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Nothing says ‘Veterans Day’ than military families in a food line

According to reports at Military.com, which as a staple covers the daily lives and military families living on and off bases across the United States, thousands of military families are seeking food assistance due to the government shutdown, which is the longest in American history.

The shutdown reached a breakthrough on Monday night, as the Senate voted on a compromise bill to reopen the government. The measure must go now to the Republican controlled House and faces an uncertain future there.

In the meantime, it’s Veterans Day, which is typically marked by parades and school-based tributes throughout the country, but on military bases, apparently, it is passing amid consternation and stress, as servicemembers and their families face a month without pay.

The impact of the longest government shutdown in history, which as of Monday surpassed 40 days but potentially could reopen this week due to Senate Democrats reaching across the aisle, is hitting military families in every branch, state and pay grade.

Families that live paycheck to paycheck are asking for food, gas and diapers. National Guard and Reserve troops are struggling because canceled drills mean no pay. Nonprofits are shipping emergency groceries to keep cupboards from going empty. A previous Military.com report warned that troops may soon miss paychecks if the shutdown is not resolved.

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Texas Officials Post Hemp Law ‘Checklist’ List To Help Businesses Comply With State Cannabis Rules

Even as Congress is taking steps to reinstitute a federal ban on hemp products containing THC, Texas officials are distributing a new hemp law “checklist” list to help businesses comply with recently enacted state cannabis rules—including age-gating to prevent the sale of intoxicating cannabinoid products to youth.

In addition to holding a license or registration with the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS), hemp businesses must follow a series of new regulatory policies if they sell or deliver consumable hemp products (CHPs), the flyer says.

For each sale or delivery, employees of licensed hemp businesses must inspect a customer’s ID to determine if they’re at least 21 years old and the identification is not expired.

“Failure to comply with these requirements is a violation of state law and regulations,” the notice says, adding that consumable hemp products include CBD and THC oils, gummies and infused food or drink edibles.

“A CHP is a product processed or manufactured for consumption that contains hemp, including food, a drug, a device and a cosmetic,” the department said. “It does not include any consumable hemp product containing a hemp seed, or hemp seed-derived ingredient used in a manner generally recognized as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.”

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Israeli Spy Stayed for Weeks at a Time With Jeffrey Epstein in Manhattan

With the looming end of the U.S. government shutdown amid a deal in the Senate, the House will soon be swearing in Adelita Grijalva to her rightful seat from Arizona, after a historic delay at the hands of Speaker Mike Johnson, taking direction from President Donald Trump, all aimed at blocking her from becoming the final signature needed to force a vote on releasing the Epstein files.

In mid-October, the House Oversight Committee released an interview with former U.S. prosecutor Alex Acosta, who told the panel that—contrary to widespread public reporting—he had never told Steve Bannon that Epstein “belonged to intelligence.” Acosta denied ever discussing Epstein with Bannon, and claimed to have “no knowledge as to whether he was or was not a member of the intelligence community.”

Yet, along with Acosta’s interview, the House panel also released a new cache of documents from Epstein’s estate containing direct evidence of Epstein’s links to Israeli intelligence: Epstein’s personal calendars reveal that a senior Israeli intelligence officer, with personal ties to former CIA Director Leon Panetta, lived at Epstein’s Manhattan apartment for multiple stretches between 2013 and 2016. When cross-referenced with emails leaked from the inbox of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, a portrait emerges of Epstein at the nexus of high-ranking intelligence officials in both the U.S. and Israel.

This is the fourth piece in Drop Site’s ongoing series on Jeffrey Epstein’s role in brokering intelligence deals for Israel.

In the first, we exposed Epstein’s role in brokering a security agreement between Israel and Mongolia. In the second, we identified Epstein’s effort to set up a backchannel between Israel and Russia during the Syria civil war. In the third, we showed Epstein’s role as a key facilitator of a security agreement between Israel and the West African nation of Côte d’Ivoire.

Meanwhile, we’re left wondering why the rest of the media, which has demonstrated no lack of excitement when it comes to the saga of Jeffrey Epstein, has all of a sudden lost its reporting capacity, in the face of reams of publicly available newsworthy documents. A question for editors reading this newsletter: What are you doing?

From a place of competition, we’re glad the media are sitting on their collective hands and we’re proud to have broken this series of stories, which give us a glimpse of a world that is often hidden from public view. But it’s also a topic that would benefit from the collective attention of our national media. Here’s hoping some will join in.

Either way, we’ll continue the work, and are grateful for the support of readers who make it possible. If you haven’t yet upgraded your subscription, please consider doing so.

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UK Crime Agency Backs “Upload Prevention” Plan to Scan Encrypted Messages

Britain’s Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) has decided that privacy needs a chaperone.

The group has launched a campaign urging tech companies to install client-side scanning in encrypted apps, a proposal that would make every private message pass through a local checkpoint before being sent.

The IWF calls it an “upload prevention” system. Critics might call it the end of private communication disguised as a safety feature.

Under the plan, every file or image shared on a messaging app would be checked for sexual abuse material (CSAM).

The database would be maintained by what the IWF describes as a “trusted body.” If a match is found, the upload is blocked before encryption can hide it. The pitch is that nothing leaves the device unless it’s cleared, but that is like claiming a home search is fine as long as the police do not take anything.

As has been shown in Germany, this technology would not only catch criminals. Hashing errors and false positives happen, which means lawful material could be stopped before it ever leaves a phone.

And once the scanning infrastructure is built, there is nothing stopping it from being redirected toward new categories of “harmful” or “illegal” content. The precedent would be set: your phone would no longer be a private space.

Although the IWF is running this show, it has plenty of political muscle cheering it on.

Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips praised the IWF campaign, saying: “It is clear that the British public want greater protections for children online and we are working with technology companies so more can be done to keep children safer. The design choices of platforms cannot be an excuse for failing to respond to the most horrific crimes…If companies don’t comply with the Online Safety Act they will face enforcement from the regulator. Through our action we now have an opportunity to make the online world safer for children, and I urge all technology companies to invest in safeguards so that children’s safety comes first.”

That endorsement matters. It signals that the government is ready to use the already-controversial Online Safety Act to pressure companies into surveillance compliance.

Ofcom, armed with new regulatory powers under that Act, can make “voluntary” ideas mandatory with little more than a memo.

The UK’s approach to online regulation is becoming increasingly invasive. The government recently tried to compel Apple to install a back door into its encrypted iCloud backups under the Investigatory Powers Act. Apple refused and instead pulled its most secure backup option from British users, leaving the country with weaker privacy than nearly anywhere else in the developed world.

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An Inconvenient and Problematic Holiday

Smedley Butler was just referenced, and the Veterans For Peace chapter — the Smedley Butler chapter up here — that was the very first Veterans For Peace outfit that I ever came into contact with. At that point in 2009, as I was speaking out against the Afghan war, I’d spent 10 years in the Marine Corps, time in the State Department. I was a young man [I’ll add arrogant] and this idea of Veterans For Peace was kind of like, who are these loons? Who are these guys that I’ve got to now spend some time with?

And I was just absolutely enthralled with them, endeared with them—not just for their passion or for their experience, but because of their knowledge and because they put into practice, because they put into action what they had gone through. The mission of Veterans For Peace is to educate about the true costs of war. And that’s what Veterans For Peace does. That’s what chapters in Veterans For Peace, like the Smedley Butler chapter in Massachusetts, helped me do.

Because as I was starting to speak out against the war and going through this psychological, psychiatric, spiritual struggle with who I had once been, it was finding resonance, finding familiarity, finding fellowship and comradeship with members of Veterans For Peace that really helped me survive that process.

Easily the Most Profitable, Surely the Most Vicious

I want to go back to Smedley Butler for a bit. I know we have a youth group here, and they may not be familiar with Smedley Butler. He is the most decorated Marine in Marine Corps history. If the rules had been different, he’d be the most decorated service member across the entire US military’s history. Smedley Butler served for 33 years in the Marine Corps. He received two Medals of Honor. If the rules had been different, he would have received a third.

Following his service, he decried war. He broke from the silence that often accompanies [service members], particularly general officers, when they retire. He broke from that and he spoke out against not just war, but America’s imperialism.

I want to take a moment to read a couple of his more poignant or forceful quotes. Smedley Butler’s definition or commentary on war was that:

War is a racket. It has always been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

He spoke about his own career, his own service, what he actually did. And I’m going to read the longer quote here because I think it’s very important as we are on the verge of war in Venezuela, and I think a broader war possibly throughout Central and South America to achieve the Trump administration’s grand strategy of consolidation of control of the hemisphere.

Of his own career, Major General Butler said:

I spent 33 years and four months in active military service. And during that period, I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico, and especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of a half dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902 to 1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interest in 1916. I helped make Honduras ripe for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927, I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do is operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

You recognize his storyline, what he’s sharing there about what he actually was doing as a gangster for capitalism, as he described his military service. Juxtapose that with not just this administration, but going back decades, American administrations and their role, their intervention, their interference in Latin America. And you can see why — and I say this to the youth group that’s here — you can see why people like me, people like Dean, your teachers, we bang on about learning about history. As Mark Twain said, history may not repeat itself, but it certainly does rhyme.

Smedley Butler’s Medals of Honor—he received one for his action in Mexico, one for his action in Haiti. And again, if the rules had been different, he would have received a third one for his actions in China. And I wonder how many Americans know that 100 years ago or 110 years ago, we had men winning medals of honor for military action in Mexico or in China, let alone the rest of the [world].

I wanted to take that time to share about Smedley Butler because he is so instructive, not just his words that accurately describe American imperialism and American military service, but because it’s not distant, it’s not removed. This is congruent. This is a continuous line of history.

When I was [a kid] in the 80s, when I was the age of you guys in the youth group here, we [the US] were in Central America. Constantly there was this idea, this story about American troops may be going to [Central] America. American troops may be going to help in El Salvador or to maybe go to war in Nicaragua. And all the storylines were the same. Well, if we don’t do something to stop the communists in Nicaragua, then they’re going to take Guatemala next and they’re going to take Mexico after that. And next thing you know—I mean, it’s all the same storyline that gets repeated over and over again.

And so here we are now with this administration, of course, what looks like on the verge of carrying out military operations to overthrow the Venezuelan government while murdering people in speedboats, extrajudicially, unconstitutionally, and of course, threatening the rest of Latin America. We saw the news last week. The American government is making plans for military action in Mexico. So, 111 years after Smedley Butler receives his medal of honor in Mexico, we have troops lining up to [once again] do the same.

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Dick Cheney’s ghost has a playbook for war in Venezuela

Former Vice President Richard Cheney, who died a few days ago at the age of 84, gave a speech to a convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in August 2002 in which the most noteworthy line was, “There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.”

The speech was essentially the kickoff of the intense campaign by the George W. Bush administration to sell a war in Iraq, which it would launch the following March. The campaign had to be intense, because it was selling a war of aggression — the first major offensive war that the United States would initiate in over a century. That war will forever be a major part of Cheney’s legacy.

The Donald Trump administration’s escalation of confrontation with Venezuela displays disturbing parallels with the run-up to the Iraq War. In some respects where the stories appear to differ, the circumstances involving Trump and Venezuela are even more alarming than was the case with Iraq.

One similarity involves corruption of the relationship between intelligence and policy. Instead of policymakers using intelligence as an input to their decisions, they have tried to use scraps of intelligence publicly to make a case for a predetermined policy. This part of the story of the Iraq War I have recounted in detail elsewhere.

Cheney’s speech to the VFW preceded and in effect pre-empted work by the intelligence community on a classified estimate, which would become notorious in its own right, about Iraqi weapons programs. When Bob Graham, who died last year and in 2002 was chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, became one of the few members of Congress to bother to read that estimate, he was so taken aback by how far short the intelligence community’s judgments were from what the administration was saying publicly that he voted against the resolution authorizing the war.

The Trump administration is using the same tactic of preemptive messaging from the top, regardless of what the intelligence agencies may be saying about Venezuela, that the Bush administration used regarding Iraq. Trump’s declarations about the regime of Nicolás Maduro have a definitive tone similar to Cheney’s “no doubt” formulation about Iraqi weapons programs.

Besides weapons of mass destruction, the other big issue that the Bush administration attempted to pin on Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime — capitalizing on the American public’s furor over terrorism in the wake of the 9/11 attacks — was a supposed “alliance” between the Iraqi regime and al-Qaeda. No such alliance existed, and the administration’s assertions on that subject were contrary to the intelligence community’s judgments.

The parallel with the current situation regarding Venezuela is especially clear, given the Trump administration’s assertions about the relationship between Maduro’s regime and certain gangs or drug cartels, which the administration equates with terrorist groups. Trump has declared that the gang most often mentioned, Tren de Aragua, is “operating under the control of” Maduro. This assertion is contradicted by the intelligence community’s judgments, as incorporated in a memorandum that is now available in redacted form.

The Bush administration not only disregarded intelligence judgments that did not support its case for war but also actively tried to discredit those judgments, and Cheney’s office was a part of this. For example, the policymakers tried to make life difficult for a former ambassador, Joseph Wilson, who, as a result of field research he performed for the intelligence community, was able to refute an administration assertion about Iraq buying uranium in Africa. The difficulties imposed on Wilson involved the career-ending outing of his wife, who was an intelligence officer under cover. Cheney aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby was convicted and sentenced to prison for obstructing justice and lying under oath in connection with that affair.

Cheney unsuccessfully lobbied President Bush to pardon Libby. But in a further connection to the present, Trump pardoned Libby in 2018.

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3I/ATLAS Radio Signal Detections Offer New Confirmation of What Many Astronomers Have Been Saying for Months

New radio detections from the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS have added to a growing number of observations that leave little question about the object’s natural origin.

The new data arrives amid ongoing speculation about whether the object’s odd trajectory and other unusual qualities could suggest it is of artificial origin, a theory that conflicts with the abundance of evidence presently obtained about the comet.

Collected by the MeerKAT radio telescope, the recent radio observations reveal distinctive hydroxyl absorption lines, which astronomers point to as only further solid evidence of cometary activity.

Lending additional clarification to the ongoing debate over the mysterious object and its unique natural properties, the new findings also help to dampen renewed interest in its possible technological origins generated in recent days, following the object’s apparent display of non-gravitational acceleration during its closest approach to the Sun last month.

Comprised of an array of radio telescopes in the Northern Cape province of South Africa, MeerKAT made its recent detections on October 24, according to the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory.

The observations revealed OH absorption at 1665 and 1667 MHz, which refers to the process astronomers use involving the detection of the hydroxyl radical (OH) molecule, which absorbs very specific radio or infrared frequencies from background sources. This results in a “dip” that astronomers identify as an absorption line in the observed spectrum.

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Satellite Communications Breakthrough Could Pave the Way Toward ‘Quantum Energy’

Researchers at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) have developed a new method for sending once-impossible Earth-to-space quantum light transmissions, which could enable ultra-secure satellite communications in the future.

The technology produces a beam of entangled light particles, a feat previously achieved only in the space-to-ground direction. The UTS team revealed their advances in a paper recently published in Physical Review Research.

Quantum Communications

China has been operating space-based quantum communications for almost a decade, beginning with the Micius satellite in 2016. Subsequently, the Jinan01 satellite, launched this year, established a 12,900-kilometer quantum link connecting China to South Africa.

“Current quantum satellites create entangled pairs in space and then send each half of the pair down to two places on Earth – called a ‘downlink, ‘” said co-author Professor Alexander Solntsev. “It’s mostly used for cryptography, where only a few photons (particles of light) are needed to generate a secret key.”

In previous estimates, scientists believed that moving in the opposite direction would be impossible, as signal loss, interference, and scattering would degrade the uplink. Despite these issues, ground station transmitters have many advantages over satellite-based ones. They have easier access to power, enabling them to produce stronger signals while also being far easier to maintain. 

By developing uplink technology, the researchers believe it will allow satellite-connected quantum computer networks, pushing them to overcome the challenges involved. Their first step was to create a testable concept that addressed the interference issues, which they did.

“The idea is to fire two single particles of light from separate ground stations to a satellite orbiting 500 km above Earth, travelling at about 20,000 km per hour, so that they meet so perfectly as to undergo quantum interference,” said co-author Professor Simon Devitt. “Is this even possible?”

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A psychedelic tour of Earth’s ecosystems – from the desert to Siberia

Every mind-bending molecule in nature has an evolutionary origin; a defence against being eaten, a lure for pollinators, or perhaps a happy biochemical accident. Though they seem extraordinary, life has evolved psychedelic molecules that alter consciousness across almost every ecosystem.

Let’s take a tour of our surprisingly psychedelic planet.

The tropical rainforests hum with chemical diversity. Among the 10,000 tree species living in the Amazon are several which produce dimethyltryptamine (DMT), the molecule that makes psychedelic brew ayahuasca so powerful. DMT is a naturally occurring tryptamine molecule, which derives from the same chemical building block that gives us serotonin and melatonin, chemical messengers that change our mood and help us sleep.

One of these tree species, the Psychotria viridis, or chacruna, is a small understory tree from the plant family that also gives us coffee. Other DMT-producing species include yopo (Anadenanthera peregrina), a tree native to the Amazon that is also found in the Caribbean. Yopo is in the legume family, a close relative of beans, chickpeas and lentils. Scientists aren’t sure why some species in the same family develop psychedelic compounds while others don’t.

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“We May Have To Evacuate Tehran”: Iranian President’s Remarks Stun Amid Water Crisis

Coming off a very ‘hot’ geopolitical summer which saw Israel and the US attack Tehran and the Islamic Republic’s nuclear energy facilities, Iran is now facing yet another immensely threatening crisis amid historic drought: lack of water for the population of 90+ million.

Rainfall has been at record lows, causing reservoirs to be nearly empty, in an already arid Middle East climate. The situation has grown so acute that President Masoud Pezeshkian has warned that if the drought persists for another month, Tehran’s water would have to be rationed. But this appears to be happening currently, as no rain is expected for at least the next ten days.

Already Iranians are being urged to conserve water and only use what’s available for the most pressing needs. Pezeshkian has actually said something stunning and unprecedented on Monday, though some are describing it as obvious hyperbole: 

“If rationing doesn’t work,” Pezeshkian said, “we may have to evacuate Tehran.“

The alarming statement resulted in an avalanche of criticism in Iranian media, also with former Tehran mayor Gholamhossein Karbaschi dismissing the idea as “a joke” and saying that “evacuating Tehran makes no sense at all”.

Some regional analysts and officials report an over 90% decrease in rainfall compared with last year. The NY Times summarizes of how dire the situation is:

Iran’s officials have begun rationing water in the capital, Tehran, amid a drought so severe that the president has warned the capital may need to be evacuated.

The country is facing the worst drought in six decades, and major dams are at critically low levels. Water authorities this week said the main dams feeding Tehran, on which more than 10 million people depend, were at 5 percent capacity.

On Sunday, the spokesman for Iran’s water industry, Isa Bozorgzadeh, told reporters that water pressure would be lowered from midnight until the morning “so that we can both reduce urban leakage and create an opportunity for city reservoirs to refill.”

People have in some cases taken to TikTok and other social media to show that faucets in their homes have stopped producing water for hours at a time.

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