Also: Putin ramps up sabotage, a CIA sex assault case ends, DoD stands by its covert disinfo op against China, more HPSCI havoc and Trump on JFK files
Blinking Red: In the four years before 9/11, CIA Director George Tenet testified publicly 10 times about the threat al Qaeda posed to the United States. In eight appearances before Congress in recent months, FBI Director Christopher Wray has been sounding similar warnings.
Le monde est confronté au danger d’une grande guerre. Pour comprendre l’ampleur de cette menace, il faut aller au-delà des nouvelles en provenance d’Ukraine. Il faut aussi, d’une part, essayer d’apprécier de manière équilibrée le facteur variable de la volonté humaine dans la gestion des crises internationales et, d’autre part, les facteurs immuables de la réalité géographique.
On 26 August 2021, shortly after the Taliban conquered Kabul, Abdur Rahman Logari detonated his suicide vest near the Abbey Gate in the city’s airport, killing 170 men, women and children who were trying to flee the country. Two days later, a US drone strike killed an entire Afghan family in the mistaken belief that the target was Logari. Joe Biden would later describe the Abbey Gate attack — Isis’s most successful operation in Afghanistan — as “the hardest of the hard days” of his presidency. Harder days, however, were soon to come.
A drastic escalation of tensions between Israel and the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon over the past week has brought the prospect of an expansion of war across the Middle East ever closer. Following Israel’s assassination of a senior Hezbollah commander and a retaliatory rocket barrage fired on northern Israel, The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) released a statement Tuesday declaring that operational plans for a war in Lebanon have been approved.
As Jonathan Tobin writes at Commentary:
The Khamenei Palestine book is important not in and of itself but because the regime’s obsession with Israel is a key to its foreign policy. Iran constitutes a grave threat to Neighboring Arab countries that are at least as angry about the president’s embrace of Tehran as the Israelis since their nuclear status would undermine their security. But as much as Iran is focused on regional hegemony in which Sunni states would be brought to heel, as Khamenei’s Palestine illustrates, it is the fixation on Israel and Zionism that really animates their expansionism and aid for terror groups.
Les Jeux olympiques vont nous laisser la surveillance de masse en héritage. En instrumentalisant cet évènement, le gouvernement a autorisé l’utilisation de la vidéosurveillance algorithmique (VSA) jusqu’en 2025 pour des situations qui dépassent largement le cadre cette compétition sportive. Ces logiciels, qui analysent les images de vidéosurveillance et envoient automatiquement des alertes à la police, sont déployés depuis des années en France en toute illégalité, sans que jamais les responsables n’aient été inquiétés. L’hypocrisie est donc totale. En légalisant quelques usages de VSA, l’État souhaite légitimer un état de fait et amorcer un projet de surveillance bien plus large de l’espace public.
The Deep State should have been alert five years ago when Candidate Joe Biden announced that he, if elected as president, was determined to make the Saudi rulers “pay the price, and make them in fact the pariah that they are.”
Falling birthrates in East Asia are causing concerns over whether the region’s military forces will be able to maintain their troop levels in future. As a result, China, Japan, and South Korea are changing their recruitment standards even though they have invested heavily in programmes to boost birthrates. However, some experts believe that advancements in technology will help offset the impact of declining populations.
Joint Statement by Foreign Affairs Ministers of France, Germany and Poland
Our security is under threat. We live in an age of systemic rivalry in which certain autocratic regimes are using their power to undermine and destroy the international order that is based on the Charter of the United Nations. Russia is waging an illegal war of aggression against one of our neighbours, is openly rejecting and actively undermining the European security architecture and has already engaged in malign and hybrid operations against our countries. As Europeans, we must stand together and protect our interests and values as well as the principles of international law, human rights and peace.
Arms trafficking is a loaded term. It conjures images of containers full of AK-47s, gangsters toting grenade launchers or fierce shootouts between rival gangs. And there is some truth to this in many parts of the world, from shiploads of assault rifles sent by Iran to the Houthis, Mexican cartels downing helicopters and the street violence of the drug market in the US.