a7efc017f116d2a9bde52107e31cc2b1
Pentagon blocks visits to military spy agencies by Biden transition team
The Trump administration has refused to allow members of President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team to meet with officials at U.S. intelligence agencies that are controlled by the Pentagon, undermining prospects for a smooth transfer of power, current and former U.S. officials said.
The officials said the Biden team has not been able to engage with leaders at the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and other military-run spy services with classified budgets and global espionage platforms.
The Defense Department rejected or did not approve requests from the Biden team this week, the officials said, despite a General Services Administration decision Nov. 23 clearing the way for federal agencies to meet with representatives of the incoming administration.
The delays came even as Biden advisers spent much of this week meeting with officials at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA, intelligence agencies that are independent of the Defense Department.But Pentagon officials said their agency was taking steps required to provide outside officials access.
Biden to nominate Avril Haines as next director of national intelligence; she would be the first woman to hold the position
Sue Gough, a Defense Department spokeswoman, said Friday that the Biden team “has not been denied any access.” After being asked by The Washington Post about the apparent standoff, Gough said the requested meetings could take place as early as next week.
By then, Biden advisers will have waited more than a month since the election to have meaningful contact with intelligence agencies that have multibillion-dollar budgets, satellite networks that ring the planet and vast surveillance authorities.The delays have added to the unprecedented tensions surrounding the transition, fueled by a president who refuses to concede that he lost the election and spent much of his tenure accusing the nation’s spy agencies of disloyalty to him.A Biden transition team spokesman declined to comment, as did NSA and DIA officials.
Current and former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, said the delays have impaired the Biden team’s ability to get up to speed on espionage operations against Russia, China, Iran and other U.S. adversaries.
The inability to meet with the NSA was described as particularly worrisome. The agency is the largest U.S. intelligence service, and its eavesdropping capabilities have been a critical source of intelligence on threats as varied as weapons proliferation and foreign interference in U.S. elections.
Officials said that rejections relayed this week to the Biden team cited seemingly petty procedural barriers.
One person said the Pentagon had asked repeatedly for rosters of those who would take part in a visit, lists of topics and estimates of time to be allotted — information that in some cases had been provided at the outset.
>https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/pentagon-blocks-biden-transition-team/2020/12/04/2e7042fa-3656-11eb-a997-1f4c53d2a747_story.html
cont
“If they were in a cooperative mood, none of this would be happening,” said another person with knowledge of the interactions.
The Pentagon has been in significant turmoil since the election. Acting secretary of defense Christopher C. Miller was installed last month after Trump fired Mark T. Esper, his Pentagon chief.
Miller has presided over the removal of senior Pentagon officials, replacing them with perceived Trump loyalists including chief of staff Kash Patel and Ezra Cohen-Watnick, who is serving as interim undersecretary of defense for intelligence. In her statement to The Post, Gough indicated that Cohen-Watnick’s office has played a central role in matters related to the transition.
Pentagon officials in turn blamed Biden advisers. One defense official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the subject, said that Biden transition officials had improperly contacted agencies directly to arrange visits and briefings, and were told that they instead needed to submit requests to the Pentagon.The result has been an awkward standoff in which former officials were spurned by agencies they formerly helped run. Among those ex-officials is Vincent Stewart, a retired three-star U.S. Marine Corps general who previously served as DIA director and is a leading member of the Biden intelligence transition team.
Other spy agencies have been far more receptive. At the CIA, for example, the Biden transition team has had extensive access to senior officials, computer equipment connected to the agency’s classified systems, and office space at “Scattergood,” a historic homestead on the CIA compound often used for hosting VIPs.
Biden recently named Avril D. Haines, a former top White House official and deputy director of the CIA, as his nominee to be director of national intelligence. Biden has made no other announcements about his intelligence team, but former deputy CIA director David S. Cohen is seen as a top candidate to be the director of that agency.While scrutiny intensifies of the transition at Defense Department intelligence agencies, officials have taken steps to advance that effort at the Pentagon itself. The first virtual meeting between the Pentagon's internal transition task force and the Biden team occurred Nov. 25. Since then, officials have taken administrative actions including granting access badges for the Biden team and completing non-disclosure agreements, Pentagon officials said.
Ellen Nakashima, Shane Harris and Greg Jaffe contributed to this report.
219f442574728c4019a51dc2ee0f7219
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0dc4fa1ac27895d49dbb6120792e96d949bb453f979c6645c307c85f205913cf
>https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/12/shots-fired-dueling-pro-trump-versus-antifa-rallies-olympia-result-gunfire-videos/
a99168968362f097a12c0b4cdd529b787a64227c803daf3a7ab4d1f3ddbfdcf0
2023 was supposed to be the back end with a lot less passengers.
==
"All Terrorists Are Educated In Schools Sponsored By Saudi Arabia": Iran Airs Laundry List==Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said this week that every terrorist group in our region received its teachings in religious schools funded by Saudi Arabia. Specifically he charged "Every terrorist group in our region has graduated from Saudi-funded Madrassas".
Khatibzadeh tweeted on Thursday "No amount of Saudi confusion can hide this ugly reality." He added in another statement about Saudi Arabia, "Their atrocities in Yemen, and the infamous killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi are just some of their other stunts, and the latest of this is their standing with the state sponsor of terror against the Palestinians.""The Saudis must change course," he continued. "The policy of inflaming tensions can no longer be defended."
The tweets of the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Saeed Khatibzadeh, came in response to recent statements by the Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Adel Al-Jubeir, in which he said that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia does not endorse the policy of assassinations, and indicated that Iran blames Saudi Arabia for every earthquake or flood .
"It seems that despair has prompted Iran’s Foreign Minister, Mr. Javad Zarif, to place any blame on the Kingdom and accuse it of causing what is happening in Iran," Al-Jubeir said ."Perhaps when an earthquake or a flood occurs in Iran, he will accuse the kingdom of causing it as well," he said.
Then he directed his speech to Zarif , saying, "The assassinations, we do not approve of them in any way and are not the policy of the Kingdom, unlike the Iranian regime that has been based on assassinations around the world since the revolution that Khomeini kidnapped in 1979."
"You can ask us and ask many countries, and you will know … that we have lost many of our citizens due to Iran’s criminal and illegal behavior," he concluded.
Zarif had said, through his official Instagram earlier that "the assassination of Fakhrizadeh ​​is a cowardly terrorist act resulting from Pompeo's recent visit to the region and the American-Israeli-Saudi meeting in the Kingdom.""Pompeo’s quick trips to the region, the trilateral meeting in Saudi Arabia, and Netanyahu’s statements show the conspiracy that unfortunately culminated in a cowardly terrorist act on Friday and the martyrdom of one of the country’s top leaders," he added.
On Monday, Iran buried the Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was assassinated last Friday, after his car was targeted near the capital, Tehran.
>https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/all-terrorists-are-educated-schools-sponsored-saudi-arabia-iran-airs-laundry-list
Early Morning Doom Porn
"2021 Will Be Catastrophic" - UN Warns Of Humanitarian Crisis As 270 Million People May StarveWhile 2020 could be one for the record books, the UN is out with a new warning that a humanitarian catastrophe could be setting up for 2021.
World Food Programme (WFP) chief David Beasley sounded the alarm at a United Nations General Assembly meeting Friday about the reemergence of the virus pandemic and resulting humanitarian crisis, reported RT News.
Beasley said a humanitarian catastrophe is developing with some 270 million people on the pathway towards "starvation."
"2021 is literally going to be catastrophic, based on what we're seeing at this stage in the game … because we've spent $19 trillion, that money may not, and will not most likely be available for 2021," he said.
He added, "We're now looking literally at 2021 being the worst humanitarian crisis year since the beginning of the United Nations, and we're going to have to step up."Beasley said the virus pandemic and resulting government lockdowns are disrupting supply chains and the global economy - stating the "cure could be worse than the disease because of the economic ripple effect." He also said "man-made conflicts" were adding to the ongoing humanitarian challenges in the world, specifically mentioning Syria, Yemen, and South Sudan.
"We've got to end some of these wars. We've got to bring these wars to an end, so we can achieve the sustainable development goals that we so desire," he said, dubbing the conflicts, health crisis and looming famine as "icebergs in front of the Titanic."
Beasley was out with a similar warning in August. Back then, he requested billions of dollars in humanitarian aid to avert a "famine of biblical proportions" that would threaten most of the world.
The dramatic rise in the number of people who don't have the means to feed themselves because of depressionary unemployment, supply chain breakdowns, and crop failures have been some of the catalysts this year that could spark a global hunger crisis as early as next year.
Even in the US, a developed world economy, food insecurity is soaring as tens of millions are unemployed, broke, and now lining up at food banks during the holiday season.
In a separate food insecurity report from June, the UN secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, warned the world is on the brink of the worst food crisis ever witnessed in the post-World War II era.
Making matters worse, world food prices are rapidly rising, with the Food and Agriculture Organization index hitting the highest level since early 2015.And if that wasn't enough, a natural weather phenomenon called La Nina, which we described in September, is disrupting the global agriculture industry, causing dry weather in some regions and heavy rainfall in others, lowering crop yields and driving up spot prices of food.
While central banks have printed trillions of dollars in bailing out financial markets - the one thing they cannot do is print food - the world is likely on the verge of a massive humanitarian crisis.
>https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/2021-will-be-catastrophic-un-warns-humanitarian-crisis-270-million-people-starve
Got to create signals to detect.
They are trying to turn the everyone going to starve up to 11
Going to call a LID for a bit, only have maybe a hour before the sun comes up and the day starts over.
MUST SEE: The Unknown Story of the Courageous Truck Driver in Pennsylvania Who Risked His Livelihood and Much More to Testify This Past Week and Save His Country (VIDEO)
On Tuesday news broke that truckloads of ballots were being shipped from New York to Pennsylvania before the 2020 election. One truck driver who drove one of these truckloads stepped forward to report the shipment. He had much to lose and little go gain in doing so, like so many witnesses we saw the past couple weeks.
This man is a hero. He was introduced by former Kansas Attorney General Phill Klein who shared the following (starting at 41:30 mark):
>https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/12/must-see-unknown-story-courageous-truck-driver-pennsylvania-risked-much-testify-past-week-save-country-video/
The 'Biggest Ever' Flotilla Of Iranian Tankers Is En Route To Venezuela With Fuel
It appears both Iran and Venezuela are ready and willing to test the outgoing Trump administration in a major gambit to skirt sanctions in a crude and fuel export scheme.
The daily American military newspaper Stars & Stripes alongside Bloomberg reports this weekend that Iran "is sending its biggest fleet yet of tankers to Venezuela in defiance of U.S. sanctions to help the isolated nation weather a crippling fuel shortage," based on sources familiar with their movements.
"Some of the flotilla of about 10 Iranian vessels will also help export Venezuelan crude after discharging fuel, the people said, asking not to be named because the transaction is not public," the report continues.This appears to be the first instance Iran has sent such a large fleet, which may potentially include smaller military escorts or patrols, or possibly armed commandos on board. Things could get interesting especially when the flotilla crosses the Caribbean Sea, given the concentrated presence of US Navy warships there.
While Maduro's Venezuela is rich in crude, it's actually for over the past year suffered a nationwide fuel shortage, given state-run processing plans which turn crude into usable gasoline have long fallen derelict and suffered mechanical failures. Caracas has sought outside help, including from the Iranians and Russians, in not only importing the necessary mechanical parts and operational products, but in bringing in teams of technicians that can bring the facilities online.
In the meantime Iran has launched several rounds of fuel deliveries since last summer. At least one major attempt to get Iranian fuel to Venezuela saw four tankers intercepted by the US military in August. The US federal government seized the over 1.1 million barrels of petroleum and later auctioned it off.
The last batch of Iranian petrol to make it through was reportedly in October. Tankers carrying Iranian fuel typically switch off their transponders to avoid attention for their sanctions-busting activities.
…moar
>https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/biggest-ever-flotilla-iranian-tankers-en-route-venezuela-fuel
Screwed this one up
I tried a quick dig on it and could find no mention of who placed it there. May be old enough to be from the fire in 1812 and that would be a reason for the damage. Another reason could be the silvering has been damaged with time on the back side.
So… what about paste?