U.S. Military Budget Tops $1 Trillion

Covert Action Magazine | Jeremy Kuzmarov

S. President Donald Trump has signed off on the first-ever trillion-dollar military budget.

When the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released its budget request for fiscal year 2026 in May, it included a base defense request of $892.6 billion, plus a $119.3 billion allocation of additional resources from the Republican-controlled Congress’s budget reconciliation bill.

On July 4, Trump signed the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” which, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, solidified the $1 trillion defense budget.

The act also cuts funding for Medicaid and food stamps, and mandates tax cuts for Corporate America and the wealthy, thus adding $3.4 trillion to the national debt, according to a Congressional study.^[1]

Subsidizing “an emerging military and nuclear technology wish list,” the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” allocates $12.8 billion for Trump’s Golden Dome initiative, a promised missile defense shield modeled after Reagan’s ill-conceived Strategic Defense Initiative (ie. Star Wars).

$29 billion is further allocated to enhance Pentagon resources for domestic shipbuilding, $1 billion to secure the southern border, and tens of billions for autonomous weapons, and an expansion of nuclear-weapon modernization and space capabilities.

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PENTAGON: New laser tech can make people hear commands

futurism.com

The Pentagon is working on a weapon that uses lasers and plasma to transmit sound files, even human speech, directly to individual people at great distances.

That’s according to a story by the Military Times newspaper, which reports that military researchers are working on ways to use lasers and plasma to control crowds. The story is short on technical details — but, at the same time, a troubling glimpse of the military’s desire to control people using next-gen tech.

Frikkin Lasers

 

It’s not clear how the tech works.

And for now, the Military Times reports that the Pentagon’s scientists haven’t yet built a speech-transmitting laser capable of passing through a wall — though officials believe it could be ready to deploy in as little as five years.

Hearing Voices

 

But, as the tech progresses, Live Science reports that the lasers could be beamed down from military planes or other vehicles to issue instructions or disperse crowds of protestors or otherwise disgruntled people in the area.

“Now I can put it anywhere. Range doesn’t make any difference,” chief scientist Dave Law told Military Times. “Put plasma at a target, modulate it and it can create a voice.”

READ MORE: Pentagon scientists are making talking plasma laser balls for use as non-lethal weapons [Military Times]

More on brain lasers: MIT Used a Laser to Transmit Audio Directly Into a Person’s Ear

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Violence Has Spiked in Africa Since the Military Founded AFRICOM, Pentagon Study Finds

Nick Turse

The Intercept

 

Since U.S. Africa Command began operations in 2008, the number of U.S. military personnel on the African continent has jumped 170 percent, from 2,600 to 7,000. The number of military missions, activities, programs, and exercises there has risen 1,900 percent, from 172 to 3,500. Drone strikes have soared and the number of commandos deployed has increased exponentially along with the size and scope of AFRICOM’s constellation of bases.

 

The U.S. military has recently conducted 36 named operations and activities in Africa, more than any other region of the world, including the Greater Middle East. Troops scattered across Africa regularly advise, train, and partner with local forces; gather intelligence; conduct surveillance; and carry out airstrikes and ground raids focused on “countering violent extremists on the African continent.”

AFRICOM “disrupts and neutralizes transnational threats” in order to “promote regional security, stability and prosperity,” according to its mission statement. But since AFRICOM began, key indicators of security and stability in Africa have plummeted according to the Defense Department’s Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Pentagon research institution. “Overall, militant Islamist group activity in Africa has doubled since 2012,” according to a recent analysis by the Africa Center.

There are now roughly 24 “active militant Islamist groups” operating on the continent, up from just five in 2010, the analysis found. Today, 13 African countries face attacks from these groups — a 160 percent increase over that same time span. In fact, the number of “violent events” across the continent has jumped 960 percent, from 288 in 2009 to 3,050 in 2018, according to the Africa Center’s analysis.

While a variety of factors have likely contributed to the rise in violence, some experts say that the overlap between the command’s existence and growing unrest is not a coincidence.

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War Profiteers And The Demise Of The US Military-Industrial Complex

Dymitri Orlov
Club Orlov

Within the vast bureaucratic sprawl of the Pentagon there is a group in charge of monitoring the general state of the military-industrial complex and its continued ability to fulfill the requirements of the national defense strategy. Office for acquisition and sustainment and office for industrial policy spends some $100,000 a year producing an Annual Report to Congress. It is available to the general public. It is even available to the general public in Russia, and Russian experts had a really good time poring over it.

In fact, it filled them with optimism. You see, Russia wants peace but the US seems to want war and keeps making threatening gestures against a longish list of countries that refuse to do its bidding or simply don’t share its “universal values.” But now it turns out that threats (and the increasingly toothless economic sanctions) are pretty much all that the US is still capable of dishing out—this in spite of absolutely astronomical levels of defense spending.

 

Let’s see what the US military-industrial complex looks like through a Russian lens.

It is important to note that the report’s authors were not aiming to force legislators to finance some specific project. This makes it more valuable than numerous other sources, whose authors’ main objective was to belly up to the federal feeding trough, and which therefore tend to be light on facts and heavy on hype. No doubt, politics still played a part in how various details are portrayed, but there seems to be a limit to the number of problems its authors can airbrush out of the picture and still do a reasonable job in analyzing the situation and in formulating their recommendations.

What knocked Russian analysis over with a feather is the fact that these INDPOL experts (who, like the rest of the US DOD, love acronyms) evaluate the US military-industrial complex from a… market-based perspective! You see, the Russian military-industrial complex is fully owned by the Russian government and works exclusively in its interests; anything else would be considered treason. But the US military-industrial complex is evaluated based on its… profitability! According to INDPOL, it must not only produce products for the military but also acquire market share in the global weapons trade and, perhaps most importantly, maximize profitability for private investors. By this standard, it is doing well: for 2017 the gross margin (EBITDA) for US defense contractors ranged from 15 to 17%, and some subcontractors - Transdigm, for example - managed to deliver no less than 42-45%. “Ah!” cry the Russian experts, “We’ve found the problem! The Americans have legalized war profiteering!” (This, by the way, is but one of many instances of something called systemic corruption, which is rife in the US.) 

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The Pentagon’s New Laser-Based Tool Uses Your Heartbeat to Track You

Singularity Hub

The government’s hefty arsenal of surveillance tools just welcomed a powerful new member. Rather than monitoring an external device—a bug or a smartphone—or even the exterior features of your face, the new tech aims straight for your heart. Literally.

First reported by MIT Technology Review, the US Pentagon is developing an infrared laser that captures a person’s unique “cardiac signature” from as far as 200 meters—the length of just over two football fields—away, as long as you’re still. According to Steward Remaly of the Pentagon’s Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office (CTTSO), even longer ranges may be possible with higher intensity lasers.

Although chilling, the tech builds on previous ideas.

Contact infrared sensors have long been used to monitor a person’s pulse, in a clinical setting or when traversing high altitudes. Here, the devices shoot infrared light into a finger and measure how much blood flow alters the refraction. Unlike this classic setup, the Pentagon’s new tech—dubbed Jetson—uses laser doppler vibrometry that detects minute movements on the skin caused by heartbeat.

Currently under development by Ideal Innovations, Inc., a veteran-owned biometrics, forensics, and scientific company based in Arlington, Virginia, the goal of Jetson is to positively identify an individual within five seconds using a “heartprint.”

“Existing long-range biometric methods that rely on facial recognition suffer from acquiring enough pixels at a distance to use the face matching algorithms and require high performance optics to acquire visual signatures at significant distances,” explained the CTTSO. “The Jetson effort…is a ruggedized biometric system that will capture cardiac signatures to aid in the positive identification of an individual” from a distance with little lag time.

Jetson is just the latest attempt at surveillance from a distance. Rather than old-school technologies such as fingerprinting or retinal scans, this new generation of surveillance technologies uses biometrics to monitor your every move—be it face, speech, heartbeat, or even brain activity—from a distance.

The tech may sound extreme, but Jetson is using the same playbook as biometrics for security. And to project where surveillance is going, it pays to look at biometrics research as the canary in the coal mine. Using your finger or face to unlock your phone is just the convenient side of things—what makes your biometric signature secure as a passcode is also what makes you identifiable as an individual. 

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Leaked Pentagon Plan Calls For 120,000 Troops To Counter Iran

ZeroHedge

As Michael Pompeo travels to Brussels to discuss the Iranian threat amid a flare-up in tensions that has brought the US to the brink of an armed conflict, the New York Times has published details from a confidential military plan presented to top national security officials that envisions sending as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East should Iran attack American forces or start ramping up work on nuclear weapons (something it has promised to do if its European partners don't meet their commitments under the Iran deal).

Though the revised plan - it had been modified to incorporate suggestions from John Bolton - doesn't include plans for a land invasion, it does reflect "the influence of Mr. Bolton, one of the administration's most virulent Iran hawks, whose push for confrontation with Tehran was ignored more than a decade ago by President George W Bush."

It's unclear whether Trump himself has seen, or been briefed on, the plan. Asked about it, Trump said "we'll see what happens with Iran. If they do anything, it would be a very bad mistake."

Here are a few key details from the plan according to more than a half-dozen senior administration officials who spoke with the NYT:

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Sweden to reopen rape case against WikiLeaks' Assange

Comment: They are intent on making Assange an example, one way or another. 

---------------------
Associated Press

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Swedish prosecutors said Monday they are reopening a rape case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, a month after he was removed from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. They said they will seek his extradition after he has served his 50-week prison term in Britain for jumping bail.

va-Marie Persson, Sweden's deputy director of public prosecutions, told a news conference in Stockholm that "there is still a probable cause to suspect that Assange committed a rape." She added: "It is my assessment that a new questioning of Assange is required."

Swedish prosecutors filed preliminary charges — a step short of formal charges — against Assange after he visited the country in 2010, following complaints from two Swedish women who said they were the victims of sex crimes committed by Assange.

A case of alleged sexual misconduct was dropped in 2017 when the statute of limitations expired. That left a rape allegation, but officials couldn't pursue it because Assange was living at the embassy and there was no prospect of bringing him to Sweden.

The statute of limitations on that case expires in August 2020. Assange has denied wrongdoing, asserting that they were politically motivated and that the sex was consensual. Persson said a European arrest warrant will be issued for Assange. The Swedish move would leave British authorities to decide whether to extradite Assange to Sweden or to the United States, where he is wanted separately for allegedly hacking into a Pentagon computer.

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Richard Dolan Interviews Gary McKinnon: UFO "Hacker"

Richard Dolan 

GARY McKINNON'S FIRST INTERVIEW IN YEARS. UK citizen Gary McKinnon is the most famous UFO "hacker" of all time. Arrested in 2002, he was in danger of extradition to the US for ten years. What he found was apparent evidence of a secret space program, including references to "non-terrestrial officers" and ship to ship transfers of vessels not in the U.S. military inventory. 

Moreover, a high-resolution photograph, taken from space, of a smooth, cigar-shaped craft. Gary also talks about the repercussions of being sought by the U.S. government, his depression, suicidal thoughts, and more. Richard Dolan is one of the world’s leading researchers and writers on the subject of UFOs and believes that they constitute the greatest mystery of our time. He is the author of two volumes of history, UFOs and the National Security State, both ground-breaking works which together provide the most factually complete and accessible narrative of the UFO subject available anywhere. He also co-authored a speculative book about the future, A.D. After Disclosure, the first-ever analysis not only of how UFO secrecy might end, but of the all-important question: what happens next? 

#RichardDolan For the home of exclusive content from author, historian, and radio host Richard Dolan.

Will the US ever be held accountable for its war crimes?

Jean Perier
New Eastern Outlook

For more than a decade, the United States has been steadily increasing the scale of its illegal military operations across the Middle East, resulting in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths.

Eighteen years ago, the US invaded Afghanistan under the pretext of ousting the Taliban who allegedly granted sanctuary to Al-Qaeda. According to a study released by Brown University, more than 140,000 Afghan militants and civilians have died in the fight.

Since December 2001, the United States has been conducting various operations in Somali, and even today the Pentagon carries out both air strikes and ground operations, accompanied by a constant toll of civilian lives.

Back in 2003, Washington launched Operation Iraq Freedom to strip Saddam Hussein of WMDs he didn't even have and to convert Iraq into a «democracy», plunging this country into a state of perpetual chaos guaranteeing that it will remain a Western bastion in the Arab and Islamic World for years to come.

Eight years ago, the US succeeded in destabilizing Libya, when US warplanes attacked the troops of Libya's most successful ruler to date - Muammar Gaddafi. Back then, Washington took every step to ensure his government would be ousted and and its key leaders murdered. The Libyan conflict has since produced tens of thousands of dead. In 2016, Barack Obama said that Libya was probably the "worst mistake" of his presidency.

The seven years of war in Syria resulted in a death toll of half a million Syrian nationals. Here, American troops are stationed illegally to fight ISIS and "indigenous ground forces." The strange wording that Washington uses in its official rhetoric is no coincidence, since more than on one occasion US armed forces have opened fire on both Syrian government troops and civilians, with no official rationale ever being given to explain this brutality.

In Yemen, the United States has been backing Saudi Arabia's efforts to put an end to the Houthi rebellion for three years. Washington carries on supplying Saudi authorities with high-precision weapons, combat aircraft and intelligence. This war has already triggered the largest humanitarian catastrophe of the 21st century, with 20 million people finding themselves on the brink of starvation. 

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What The Hell Is Going On With UFOs And The Department Of Defense?

Tyler Rogaway
The Drive

Few stories have garnered more requests from our readers for commentary than the recent news that the Navy has decided to very publicly change its reporting rules and procedures for when its personnel observes an unexplained phenomenon like a UFO and a USO. 

There have been wildly varying takes on this sudden change, but the truth is that it is very hard to know what to make of it considering how absurd it sounds-the Navy now wants to know about unidentified craft that can penetrate airspace over its installations and around its most capable naval vessels with impunity? Shouldn't that be a default position for a service tasked with defending American interests and controlling vast swathes of area above, below, and on the surface of the Earth? 

Politico was first to report on the Navy's new directions for reporting unexplained objects operating in the same environment as its vessels and aircraft. Politico's Bryan Bender writes:

"There have been a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated air space in recent years," the Navy said in a statement in response to questions from POLITICO. "For safety and security concerns, the Navy and the [U.S. Air Force] takes these reports very seriously and investigates each and every report."

"As part of this effort," it added, "the Navy is updating and formalizing the process by which reports of any such suspected incursions can be made to the cognizant authorities. A new message to the fleet that will detail the steps for reporting is in draft."

To be clear, the Navy isn't endorsing the idea that its sailors have encountered alien spacecraft. But it is acknowledging there have been enough strange aerial sightings by credible and highly trained military personnel that they need to be recorded in the official record and studied - rather than dismissed as some kooky phenomena from the realm of science-fiction.

The Washington Post did their own follow-up to Politico's story, stating:

Recently, unidentified aircraft have entered military-designated airspace as often as multiple times per month, Joseph Gradisher, spokesman for office of the deputy chief of naval operations for information warfare, told The Washington Post on Wednesday.

Citing safety and security concerns, Gradisher vowed to "investigate each and every report."

He said, "We want to get to the bottom of this. We need to determine who's doing it, where it's coming from and what their intent is. We need to try to find ways to prevent it from happening again."

In recent years, from what we can tell, in part by the reporting done by The War Zone itself, is that there is no real way to distinctly classify something like a UFO or USO in such a way that it gets reported and an investigation occurs on an official level within the military. This appears to be true for civilian government institutions, like the FAA, as well. 

The lack of a structured procedure and classification system, and the nebulous fear of being stigmatized by reporting things like UFOs-something that has long plagued the military and private sectors alike-has repressed the conveyance of information in unquantifiable, but hugely significant ways. 

This reality has led to much speculation, and rightfully so, that the military knows far more about these strange happenings than they are willing to let on, at least on the surface. Otherwise, why wouldn't they want to know more about intruders wielding fantastic technology that makes them impervious to existing countermeasures and defenses?

Now all this appears to be changing on a grand level, but why? 

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Hollywood's 'Captain Marvel' blockbuster is the latest US military propaganda push

Ben Norton
The Grayzone

The Pentagon was deeply involved in the production of the hit Hollywood film Captain Marvel, and is using the movie to spread recruitment propaganda.

The superhero blockbuster Captain Marvel is a perfect case study for how the United States military uses Hollywood to spread propaganda.

The US military is at the center of the plot of Captain Marvel. The film's protagonist, Carol Danvers, is a former US Air Force pilot who becomes a superhero after absorbing the powers of an advanced technology created by another US military scientist. (That scientist happens to be a member of the advanced alien race known as the Kree, who for unexplained reasons decided to do groundbreaking military research for, of all the myriad places in the universe, the US of A).

As soon as the film opens, it bombards viewers with two hours of non-stop US military propaganda. And it is not even subtle; at the plot's climax, Captain Marvel changes the colors of her suit to match those of the American flag.

But the US military is not only part of the story of Captain Marvel; as The Grayzone details below, the Pentagon was deeply involved in the production of the film itself.

The cast and directors of Captain Marvel worked closely with the United States military, relying on US military officers as consultants and advisers, employing dozens of active-duty US soldiers as extras. Several scenes were shot on a US military base. And since its release, the US Department of Defense has promoted the film relentlessly on its website and social media accounts. 

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See also: Man up, Hollywood, and stop making boys into wimps

DOJ And Clinton Lawyers Struck Secret Deal To Block FBI Access To Clinton Foundation Emails: Strzok

Comment: The Clintons are sociopathic scum of the earth and represent everything that is wrong with our political, economic and law/justice systems today, not least the utterly ponerized intelligence agencies. 

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Zero Hedge

The Justice Department and Hillary Clinton's legal team "negotiated" an agreement that blocked the FBI from accessing emails on Clinton's homebrew server related to the Clinton Foundation, according to a transcript of recently released testimony from last summer by former FBI special agent Peter Strzok.

Under questioning from Judiciary Committee General Counsel Zachary Somers, Strzok acknowledged that Clinton's private personal email servers contained a mixture of emails related to the Clinton Foundation, her work as secretary of state and other matters.
"Were you given access to [Clinton Foundation-related] emails as part of the investigation?" Somers asked
"We were not. We did not have access," Strzok responded. "My recollection is that the access to those emails were based on consent that was negotiated between the Department of Justice attorneys and counsel for Clinton." -Fox News

Strzok added that "a significant filter team" was employed at the FBI to "work through the various terms of the various consent agreements."

"According to the attorneys, we lacked probable cause to get a search warrant for those servers and projected that either it would take a very long time and/or it would be impossible to get to the point where we could obtain probable cause to get a warrant," said Strzok.

The foundation has long been accused of "pay-to-play" transactions, fueled by a report in the IBTimes that the Clinton-led State Department authorized $151 billion in Pentagon-brokered deals to 16 countries that donated to the Clinton Foundation - a 145% increase in completed sales to those nations over the same time frame during the Bush administration. 

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See also: 

The Pentagon wants smartphones to recognize people by their gait

futurism

Foot Recognition Software

 

The U.S. military is developing technology that would use a smartphone’s built-in sensors to recognize how you walk or other subtle biofeedback.

In about two months, the Department of Defense will finish testing a system that will sign people into their smartphones if the phone recognizes them based on their gait, typing patterns, grip, or other physical characteristics that the phone’s hardware can pick up, according to The Washington Post.

Global Posturing System

 

If all goes well, the technology could roll out to most U.S. phones within the next two years.
“Our focus from the start was something usable at the commercial level,” Steven Wallace, a scientist at the Pentagon’s Defense Information Systems Agency told Post.

Wallace cited past developments, like the GPS and the internet, that started as military research projects and then spread out to the rest of society.

“I’m not going to say that we’re going to create something that’s as broad and as grand as GPS or the Internet, but there’s a history of the department working on things and those things ending up in consumer devices,” Wallace told the Post.

Personal Security

 

The tech under development at the Pentagon is different from China’s gait-based surveillance system. Instead of monitoring people, it’s supposed to add an extra, low-cost layer of security to government officials’ phones.

If a phone detects that too many different things — how a user walks, how they grab their phone out of their pocket or bag, how they hold it while they type — are different from normal, then it will lock. That way, people can still use their phone like normal, but someone else won’t be able to pick it up and see personal information if the phone ever gets left behind. 

READ MORE: The Cybersecurity 202: Your phone could soon recognize you based on how you move or walk [The Washington Post]

More on cybersecurity: Secret UAE Spy Team Used “Cyber Super-Weapon” to Hack any iPhone

Pentagon releases blueprint for accelerating artificial intelligence

yahoo 

 

The Pentagon made public for the first time on Feb. 12 the outlines of its master plan for speeding the injection of artificial intelligence (AI) into military equipment, including advanced technologies destined for the battlefield. 

 

By declassifying key elements of a strategy it had adopted last summer, the Defense Department appeared to be trying to address disparate criticism that it was not being heedful enough of the risks of using AI in its weaponry or not being aggressive enough in the face of rival nations’ efforts to embrace AI. 

 

The 17-page strategy summary said that AI — a shorthand term for machine-driven learning and decision-making — held out great promise for military applications, and that it “is expected to impact every corner of the Department, spanning operations, training, sustainment, force protection, recruiting, healthcare, and many others.” 

 

It depicted AI’s embrace in solely positive terms, asserting that “with the application of AI to defense, we have an opportunity to improve support for and protection of U.S. service members, safeguard our citizens, defend our allies and partners, and improve the affordability and speed of our operations.” 

 

Stepping back from AI in the face of aggressive AI research efforts by potential rivals would have dire — even apocalyptic — consequences, it further warned. It would “result in legacy systems irrelevant to the defense of our people, eroding cohesion among allies and partners, reduced access to markets that will contribute to a decline in our prosperity and standard of living, and growing challenges to societies that have been built upon individual freedoms.”

 

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The results of US 'regime change' in Latin America & the Caribbean

The Unz Review

As the US strives to overthrow the democratic and independent Venezuelan government, the historical record regarding the short, middle and long-term consequences are mixed.

We will proceed to examine the consequences and impact of US intervention in Venezuela over the past half century.

We will then turn to examine the success and failure of US 'regime changes' throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

Venezuela: Results and Perspectives 1950-2019

During the post WWII decade, the US, working through the CIA and the Pentagon, brought to power authoritarian client regimes in Venezuela, Cuba, Peru, Chile, Guatemala, Brazil and several other countries.

In the case of Venezuela, the US backed a near decade long military dictatorship (Perez Jimenez ) roughly between 1951-58. The dictatorship was overthrown in 1958 and replaced by a left-center coalition during a brief interim period. Subsequently, the US reshuffled its policy, and embraced and promoted center-right regimes led by social and christian democrats which alternated rule for nearly forty years.

In the 1990's US client regimes riddled with corruption and facing a deepening socio-economic crises were voted out of power and replaced by the independent, anti-imperialist government led by President Chavez.

The free and democratic election of President Chavez withstood and defeated several US led 'regime changes' over the following two decades.

Following the election of President Maduro, under US direction,Washington mounted the political machinery for a new regime change. Washington launched, in full throttle, a coup by the winter of 2019.

 The record of US intervention in Venezuela is mixed: a middle term military coup lasted less than a decade; US directed electoral regimes were in power for forty years; its replacement by an elected anti-imperialist populist government has been in power for nearly 20 years. A virulent US directed coup is underfoot today.

The Venezuela experience with 'regime change' speaks to US capacity to consummate long-term control if it can reshuffle its power base from a military dictatorship into an electoral regime, financed through the pillage of oil, backed by a reliable military and 'legitimated' by alternating client political parties which accept submission to Washington.

US client regimes are ruled by oligarchic elites, with little entrepreneurial capacity, living off of state rents (oil revenues).

Tied closely to the US, the ruling elites are unable to secure popular loyalty. Client regimes depend on the military strength of the Pentagon -but that is also their weakness. 


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The convenient timing of US troops killed in Syria

Finian Cunningham
Strategic Culture Foundation

With unseemly haste, US news media leapt on the killing of four American military personnel in Syria as a way to undermine President Donald Trump's plan to withdraw troops from that country.

The deadly attack in the northern city of Manbij, on the west bank of the Euphrates River, was reported to have been carried out by a suicide bomber. The Islamic State (ISIS) terror group reportedly claimed responsibility, but the group routinely makes such claims which often turn out to be false.

The American military personnel were said to be on a routine patrol of Manbij where US forces have been backing Kurdish militants in a purported campaign against ISIS and other terror groups.

An explosion at a restaurant resulted in two US troops and two Pentagon civilian officials being killed, along with more than a dozen other victims. Three other US military persons were among those injured.

US media highlighted the bombing as the biggest single death toll of American forces in Syria since they began operations in the country nearly four years ago.

The US and Kurdish militia have been in control of Manbij for over two years. It is one of the main sites from where American troops are to withdraw under Trump's exit plan, which he announced on December 19.

Following the bombing, the New York Times headlined: "ISIS Attack in Syria Kills 4 Americans, Raising Worries about Troop Withdrawal". The report goes on, "the news prompted calls from Republicans and Democrats for President Trump to reconsider his plans to withdraw troops from the country."

A more pointed headline in The Washington Post was: "Killing of 4 Americans in Syria Throws Spotlight on Trump's Policy". 

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Scathing Report Accuses the Pentagon of Developing an Agricultural Bioweapon

Gizmodo

 

A new technology in which insects are used to genetically modify crops could be converted into a dangerous, and possibly illegal, bioweapon, alleges a Science Policy Forum report released today. Naturally, the organization leading the research says it’s doing nothing of the sort.

The report is a response to a ongoing research program funded by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Dubbed “Insect Allies,” the idea is to create more resilient crops to help farmers deal with climate change, drought, frost, floods, salinity, and disease. But instead of modifying seeds in a lab, farmers would send fleets of insects into their crops, where the genetically modified bugs would do their work, “infecting” the plants with a special virus that passes along the new resilience genes.

If you think this sounds scary, you’re not alone. The lead author of the new Science Policy Forum report, Richard Guy Reeves from the Department of Evolutionary Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Plön, says the Insect Allies program is a disturbing example of dual-use research in which DARPA, in addition to helping out farmers, is also working on a potential weapon. When contacted by Gizmodo, DARPA denied the accusations made in the new report, saying it’s filled with inaccuracies and mischaracterizations.

The technology at the heart of this research could herald an entirely new way of genetically modifying crops. Instead of having to wait for a plant to pass its newly-acquired traits onto the next generation, genetic changes would be imposed upon living organisms, a process known as horizontal genetic alteration. Hence the technology’s name—Horizontal Environmental Genetic Alteration Agents, or HEGAAs.

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Imperial Conquest: America’s “Long War” against Humanity

Global Research

The following text  is background document in relation to Michel Chossudovsky’s presentation entitled: The Globalization of War, US-NATO Threat Directed against Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.

The event is organized by Malaysia’s JUST Forum, IAIS Malaysia.

19 July 2018 (Thursday) 09:30am – 12:30pm

 

Jointly Organised by International Movement for a Just World (JUST) and IAIS Malaysia

Venue: IAIS Malaysia, Jalan Elmu, Off Jalan Universiti, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

***

The document below is Chapter I of Michel Chossudovsky’s Book entitled; The Globalization of War; America’s Long War against Humanity, Global Research Publishers, Montreal 2015.

The book was launched in Kuala Lumpur in 2015 by Tun Mahathir Mohamad, Prime Minister of Malaysia.

Introduction

The U.S. and its NATO allies have embarked on a military adventure, “a long war”, which threatens the future of humanity. This “war without borders” is intimately related to a worldwide process of economic restructuring, which has been conducive to the collapse of national economies and the impoverishment of large sectors of the World population.The U.S. weapons producers are the recipients of U.S. Department of Defense multibillion dollar procurement contracts for advanced weapons systems. In turn, “The Battle for Oil” in the Middle East and Central Asia directly serves the interests of the Anglo-American oil giants. The U.S. and its allies are “Beating the Drums of War” at the height of a worldwide economic depression.

The military deployment of U.S.-NATO forces coupled with “non-conventional warfare” – including covert intelligence operations, economic sanctions and the thrust of “regime change”– is occurring simultaneously in several regions of the world.

Central to an understanding of war, is the media campaign which grants it legitimacy in the eyes of public opinion. War has been provided with a humanitarian mandate under NATO’s “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P). The victims of U.S. led wars are presented as the perpetrators of war. Civilians in Yugoslavia, Palestine, Ukraine, Libya, Syria and Iraq are responsible for their own deaths.

Meanwhile, the Commander in Chief of the largest military force on planet earth is presented as a global peace-maker. The granting of the Nobel “peace prize” in 2009 to President Barack Obama has become an integral part of the Pentagon’s propaganda machine. It provides a human face to the invaders, it demonizes those who oppose U.S. military intervention.

The Nobel Committee says that President Obama has given the world “hope for a better future”. The prize is awarded for Obama’s “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special impor- tance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.”

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The Weird DARPA/Facebook "Coincidence" You Never Heard About

corbett report

How $21 Trillion in U.S. Tax Money Disappeared. “Full Scope Audit” of the Pentagon

David DeGraw
Global Research

This is part of our series on the unaccounted for $21 Trillion in taxpayer money. As unbelievable and absurd as that sounds, the actual total of unaccounted for money at the Pentagon is most likely significantly more than $21 trillion. The First ever “full-scope audit” of the Pentagon is presently underway. Read the first report from this series here. 

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According to the Department of Defense Inspector General and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, $21 Trillion in Taxpayer Funding Is Unaccounted For.

To help people comprehend the scale of this, $1 Trillion is $1000 Billion. This means that $21,000 Billion in taxpayer money has gone missing.

Image: a stack of one trillion dollars. Multiply that by 21

How can this be possible? 

We outlined the “Unaccountable System of Global War Profiteers” in detail here.

For further understanding, we are featuring another mind-blowing Department of Defense Inspector General (DOD IG) report. 

Read more