The omnibus spending bill, which includes a bevy of pork-barrel spending items, was coupled with a new $900 billion COVID-19 relief bill. Together, they serve as the most recent example of congressional sausage-making at its worst.
USA
Drug Trafficking: The Dirtiest Little Secret
Here is the answer: Law enforcement corruption. The question? Why are we continuing to fight and lose the “War on Drugs,” proclaimed by President Nixon, almost fifty years ago, in June 1971?
Think about the U.S. forces arrayed against Mexican drug cartels: DEA, FBI, Homeland Security, state police forces, county sheriffs, municipal police forces, even the postal service. We have established High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area task forces with their own regional fusion centers.
The United States is incapable of defeating Mexican cartels? We can transport armored and special operations forces halfway around the world to the Middle East and Southwest Asia, and defeat both conventional and irregular military forces — but we cannot secure our southern border and stop the poisoning of our own population?
Why Biden won’t stand up to the Chinese menace
THE first half of 2020 clarified China’s malign diplomacy. The second half clarified China’s espionage. The trouble is: the US Democratic Party is most exposed, so is reluctant to shift from deference. Much will depend on how the conservative minority in journalism and Congress can leverage the latest revelations.
In June, the US National Security Adviser (Robert C O’Brien) launched a series of cross-departmental revelations: ‘The [Chinese Communist] Party is collecting your most intimate data – your words, your actions, your purchases, your whereabouts, your health records, your social media posts, your texts, and mapping your network of friends, family, and acquaintances.’ The collectors include state-subsidised telecoms, computer hardware and software, and medical services such as Huawei servers and genetic tests.
Racial Justice Activists Push Biden to Give Them Administration Posts
The same people who backed and took part in protests in cities across the United States in the name of racial justice are now pressuring President-elect Joe Biden to reward them for their votes with positions in his administration.
“There was a mandate,” Gladys Limón, executive director of California Environmental Justice Alliance, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “This is a litmus test.”
Paul Whelan: Grim life of US ‘spy’ in Russian labour camp
Convicted as an American spy, Paul Whelan is preparing to spend Christmas in a Russian labour camp as talks to negotiate his release have faltered.
In his first detailed interview since his arrest, Mr Whelan has described life locked up alongside murderers and thieves as a “very, very grim existence” and called on his four governments to do more to get him out.
The former US Marine has always insisted he is innocent, describing himself as a hostage of “slimy” Russian politics and a “sham” trial.
Beijing ransacked data as US sources went Dark in China
In early 2013, as Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping prepared to assume the Chinese presidency, very few people in the West had any idea what kind of leader he was. In January of that year, the New York Times’ Nick Kristof, an experienced China correspondent, wrote that Xi “will spearhead a resurgence of economic reform, and probably some political easing as well.”
It was a radically mistaken assessment. But even inside the U.S. government, knowledge of China—and its intensions—was at a low point. During the 2000s, U.S. intelligence had operated with relative confidence against Beijing. But during China’s biggest political transition in decades, American officials were looking through an increasingly opaque glass.
China ‘Struck Paydirt’ With Alleged Spy Who Got Close to US Politicians
The Chinese regime “struck paydirt” when one of its alleged spies got close to U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), said Bill Gertz, who is the national security correspondent for The Washington Times and author of the book “Deceiving the Sky: Inside Communist China’s Drive for Global Supremacy.”
The alleged Chinese spy, Fang Fang, was the subject of an investigative Axios report detailing how she allegedly posed as a U.S. university student to focus on up-and-coming U.S. officials in the San Francisco Bay Area between 2011 and 2015. She was allegedly working for the Ministry of State Security, China’s chief intelligence agency.
Lockerbie bombing: Alleged bomb-maker charged on 32nd anniversary of attack
The US has announced charges against a Libyan suspected of making the bomb that blew up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.
Abu Agila Mohammad Masud has been charged with terrorism-related crimes, Attorney General William Barr said on Monday, 32 years on from the atrocity.
The deadly bomb attack on the Boeing 747 killed 270 people, including 190 American citizens.
Prosecutors will seek the extradition of Mr Masud to stand trial in the US.
Every single US state is being advised to consider ethnic minorities as critical groups for vaccination with HALF prioritizing black and Hispanic residents over white
These include New Mexico, where collaboration with Native Americans is being prioritized; California, which has committed to ensuring black and Hispanic people have greater access to the vaccine; and Oregon, where health officials have said that ethnic minorities with have ‘equitable access’ to the shot.
Rep. Debbie Dingell Demands Facebook Remove Criticism of Islam
The Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has always had friends in high places, and on Wednesday it celebrated another, announcing that it had “thanked Congresswoman Debbie Dingell (D-MI) – and the 29 congressional colleagues that joined her – in urging Facebook to take immediate action to eliminate anti-Muslim bigotry from that social media platform.” CAIR’s longtime spokesman Ibrahim “Honest Ibe” Hooper noted proudly that it was “one of several organizations named by Rep. Dingell in her press release announcing the letter.”
Chairman of Disney for Ambassador to China? There couldn’t be a worse candidate.
Bob Iger, executive chairman of Disney, is reportedly “at the top of President-elect Joe Biden’s wish list” for several key ambassadorship positions, including the U.S. mission in China.
Such a pick would be an inversion of norms on Biden’s part. The allotment of ambassadorships in recent years has followed an unspoken set of rules: “difficult” assignments such as Russia or Saudi Arabia are given to career diplomats and political appointees with relevant experience, while cushy positions in places like Europe or New Zealand are given as rewards to prominent financial backers and bundlers.
‘Trump is crazy’ says Batshit Crazy Hezbollah
‘Trump is crazy’: Hezbollah sees threat in US president’s final days
For the past four years, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has fought a war in Syria, supported Iraqi forces and stage-managed the politics of its homeland, all the while trying to avoid facing off with Israel. Yet its exhausted leaders fear the last gasps of Donald Trump’s presidency could deliver threats that eclipse everything else.
In the organisation’s heartland, Hezbollah members are watching the clock – and the skies. Israeli jets have been streaking overhead for more than a month, and over the past few weeks the frequency of flights has sharply increased, as has security in Beirut’s southern suburbs, the nerve centre of the region’s most powerful militant group.
Conrad Black: America in a shambles
Canada’s 4,000-mile border with the world’s most powerful country, what Prime Minister W.L. McKenzie King described to General Charles de Gaulle in 1944 as “an overwhelming contiguity,” has generally been a veritable blessing. To the best of my research, Canada is the only country in the world that has had land borders with other countries for over 200 years that has not been invaded in that time (I consider the U.S. Civil War an invasion of the Union). And on the two prior occasions when we were invaded, the Americans were in the first case conducting what is generally reckoned to be a just revolution against oppressive colonization (though it is massively romanticized and George III hideously defamed in American mythology). The second invasion, the War of 1812, was an American response to outrageous provocations by the British. We only survived that brush with pre-national extinction because of the loyalty of the French-Canadians, the generalship of Isaac Brock and the fortuitous incompetence as a war leader of President James Madison, one of history’s great lawgivers, as the chief author of the Constitution of the United States, though he was.
Mike Pompeo: ‘We can say pretty clearly’ Russia was behind hack of US agencies
Mike Pompeo has become the first member of the Trump administration to blame Russia for wide-ranging hacks of US government agencies and private companies.
“This was a very significant effort,” the secretary of state told rightwing talk radio host Mark Levin on Friday night. “I think it’s the case that now we can say pretty clearly that it was the Russians that engaged in this activity.”
On Saturday, Pompeo announced the closure of two US consulates in Russia at which activity had already been curtailed, due to Covid-19.
U.S. charges China-based Zoom employee for disrupting Tiananmen commemoration event
A China-based Zoom executive has been charged by the Justice Department with disrupting video meetings that commemorated the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, Reuters reports.
Why it matters: This case could shake the foundations of U.S. tech cooperation with China. Researchers and U.S. government officials have warned of the possibility that the Chinese government might require China-based employees to hand over private company data to Beijing. This indictment indicates that those fears are, in fact, a reality.