The mainstream media’s hair caught fire this week. It seems that President Trump had the audacity to disagree with top “intelligence” officials who say Iran poses no nuclear threat. Evidence has surfaced that the regime is still working with tons of enriched uranium, but who dares dispute the infallibility of the intelligence agencies? And that’s not the only dispute. The President’s desire to bring troops home from Syria and Afghanistan is also misguided, the usual suspects testified this week. It wouldn’t be the same “intelligence” agencies who said Russia helped Trump steal the election would it? Not the ones that vouched for the authenticity of the mysterious dossier?

The anchors and their guests are beside themselves. Who does he think he is to be disagreeing with experienced professionals with years of knowledge and experience? The fact that the President has questioned the NATO status quo really put his sworn enemies over the moon. The Senate minority leader (Chuck Schumer) urged the “intelligence” official (Dan Coats) to stage an intervention with the President for the sake of national security. The news anchors and their guest panelists wholeheartedly agreed. They’re like a broken record on all this. They routinely call him a liar, a racist bigot and so on and on. But there’s a slight variation on the theme. Maybe he’s not a racist, personally. He’s just adopted a crazy racist platform to appeal to his racist supporters. Maybe that’s the explanation! It just couldn’t be that he loves the United States and is trying against unbelievable odds to preserve our civilization. And those of us in fly-over country? We’re beneath mainstream contempt.

After hearing the comments of the Virginia Governor/pediatrician, which no one could have missed this week, there’s not a lot to argue about. His comments couldn’t have been more casual or matter of fact. The living infant would be “kept comfortable” while a conversation ensued as to what the mother wanted to do next. It’s just that simple and ordinary as far as Governor Ralph Northam is concerned. His defenders cannot defend what he said or how he said it, so they go on the attack about interference with women’s rights.

They simply refuse to address what he said, and with good reason. These are the very same morons who recently wailed that children were separated from their parents at the border. The children! Remember? Never mind that those kids, in many cases, were subjected to terrible hardship and used as little more than props brought along to exploit loopholes in U. S. immigration laws. Often, they were separated from their “parents” because their parents were being criminally charged and locked up. Otherwise they’ve been loosed on the American public until a hearing two years out when nobody has any idea where they might be.

We see articles and “expert” panelists daily, alternately trying to explain the logic of their insane positions or more often just returning to their focus-group tested talking points in an ongoing effort to keep the masses deceived. We’ll see how this turns out, eventually. The madness of unlimited illegal immigration, free medical care for everybody in the United States and anybody else who can manage to get here, immoral inanimate objects (like border barriers), are some of their tactics to get us to help destroy our own beloved country. You talk about a convoluted definition of morality!

Border barriers are immoral, but infanticide should be codified into law? Free medical care for EVERYONE, except maybe the elderly who’ve outlived their usefulness, will cost three times the entire national budget, but so what? It’s the “moral” way to go, according to the new media stars promising the moon. The presidency of Donald Trump and the fact that fly-over country supports him has driven these people off their rockers. The “solutions” being proposed by self-righteous, godless socialists would make the leaders of collapsed authoritarian regimes proud. The darkest periods in modern history have been brought about by the very same feel good “solutions.”

How many times have we been told, “That’s not who we are as a people?” Some of us are a little weary of being lectured by tyrannical socialists trying make an emotional appeal about non-existent “victims.” The amounts of crime, drugs and long-forgotten diseases coming across the border are off the charts, despite what the left-wing and the media say. They just made one of the biggest crystal meth and synthetic heroin drug busts in American history in California, right after the load had come across from Mexico.

And have you heard? They’re calling it a typhus epidemic spreading across Los Angeles County. The governmental buildings in downtown LA are plagued with rats that carry infected fleas. The illness produces rashes, extremely high fevers and ferocious headaches. One of L A’s top prosecutors has come down with it. The problem, they believe, is garbage on the streets. You can read all about it in an NBC4 report that dares not insult California state policies by concluding why they have this dangerous problem, or where it came from. It does sound a little like a third-world, uh, situation, does it not?

More “caravans” are on their way. An embedded reporter figures at least twelve thousand are on the march. It’s frustrating. There will be an intervention all right. But not the one the critics expect. Make it a great Sabbath.

Mark

Source: http://www.intercontinentalcog.org/fridayupdates.php

The post Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – 1 February 2019 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The post US Intelligence Chief Claims Russia, China Will Meddle in 2020 Elections first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Top national security and intelligence officials sounded the alarm during a high-powered White House press briefing, raising concern about foreign operations that pose a threat to the 2018 midterms and even the 2020 election.

“We continue to see a pervasive messaging campaign by Russia to try to weaken and divide the United States,” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said.

The briefing showed the administration renewing its public commitment to combating the Russian threat, just weeks after President Trump faced broad and bipartisan criticism for initially appearing to accept Russian President Vladimir Putin’s denial of meddling during their summit in Helsinki.

But National Security Adviser John Bolton, in a new letter to senators, said Trump has directed a “vast, government-wide effort” to protect U.S. election integrity.

“A single attack can have widespread and cascading consequences. … It’s not just risk to prosperity, privacy, and infrastructure,” Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said. “Our democracy itself is in the crosshairs.”

Coats said the threat is “real” and “continuing” and “we’re throwing everything at it.”

“Our focus today is simply to tell the American people we acknowledge the threat,” Coats said. “It is real. It is continuing. And we’re doing everything we can to have a legitimate election.”

While the upcoming midterm elections are certainly a target for Russia and other nations with influence capabilities, FBI Director Christopher Wray stressed that “this is not just an election cycle threat.”

“Our adversaries are trying to undermine our country—whether it’s election season or not,” Wray said, noting that the intelligence community has met with top social media and technology companies to provide classified briefings so they can better monitor their platforms. “It’s going to take all of us working together—this threat is not going away.”

Wray added: “As I’ve said consistently, Russia attempted to interfere in the last election and continues to engage in malign influence operations … and this needs to be taken extremely seriously.”

Coats said that current Russian efforts are not as “robust” as during the 2016 election cycle, but that Moscow has taken on “numerous” other strategies to influence public opinion — through media, social media, bots and proxies — “with the intent to … drive a wedge and undermine our democratic values.”

Earlier this week, Facebook uncovered “sophisticated” efforts, possibly linked to Russia, to influence American politics in advance of the midterms. The social media giant said in a blog post that it removed 32 accounts from Facebook and Instagram because they were involved in “coordinated” political behavior and appeared to be fake.

Facebook did not say the effort was explicitly aimed at the midterm elections, but said the timing could be a sign of an attempt.

Other methods of cyber influence were revealed last week, when a report surfaced that Russian hackers allegedly targeted staff employed by Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., using a sophisticated password-stealing scheme. The hack was apparently unsuccessful, but an example of Russian meddling practices.

Other U.S. officials and lawmakers have been targeted by foreign actors. Coats told reporters Wednesday that the intelligence community processed that type of information through House or Senate leadership, and then disseminated the findings down to the individual lawmakers targeted. Coats, though, said he could not release any other names.

“The Russians are looking for every opportunity, regardless of party, whether it applies to the election, to continue pervasive efforts to undermine our fundamental values,” Coats said.

And last month, Maria Butina, a Russian national accused of working as a covert spy while in the U.S. on a student visa, was arrested. Butina is accused of attempting to infiltrate multiple organizations in the U.S. at the direction of an unnamed senior Kremlin official. She has pleaded not guilty to the allegations, but remains in jail as prosecutors argued she could be a flight risk.

Fox News’ Christopher Carbone, Gregg Re and The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/08/02/trump-officials-sound-alarm-on-russian-meddling-vow-to-fight-back-democracy-in-crosshairs.html

The post Trump officials sound alarm on Russian meddling, vow to fight back: Democracy ‘in the crosshairs’ first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

First, four Army Stryker armored combat vehicles collided, sending 15 soldiers to the hospital with minor injuries. No one died.

But hours later, an anti-American blog claimed a Lithuanian child was killed in the crash and posted a photo of a grisly accident.

It was a different collision from the Army mishap and Lithuanian news media quickly denounced the blog post as fake, designed to turn public opinion against the Americans and their Baltic ally.

The bloggers had borrowed a page from the playbook of Russia’s so-called hybrid warfare, which U.S. and Lithuania officials say has increasingly combined the ability to manipulate events using a mix of subterfuge, cyberattacks and information warfare with conventional military might.

The 12-day military exercise, which involved 18,000 U.S. and allied troops spread across four countries formerly part of the Soviet bloc, offers a window into how Army commanders are countering not just Russian troops and tanks, but also twisted truths.

“The Russians are actively seeking to divide our alliance and we must not allow that to happen,” Dan Coats, director of national intelligence, warned separately in a speech in France the day after the June 7 accident in Lithuania.

The military exercises occurred as President Donald Trump sidled up to Moscow, calling for Russia to be readmitted into the Group of 7 industrialized nations and meeting with President Vladimir Putin of Russia July 16.

U.S. commanders say they are tuning out Trump’s comments and concentrating on Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’ newest defense strategy, which focuses more on potential threats from Russia and China, and less on terrorism.

Over the past year, the United States and its NATO allies completed positioning about 4,500 soldiers in the three Baltic States and Poland, and have stationed several thousand other armored troops mostly in Eastern Europe as a deterrent to Russian aggression.

In Brussels, allied defense ministers met recently in advance of a NATO summit meeting in July. They approved a plan to ensure that by 2020 at least 30,000 troops, plus additional attack planes and warships, can respond to aggressions within 30 days.

These tensions are part of an expanding rivalry and military buildup, with echoes of the Cold War, between Washington and Moscow.

The doctored photo of the Army accident in Lithuania was just the latest reminder of what U.S. officials called Russia’s increasing reliance on cyberattacks and information warfare to keep its rivals off balance.

Last year, for instance, Lithuanian prosecutors investigated a claim of rape against German soldiers who were stationed in Lithuania as part of a NATO mission to deter Russia.

Ultimately, the report turned out to be false. Moscow denied being involved in any disinformation campaign aimed at discrediting troops, but the incident was widely viewed as an attempt to sow divisions among the allies. Moscow is flexing its conventional might, too, sending military forces for its own exercises along its western border with Europe and also to Syria and eastern Ukraine.

Additionally, Russia is building up its nuclear arsenal and cyberwarfare prowess in what U.S. military officials call an attempt to prove its relevance after years of economic decline and retrenchment.

In response, the Pentagon has stepped up training rotations and exercises on the territory of newer NATO allies in the east, including along a narrow 60-mile-wide stretch of rolling Polish farmland near the Lithuanian border northeast of here called the Suwalki Gap.

The corridor is sandwiched between the heavily militarized Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and Moscow’s ally, Belarus, and is considered NATO’s weak spot on its eastern flank.

In the unlikely event of a land war, U.S. and allied officers say, the region is where Russia or its proxies could cut off the Baltic States from the rest of Europe. Since Russia annexed Crimea and supported separatists in eastern Ukraine, Eastern Europe has felt increasingly vulnerable.

“Putin is a bird of prey,” said Piotr Lukasiewicz, a retired Polish army colonel and former Polish ambassador to Afghanistan. “He preys on weak states.”

The Polish government has offered to pay the U.S. up to $2 billion to build a permanent military base in the country, an offer the Trump administration is weighing cautiously.

U.S. forces are, apparently for the first time, flying unarmed Reaper surveillance drones from a Polish base in the country’s northwest.

Nearly 2,000 Special Operations forces from the United States and 10 other NATO nations carried out one of their biggest exercises ever — Trojan Footprint 18 — in Poland and the Baltics this month.

Elsewhere in Europe, Norway agreed two weeks ago to increase the number of U.S. Marines training there regularly, to 700 from 330, drawing an angry protest from Moscow.

The Russian military threat has changed markedly since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Putin has invested heavily in modern infantry forces, tanks and artillery.

Moscow has also increased its constellation of surveillance drones that can identify targets and coordinate strikes launched from other weapons.

Russia’s big war game in Belarus last year — known as Zapad 2017 — involved tens of thousands of troops and raised concerns about accidental conflicts that could be triggered by such exercises, or any incursions into Russian-speaking regions in the Baltics.

The Kremlin firmly rejects any such aims and says NATO is the security threat in Eastern Europe. Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov, the chief of the Russian general staff, in Helsinki, Finland, this month, in part to discuss “the current international security situation in Europe,” a spokesman for Dunford said.

A mobile U.S. command post here in northeastern Poland reflects the Army’s new realities in Eastern Europe.

Soldiers accustomed to operating from large, secure bases in Iraq and Afghanistan now practice disguising their positions with camouflage netting. Troops disperse into smaller groups to simulate avoiding sophisticated surveillance drones that could direct rocket or missile attacks against personnel or command posts. Intelligence analysts track Twitter and other social media for information on their adversaries and local sympathizers.

“We have to be nimble,” said Brig. Gen. Richard R. Coffman, a deputy commander of the Army’s 1st Infantry Division based in Fort Riley who is overseeing much of the U.S. training from a command post in Orzysz.

For Lithuanian officers, many of whom have served alongside Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq, the expanded allied presence is welcome payback for the Baltic contributions to those counterterrorism campaigns of the past decade.

When it comes to Russian aggression, the Lithuanians have long memories. Hanging in the spacious office of Maj. Gen. Vitalijus Vaiksnoras, Lithuania’s second-ranking officer, is a huge painting of the Battle of Orsha — from 1514 — when a force of 30,000 Lithuanians and Poles defeated 80,000 Russians.

“We cannot afford to be weak,” said Vaiksnoras, who studied in San Antonio and at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. “The Russians will take advantage of that.”

Source: http://themercury.com/in-eastern-europe-army-girds-against-russian-might-manipulation/article_c72b7a0c-d32b-5211-a377-c22e4ed0c698.html

The post In eastern Europe, Army girds against Russian might, manipulation first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.