According to Spiegel, SPD members of the Bundestag in a recent meeting joined local and regional politicians in voicing doubts over Scholz’s chances to succeed and called for Pistorius to step in.
The comments were made on Tuesday at a meeting of the Seeheimer Kreis (Seeheim Circle), a conservative wing of the SPD which claims to be aiming at “a modern and pragmatic policy,” the German newspaper reported
In 2015, Iran proved the peaceful nature of its nuclear program to the world by signing the multilateral nuclear agreement, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — with six world powers.
However, Washington’s unilateral withdrawal in 2018 and its subsequent re-imposition of sanctions against Tehran left the future of the deal in limbo.
In 2019, Iran started to roll back the limits it had accepted under the JCPOA after the other parties failed to live up to their commitments.
After being ambushed with demands for him to call for a ceasefire in December last year, he replied: “No, I will not. On the contrary … I want [Israel] to destroy every element of Hamas they can get their hands on.
“These people are vicious animals who did horrifying crimes.” To the activists, he added: “I hope you guys post that, because that’s my position.”
US President-elect Donald Trump is expected to tap Senator Marco Rubio to be his secretary of state and Rep. Michael Waltz as national security adviser, The New York Times reported Monday, pushing the emergent cabinet in a hawkish, pro-Israel direction.
(April 14, 2023)
Peo0le with clearance and access to „Top Secret“ U.S.federal government information, by employee type
Government 605.579
Contractor 472.576
Other 173.803
Total 1.251.958
As of Oct.1, 2019
Source: Office of the Director of National Intelligence via Federation of American Scientists
(July 20, 2010)
The Post investigation uncovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America created since 9/11 that is hidden from public view, lacking in thorough oversight and so unwieldy that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.
It is also a system in which contractors are playing an ever more important role. The Post estimates that out of 854,000 people with top-secret clearances, 265,000 are contractors. There is no better example of the government‘s dependency on them than at the CIA, the one place in government that exists to do things overseas that no other U.S. agency is allowed to do.
(…)
Contractors kill enemy fighters. They spy on foreign governments and eavesdrop on terrorist networks. They help craft war plans. They gather information on local factions in war zones. They are the historians, the architects, the recruiters in the nation‘s most secretive agencies. They staff watch centers across the Washington area. They are among the most trusted advisers to the four-star generals leading the nation‘s wars.
Baghaei said the repetition of such claims at this juncture is “a malicious conspiracy by Zionist and anti-Iranian circles aimed at further complicating the issues between the United States and Iran.”
It came after Trump was declared the winner of the presidential election on Wednesday. On July 13, Trump survived an assassination attempt, suffering only minor injury to his ear.
In August, Iran dismissed having any connection with a Pakistani individual allegedly arrested in the United States and charged with being behind a foiled plot to assassinate US politicians.
Prosecutors allege Shakeri – who participated in recorded conversations with law enforcement – was originally tasked by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps to carrying out other assassinations against US and Israeli citizens inside the US. (…)
Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray, in statements released Friday, denounced the continued threats from the Iranian government against individuals in the United States.
“There are few actors in the world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as does Iran,” Garland said.
(December 9, 2023)
With a month to go before what is widely expected to be an extraordinarily close election, an extra element of unpredictability looms: In every battleground state, there is at least one third-party or independent presidential candidate on the ballot.
None of these candidates will come anywhere close to winning the presidency. Jill Stein, the Green Party nominee, is polling at about 1 percent nationally, according to New York Times polling released last week. Same with Chase Oliver, the Libertarian Party candidate.
In other campaign news, the Democratic National Committee has released an ad attacking Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein, claiming a vote for Stein is a vote for Trump. Democrats are planning to run the ad in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. In August, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR, published a survey that showed Stein is leading Harris among Muslim voters in Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin. Stein has criticized Harris for refusing to cut off arms sales to Israel.
VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: I am gonna actually announce — we have press in the room — that I have decided, not only will I have a Republican in my cabinet — I was talking to my team about it — I want to create some structure around the following, which is: I love good ideas, wherever they come from. I love good ideas! Right?
So part of what I intend to do and put some structure around is creating a bipartisan council of advisors, who can then give feedback on policy as we go forward.
Because here‘s the thing I also understand, and feel strongly about. In order for us as America to maintain our status as the strongest democracy in the world, we need a healthy two-party system. We have to have a healthy two-party. We have to! It‘s in the best interest of all of us.
The US will deploy the THAAD anti-ballistic missile system in Israel, according to reports by Channel 12 news and Army Radio that describe the move as part of preparations for the expected Israeli response to Iran’s recent missile attack.
Channel 12 news says the advanced missile defense system will be operated by American troops on Israeli soil.
The deployment would mark a deepening of the US‘s military footprint inside Israel.
The pentagon has said US special operations forces are stationed in Israel to “actively“ help Israel “identify hostages, including American hostages“.
In 2007, former Nato commander Wesley Clark recounted a meeting at the Pentagon shortly after the US invasion of Afghanistan. An officer told him: “We are going to attack and destroy the governments in seven countries in five years. We’re going to start with Iraq, and then we’re going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.”
Clark added of the neoconservatives: “They wanted us to destabilise the Middle East, turn it upside down, make it under our control.”
As I documented in my 2008 book Israel and the Clash of Civilisations, Israel was supposed to carry out a central chunk of Washington’s post-Iraq plan, starting with its war on Lebanon in 2006. Israel’s attack there was supposed to drag in Syria and Iran, giving the US a pretext to expand the war.
This was what the US secretary of state of the time, Condoleezza Rice, meant when she spoke of the “birth pangs of a new Middle East”.
The plan went awry largely because Israel got bogged down in phase one, in Lebanon. It blitzed cities like Beirut with US-supplied bombs, but its soldiers struggled against Hezbollah in a ground invasion of southern Lebanon.
The West subsequently found other ways to deal with Syria and Libya.
(January 5, 2024)
In 1988, the Central Intelligence Agency did discover that Riyadh bought SS-2 medium-range missiles from China but only after the deal was sealed. In 2003, when China exported DF-21 ballistic missiles to the Kingdom, the CIA again found out and was even allowed to verify the missiles were not nuclear-capable, but only after the missiles were delivered.
Several years later, when intelligence finally leaked out that China secretly built missile factories for the Saudis, the Trump administration was mum on whether there was an intelligence failure and allowed speculation that it had blessed the transaction. Then, in 2020, when US intelligence confirmed China was helping the Kingdom mill uranium domestically, it did so, again only after the mining and milling were well underway.
This track record of studied inadvertence, then, brings us to the next worry: MBS wants Washington to green-light the Kingdom enriching uranium…
(March 19, 2023)
In general, the Saudis wish to present themselves as Iran’s equals, and if Iran can enrich uranium, say the Saudis, then so can we. In addition, the Saudis want to keep all their nuclear options open, even if they are not intending to work on the development of nuclear weapons immediately.
(September 14, 2023)
Top Israeli sources have told the Jerusalem Post that there are secret technological ways to ensure that the Saudis do not misuse civilian nuclear items, which the US may give them as part of a three-way normalization deal, for military purposes.
Although there are no guarantees, because the issue is highly technical and there are issues to address regarding the Palestinians and highly complex politics, these technological fixes could be key to locking in a normalization deal between Riyadh and Jerusalem, under Washington’s auspices.
(March 27, 2019)
Many U.S. lawmakers are concerned that sharing nuclear technology with Saudi Arabia could eventually lead to a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. (…)
Last month, Democratic House members alleged in a report that top White House aides ignored warnings they could be breaking the law as they worked with former U.S. officials in a group called IP3 International to advance a multibillion-dollar plan to build nuclear reactors in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia.
(Oct 04, 2023)
Amid reports that Saudi Arabia is seeking United States support for its nuclear energy program—whose capacities critics fear could be utilized to develop nuclear weapons—a group of 20 U.S. senators on Wednesday urged President Joe Biden to „seriously consider“ whether such a move is in the national interest as the administration brokers a possible normalization deal between the kingdom and Israel.
(August 30, 2023)
Policymakers in Washington and the Middle East have been busy talking about the possibility of Saudi Arabia normalizing its ties with Israel in return, in part, for a formal defense pact with the United States. Receiving far less attention is a critical question, at least for Riyadh: Would such a move jeopardize Saudi Arabia’s recent diplomatic accord with Iran?
Figure 1: U.S. Military Aid to Israel from October 7, 2023 to September 2024 (in millions of dollars)
Foreign Military Financing $6,8009
Missile Defense $4,500
Missile Defense (Iron Beam) $1,200
Enhancing Artillery Production $1,000
Replenishing Arms Delivered to Israel from U.S. Stocks $4,400
TOTAL $17.9 billion
Our real enemies are in Washington and London and Tel Aviv. In Berlin and Paris and Canberra. In secretive government agencies in the state of Virginia, and in imperial propaganda institutions in New York and Hollywood.
I hate when people say “Bah the middle east has always been at war, it’s just how they are.” No you asshole, it’s been at war because of western interventionism and Israel.
The Israeli response was yet another example of what Austin privately characterized as Netanyahu’s government “playing with house money”: taking big shots at its adversaries, knowing that the United States, as Israel’s chief ally, would throw its military and diplomatic weight behind it.
Some speculated that Biden’s new lame-duck status had further emboldened Netanyahu, who thought a possible Trump return to the White House would mean more U.S. support for Israel and less complaining. Just days before the attacks on Shukr and Haniyeh, after giving a table-thumping speech to Congress, Netanyahu had visited the former president and newly crowned Republican presidential nominee at his Florida residence.
(04.03.2015)
The prime minister has been warning for over 20 years that Tehran is close to achieving its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
(September 21, 2024)
He could have ended it with a phone call. The killing continued because he and his handlers wanted it to.
Before Israel and Hezbollah’s last war, in 2006, parents came to the border to bid their sons goodbye. In October, rows of tanks formed in southern Israel before invading the Gaza Strip.
Hassan Nasrallah and the terrorist group he led, Hezbollah, were responsible for killing hundreds of Americans over a four-decade reign of terror. His death from an Israeli airstrike is a measure of justice for his many victims, including thousands of Americans, Israelis, and Lebanese civilians.
The strike that killed Nasrallah took place in the broader context of the conflict that began with Hamas’s massacre on October 7, 2023. Nasrallah, the next day, made the fateful decision to join hands with Hamas and open what he called a “northern front” against Israel.
The United States fully supports Israel’s right to defend itself against Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and any other Iranian-supported terrorist groups. Just yesterday, I directed my Secretary of Defense to further enhance the defense posture of U.S. military forces in the Middle East region to deter aggression and reduce the risk of a broader regional war.
President Biden called the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah “a measure of justice” for his victims – and said that the US “fully supports” Israel’s move to defend itself against the Iran-backed terror group.
“Hassan Nasrallah and the terrorist group he led, Hezbollah, were responsible for killing hundreds of Americans over a four-decade reign of terror,” Biden, 81, said in a statement released by the White House Saturday afternoon.
The troops will number in the dozens, one official said, and will head to the region to help protect the thousands of Americans who are stationed there.
(…)
About 40,000 American troops are stationed in the region on bases in Iraq, in Syria and in the Persian Gulf countries. The U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln is in the Gulf of Oman, and a second aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Harry S. Truman, left Norfolk, Va., on Monday for the Mediterranean as part of a regularly scheduled deployment.
(September 20, 2024)
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have claimed for months to be working „around the clock“ on a Gaza ceasefire deal that is „close“ to happening. Spoiler alert: It‘s not going to happen because Hamas, the terrorist organization that massacred Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, doesn‘t want to release their hostages.
Despite their reportedly tireless efforts to negotiate with the terrorists, the Biden-Harris administration has privately conceded that a ceasefire deal won‘t happen before the end of Biden‘s term in January 2025. „No deal is imminent,“ a Biden-Harris official told the Wall Street Journal. „I‘m not sure it ever gets done.“
(September 16, 2024)
In this essay, I describe and discuss the United States’ view—shared by Germany and others—that arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant would be premature because the Prosecutor did not provide Israel with sufficient notice of the alleged crimes. In my second essay, I’ll discuss the United States’ more fundamental objection that the ICC lacks jurisdiction over Israeli nationals for conduct involving Gaza because (according to the United States) Palestine is not a state that itself would have prescriptive or enforcement jurisdiction over such persons as a matter of international law (an objection that does not depend upon the Oslo Accords).
The United States tends to hail the ICC when it prosecutes American enemies, but assails the court when it goes after U.S. allies.
(December 9, 2023)
(23. Mai 2013)
Now, the speech:
The president who dramatically expanded the CIA secret drone war, ordered a troop surge in Afghanistan and aggressively prosecuted leakers made a forceful defense of his actions and an even more forceful case for winding down the war on terrorism.
The key line: „This war, like all wars, must end. That‘s what history advises. That‘s what our democracy demands.“
Demoralized by the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war, Palestinian American Samia Assed found in Vice President Kamala Harris’ ascension — and her running mate pick — “a little ray of hope.”
That hope, she said, shattered during last month’s Democratic National Convention, where a request for a Palestinian American speaker was denied and listening to Harris left her feeling like the Democratic presidential nominee will continue the U.S. policies that have outraged many in the anti-war camp.
(December 9, 2023)
From September 10 to September 30, World BEYOND War, Code Pink, Veterans For Peace, Pax Christi, and other coalition partners will leaflet, demonstrate, and nonviolently act to expose and oppose Israeli and U.S. actions that flout international law. We will gather before both the United States’ U.N. Mission and the Israeli Consulate demanding both nations desist from further massacres, forcible displacement, and the use of starvation and disease as weapons.