, holding a portrait of his late daughter

at a protest demanding justice for her. Darrin Zammit Lupi / REUTERS

"There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate."

Daphne Caruana Galizia on Oct. 16, 2017, in her last blog entry, posted 24 minutes before her murder.

It's tempting to ask Corinne Vella how she avoided going crazy in the last two years. It is one thing, after all, to lose your sister to a hit job -- to learn that she was murdered in cold blood by a car bomb. But it is quite another to live with the conviction that neither the police, nor the country's government nor public prosecutors seem to have much of an interest in getting to the bottom of the crime.

Vella is sitting in the lobby of the luxurious Phoenicia Hotel in Valletta, the capital of the Mediterranean island nation of Malta. Jazz is playing in the background and the waiters wear ties, at pains to serve guests from the correct side. Vella is a serene woman, perhaps even shy. But she's here because she wants to talk about her sister and the factors that led to her death. It's the strategy she uses to avoid going crazy. "Daphne basically became my job. There isn't much else I've done in the last two years."

Vella is the sister of Malta's most famous journalist, Daphne Caruana Galizia. Daphne, as everyone in the country calls her, was murdered in a targeted killing on Oct. 16, 2017. She was a blogger, and her frequently extremely well reported, occasionally biting and sometimes humiliating reports were required reading on the island. Some of her entries were read more than 400,000 times. Everyone knew Daphne, many were afraid of her -- and not a few hated her.

"When Daphne was killed, people wrote on social media that the witch had finally got what she deserved," says Vella. Her family closed ranks after the murder and resolved to do everything in their power to ensure that the murderer would not go unpunished. Aunts, nieces, sons: They all protested at government agencies, got European institutions involved and spoke at journalism conferences.

The investigation, meanwhile, proceeded only sluggishly. Police arrested three suspects, ex-convicts who officials felt could have been responsible because of their criminal records and because of clues that seemed to point in their direction, but there was no obvious motive. Why should these men kill a journalist? Caruana Galizia never wrote a word about them. Who really wanted the prominent journalist dead?

Moving Quickly

Now, a bit more than two years after the attack, things have suddenly begun moving quickly. Two weeks ago, Yorgen Fenech, a businessman and a member of one of Malta's wealthiest families, was arrested on his yacht -- apparently just as the multimillionaire was preparing to leave the island. He has since been charged with accessory to murder. Despite incriminating witness testimony, Fenech continues to deny any wrongdoing. He has, however, accused a member of the Maltese government of being involved in the murder: Keith Schembri, chief of staff to the country's prime minister.

Schembri resigned last week, despite insisting he is innocent. But then Prime Minister Joseph Muscat also announced his intention to step down in January. Opposition politicians in parliament demanded that he not wait so long and vacate his office immediately. Meanwhile, demonstrators pelted Muscat with eggs.

"It has been the two most chaotic weeks in Malta's recent history," says Corinne Vella, adding that she has spent almost the entirety of the last few days on her mobile phone because of the torrent of news. For the first time, she now has the feeling that she may ultimately learn who killed her sister.

Daphne Caruana Galizia's sister, Corinne Vella - Gianmarco Maraviglia/ / DER SPIEGEL

Malta, the European Union's smallest member state, generally stays out of the headlines. Two-and-a-half years ago, DER SPIEGEL and other European media outlets involved with European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) published the "Malta Files," which revealed how German companies were able to save on taxes by establishing themselves on the island. Beyond that, not much tends to be written about the country and its 475,000 residents.

Now, though, dubious links between Maltese business leaders, politicians and organized crime have become visible, and it increasingly looks as though Malta operates by a different rulebook than the rest of the EU. The separation of powers in the country appears to be largely non-existent, with police doing the bidding of politicians and the anti-money-laundering agency joining the judiciary in turning its back all too often on malfeasance, instead of investigating, prosecuting and punishing criminal behavior.

A poster of Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat - Guglielmo Mangiapane/ REUTERS

Alarmed, the European Parliament sent a delegation to Malta a few days ago, with the European Commission in Brussels warning the country's government to refrain from exerting political influence on the investigation. The murder of Caruana Galizia, it would seem, is no longer just a problem for Maltese politics. It is now emerging as an acute threat to European values, the rule of law, the freedom of the press and a rules-based market economy. Ultimately, it is about how many banana republics the EU can tolerate within its ranks.

An Economic Miracle?

There is much more on this story at Der Spiegel.

Why the Kyoto/Paris Agreement is Not Working - Diane Francis Nails It

Trudeau’s ridiculous, holier-than-thou climate policies

are making emissions much worse

For every pipeline and well and LNG plant that is not built in Canada,

the Chinese and Indians will simply burn more dirty coal

Bloomberg Best of the Year 2019: A man tends to vegetables in a field as emissions rise from nearby cooling towers of a

coal-fired power station in Tongling, Anhui province, China, on Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2019. Qilai Shen/Bloomberg files

Diane Francis

The inconvenient truth about the Kyoto-Paris Agreement on climate change is that the 1997 deal has been a major flop because it was flawed from the beginning. It should be scrapped and completely overhauled and Canada’s Liberals should have realized this before they embarked on their ruinous attack against the country’s resource base.

The failure of the agreement, evidenced by emissions that are climbing alarmingly fast, reveal how the Trudeau government’s holier-than-thou approach on climate change is naive and completely misguided. The facts are that Ottawa should have been building lots of pipelines, approving many LNG export projects, and leading an international movement to scrap and try to redo the Paris agreement.

The agreement has been dramatically counter-productive because targets were not applied equally and globally. Of the 192 countries that signed on in 1997, only the 37 developed countries had to agree to reduce emissions. The undeveloped nations — notably China and India — had no restrictions placed on them. They argued that restrictions on emissions would hold back their economic development.

That’s fine, but targets should have been phased in and applied to all countries. This benefit should not have been permanently baked in.

Energy intensive companies help developed countries

approach their Kyoto targets by moving to countries

that have no targets. How crazy is that?

The result was predictable and noted by the Americans, Canadians and Australians at the time. Today, the developing countries’ emissions have soared, which has allowed them to keep their costs low based on the burning of cheap local coal as their principal energy source.

Naturally, this patchwork quilt of regulation has resulted in a gigantic global arbitrage — companies from countries with restrictions — have moved plants or outsourced energy-intensive products such as steel and cement to environmentally dirty nations. For instance, Canada’s imports of steel jumped between 2018 and 2019 alone by 87 per cent, bought, directly or indirectly, from countries not bound by the Kyoto-Paris Agreement. Germany and the United States have done the same.

“Since 1997, the 37 developed countries have reduced CO2 emissions by about 7 per cent, while exempted country emissions rose 130 per cent. And overall global emissions hit a new record in 2018, up two per cent year over year and up 49 per cent since 1997,” according to official figures contained in a report by former Canadian investment bankers who are now investors, Steve Larke and Adam Le Dain. “Driven by good intentions and accelerating energy demand, the world is facing an unintended energy crisis.”

And that wasn't predictable?

Counterintuitively, Canada must prioritize the building of pipelines to export its oil, with relatively low emissions, and to build natural gas pipelines and dozens of LNG projects on both coasts. This is because every single energy molecule that is exported from Canada to Asia or elsewhere replaces their need to burn dirty coal, or to fuel their vehicles with electricity generated by coal. (This was a platform in the Tory energy policy this election, plus conservation subsidies for consumers.)

Perhaps, but it certainly was never articulated like this.

Canada’s foolish belief in an international treaty that doesn’t work has left us badly behind. The Americans have dozens of LNG export projects completed or under construction and Canada, with one of the biggest natural gas endowments on the planet, has been unable to get one built — thanks to the usual suspects in Ottawa, British Columbia and Quebec. The country could be a major player in LNG exports but time is running out as Australia and Qatar also move aggressively to compete.

Not to mention Russia's superport LNG in the Arctic, and the pipeline to China.

Instead, Trudeau cripples Alberta, subsidizes profitable Loblaw to buy lower-emission refrigerators and campaigns across the country about climate change in two fuel-guzzling aircraft and does nothing to curb demand at home by consumers.

The inconvenient truth is that for every pipeline and well and LNG plant that is not built in Canada, the Chinese and Indians will simply burn more dirty coal.

The Liberals and greens in Canada are not the solution. They are the problem. 

They are committing economic suicide, and rather than saving the planet, they will make it impossible for our next generations to be able to respond, because they will be so heavily in debt, our debt.

Financial Post