Many people may not realise that the White House is a museum, as well as the home of the American president and a place of government business.

Its rooms and hallways contain a heralded collection of furniture, china, statues, and most of all, paintings, both works of art, and depictions of history.

Every president and first lady is commemorated with a portrait, commissioned toward the end of their time in the White House, and hung a few years after they leave.

But Donald Trump, it seems, is not waiting to make sure his face hangs in the White House.

This weekend, the nation learnt through an interview on 60 Minutes that he is already on the wall of his private office.

Mr Trump appears in a fanciful grouping, enjoying cocktails with former presidents from the Republican party. (A teetotaller, his glass contains his favoured Diet Coke.)

The painting, called The Republican Club, is by artist Andy Thomas. He told NBC News that he was shocked to see it hanging in the White House.

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-16/donald-trump-portrait-andy-thomas...

On 4 October 2018, the White House published the new « National Strategy for Counterterrorism» [1]. This document is presented as a split from what has been achieved so far in the matter – the last text, dating from the Obama administration, was published in 2011. In reality, this is a compromise between President Trump and the Pentagon.

Terrorism is a method of combat to which all armies reserve the right. The five permanent powers of the UN Security Council made a targeted use of [state] terrorism during the Cold War.

At that time, terrorist acts were either messages sent by one state to another, or secret operations aimed at inhibiting a protagonist. Today, they have become generalised. They no longer have a place in the secret dialogues between states, but are intended to weaken them.

As an example for our French readers, let’s remember that during the civil war in Lebanon, President François Mitterrand ordered the attack against the Office of Military Conscription in Damascus, causing 175 deaths, in response to the assassination of France’s ambassador in Beirut, Louis Delamarre. Or again, in 1985, President Mitterrand ordered the destruction of the Rainbow Warrior, a ship belonging to the Greenpeace organisation, because its presence prevented the continuation of nuclear testing in the Pacific. The attack caused one death.

Three ambiguities have persisted in US rhetoric since 2001 :

The notion of a « Global War on Terror » (GWOT), formulated by George Bush Jr., never made any sense at all. The word « terrorism » does not define enemies, but a method of combat. The « war on terrorism » makes no more sense than a « war against war ». It was a way of announcing what Donald Rumsfeld called the « endless war » - in other words the strategy by Admiral Arthur Cebrowski for the destruction of the state structures of countries which are not connected to the global economy.

The development of Muslim organisations which practise terrorism is based on an ideology, that of political Islam, which is defended and spread by the Muslim Brotherhood. Simultaneously, a variant of this ideology is propagated by certain Iranian currents, even though they use terrorism very infrequently. There is no point fighting the symptom (the multiplication of terrorist acts) without fighting the disease itself (political Islam).

The word « terrorism » has become pejorative. It is often used to describe organisations which use this method of combat only rarely, but which the White House wishes to demonize (for example, Hezbollah).

Launched by President Bush Jr. after the attacks of 11 September 2001, the Global War on Terrorism has not attained its declared objective. On the contrary, the number of terrorist acts in the world has been increasing constantly. This whole mess was simply an excuse to install a generalised surveillance of US citizens US (the Patriot Act and the creation of the Secretariat of Homeland Security) and to justify wars of aggression (Afghanistan, Iraq).

President Obama polished up this system. He put an end to certain practices (for example the use of torture) and abstained from using this rhetoric to justify the aggressions against Libya and Syria. He buried the disagreements about the attacks of 9/11, maintained the Patriot Act, and developed the agencies which spy on the population. He only spoke of the war on terrorism in order to create a vast system of targeted assassinations, often carried out by drones. At the same time, he directed the « death » of Oussama Ben Laden in order to reintegrate his companions into the initial system of the CIA, thereby relying on Al-Qaïda for ground operations in Libya and Syria. Finally, he supported the creation of a Caliphate straddling Iraq and Syria, while pretending to combat Daesh.

President Trump, who had planned to end the use of terrorism by the Allies, was obliged to modify his objectives after the forced resignation of his National Security Advisor, General Michael T. Flynn. Finally, he forced the Gulf countries to cease their financing of terrorist armies, put an end to the Caliphate as a state, and introduced the war against terrorism into the objectives of NATO.

The new US doctrine attempts to conciliate the objective of « America first! » and the tools of the federal state. It therefore implies that from now on, Washington will only fight the terrorist organisations which attacks its interests – but let’s remember that it defines the word « interests » in the widest possible sense – including Israël.

In order to justify this strategic annexation, it recycles the rhetoric of Bush Jr., proclaiming the necessity of defending the United States - including Israël - because they are the « vanguards of liberty, democracy and constitutional governance » (sic).

President Trump therefore designates as the organisations which must be opposed - 
groups such as Al-Qaïda, Daesh, Boko Haram, Tehrik-e-Taliban, and Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, insofar as they continue to encourage their soldiers to attack US interests ; 
groups which resist Israël (Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas) ; 
other extremists (neo-Nazis of the Nordic Resistance Movement and the National Action Group, Sikhs of the Babbar Khalsa, also the specists).

No-one has failed to notice that the designation of Muslim and Sikh groups based in Pakistan is probably preparing for an operation of destabilisation of this country. After Daesh in Palmyra, the Nazis in the Ukraine and the « revolution » in Nicaragua, Pakistan could be the fourth site for the hindrance of the Chinese « Belt and Road Initiative ».

The continuation of the new strategy is a description of the acts which need to be implemented. President Trump willingly admits that the United States can not do everything at once, and therefore defines his « priority choices » ; an elegant way to stipulate what should not be done.

Let’s note that at the same time, President Trump validates the detention of jihadists in the name of the laws of war ; a detention which could be life imprisonment, taking into account the impossibility of ending the war in a reasonable delay.

The three major innovations are :

The system created in the USA for the surveillance of entries into the territory and the filing of suspects should be extended to all of the allied countries. « America first! » does not mean « USA alone! ». Whether the White House likes it or not, the Pentagon will attempt to re-establish the « American Empire » by pretending to coordinate the war on terrorism.

While until now there existed propaganda to combat the enrolment of new jihadists, the Pentagon and the Secretariat of Homeland Security are now authorised to transform it into a State ideology in order to mobilise the whole society. Counter-terrorism is now slated to become what anti-Communism was during the time of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

While fighting groups qualified as « terrorists », the Pentagon will now consider that it cannot prevent all the attacks on its territory. It will therefore develop a programme for the repair of damages. This is a complete change of mentality. Until now, no enemy had been able to reach the territory of the United States, and US armies are currently deployed all over the world to impose the law of Washington. The Pentagon is beginning to consider itself as a force for the Defence of the homeland.

To resume, this new National Strategy for Counter-Terrorism is a long way away from the analyses formulated during the electoral campaign by Donald Trump and Michael T. Flynn. It will have little impact in the sector of terrorism. Its usefulness must be understood elsewhere. Step by step, the President is recalibrating the security apparatus of the federal state. If it is applied, the text will have profound consequences in the long term. It will play its part in the desire to transform imperialist armed forces into organs of national Defence.

Translation 
Pete Kimberley

Read more:

http://www.voltairenet.org/article203500.html

Cradling an AK-47 and sucking a lollipop, the former American Green Beret bumped along in the back of an armored SUV as it wound through the darkened streets of Aden. Two other commandos on the mission were former Navy SEALs. As elite US special operations fighters, they had years of specialized training by the US military to protect America. But now they were working for a different master: a private US company that had been hired by the United Arab Emirates, a tiny desert monarchy on the Persian Gulf.

On that night, December 29, 2015, their job was to carry out an assassination.

Their armed attack, described to BuzzFeed News by two of its participants and corroborated by drone surveillance footage, was the first operation in a startling for-profit venture. For months in war-torn Yemen, some of America’s most highly trained soldiers worked on a mercenary mission of murky legality to kill prominent clerics and Islamist political figures.

Their target that night: Anssaf Ali Mayo, the local leader of the Islamist political party Al-Islah. The UAE considers Al-Islah to be the Yemeni branch of the worldwide Muslim Brotherhood, which the UAE calls a terrorist organization. Many experts insist that Al-Islah, one of whose members won the Nobel Peace Prize, is no terror group. They say it's a legitimate political party that threatens the UAE not through violence but by speaking out against its ambitions in Yemen.

Read more:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/aramroston/mercenaries-assassinatio...

Washington is not at all pleased that the International Court of Justice condemned some of its sanctions against Russia.

After Teheran argued that its position was based on the Bilateral Treaty on Friendship, Economic Relations and Consular Rights of 15 August 1955, Washington announced that it was denouncing that Treaty.

The Court is currently examining a set of pleadings from the Palestinian authority denouncing the illegal transfer of the US embassy to Jerusalem. The basis for the complaint is founded on the UN plan for the division of Palestine and the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

It is not possible in this case to withdraw from a resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly. Also, the National Security Advisor, John Bolton, has decided to curtail possibility that the ICJ has jurisdiction over the US by denouncing all its treaties authorizing recourse to the ICJ under the Vienna Convention’s Optional Protocol.

The International Court of Justice is the heir of the PCIJ - the Permanent Court of International Justice. The PCIJ was established by the Hague Conference of 1899. At the initiative of Tsar Nicolas II and the President of the French Radical Party, Léon Bourgeois, its mandate was to help states settle the disputes they had with one and other. Today the ICJ functions as the judicial arm of the UN. It should not be confused with international tribunals that also sit in the Hague.

Translation 
Anoosha Boralessa

Read more:

http://www.voltairenet.org/article203479.html

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The owner of brothels had been dead for several weeks and yet, according to the electoral code, he was elected to the Nevada assembly in mid-term elections in the United States. With 63%, he beat his opponent Democrat.

Dennis Hof, a famous owner of brothels who died last month, was elected on November 7 in the US mid-term elections to the Nevada assembly, under the Republican label, due to a peculiarity of the electoral code in force.

According to the results of local elections published on the site of the Nevada legislature, Dennis Hof won with 63% of the votes against the Democratic candidate in the 36th constituency of the assembly of this state of the west of the country, where prostitution is legal.

Translation by Jules Letambour

Read more:

https://francais.rt.com/international/55214-elections-mi-mandat-etats-un...

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Fake news about Muos « maxi-radar »

by Manlio Dinucci

Contrary to articles in the Atlantist Press, Muos is not a defensive radar, but a new satellite communications system which enables the Pentagon to supervise offensive actions anywhere in the world. One of its four land bases is situated in Europe, specifically in Niscemi (Italy).

« The M5S (5 Star Movement) divided about the Sicilian maxi-radar », headlined the Corriere della Sera, thereby spreading a maxi fake news – not about the directorate of the 5 Star Movement, which, after having won an electoral consensus with the « No Muos » in Sicily, is now backing off - but about the very object of the dispute.

By defining the Muos station in Niscemi as a « maxi-radar », they are fooling public opinion into believing that it is an Earth-bound electronic scanning device, and therefore defensive. But on the contrary, the Muos (Mobile User Objective System) is a new satellite communications system which extends the offensive capacity of the United States to the whole planet.

The system, developed by Lockheed Martin for the US Navy, is composed of an initial configuration of four satellites (plus one in reserve) in a geo-stationary orbit, and linked to four terrestrial stations – two in the United States (Hawaï and Virginia), one in Sicily and one in Australia. The four stations are linked by a network of terrestrial and submarine fibre-optic cables (the station in Niscemi is connected directly to the station in Virginia).

The Muos, which is already in function, will become fully operational in the summer of 2019, attaining a capacity 16 times superior to that of the preceding systems. It will simultaneously transmit ultra-high frequency coded messages of vocal, video and data material. So submarines and warships, fighter-bombers and drones, military vehicles and on-the-ground units of the US and their allies, will thus be linked to a single command network of control and communications under the orders of the Pentagon, while they are operating anywhere in the world, including the polar regions.

So the Muos station in Niscemi is not a « Sicilian maxi-radar » which guards the island, but an essential element of the planetary war machine of the United States.

The same role is being played by the other main US and NATO bases in Italy. The Naval Air Station Sigonella, a few kilometres from Niscemi, is the base for the launching of military operations mainly in the Middle East and Africa, carried out by special forces and drones.

The JTAGS (Joint Tactical Ground Station), a US satellite station of the « antimissile shield » deployed at Sigonella – one of the five with global reach (the others are situated in the United States, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Japan) – serves not only for anti-missile defence, but also for attack operations commanded from advance positions.

The Joint Allied Force Command in Lago Patria (Naples), is under the orders of a US admiral who simultaneously commands the US Naval Forces in Europe (with the Sixth Fleet based at Gaeta in the Lazio) and the US Naval Forces for Africa, whose headquarters are at Naples-Capodichino.

Camp Darby, the largest US arsenal outside of the homeland, supplies the US and allied forces for their wars in the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

The US 173rd Airborne Brigade based in Vicence, operates in Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine and other countries in Eastern Europe.

The bases at Aviano and Ghedi – sites of the deployment of US and Italian fighters under US command, and equipped with B61 nuclear bombs, which, as from 2020 will be replaced by B61-12’s – are an integral part of the Pentagon’s nuclear strategy.

Incidentally, do Luigi Di Maio and the other leaders of M5S remember that they took a solemn engagement with the ICAN (International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons) to ensure that Italy adheres to the UN Treaty, thus liberating Italy from US nuclear weapons?

Manlio Dinucci

Translation 

Pete Kimberley

Source 

Il Manifesto (Italy)

Read more:

http://www.voltairenet.org/article203870.html

Read from top. See also:

https://www.exmouth.wa.gov.au/heh-naval-communication-station.aspx

https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/sociopol_pinegap08.htm

Please note: the point of having US nuclear weapons in Europe is to strike enemies (read Russia) from such locations which would then become targets of retaliation — leaving the USA "safer" for a longer time frame. The EU would bear the brunt of WW3... This is the calculation of the generals in charge of the pentagon...