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Senate Skeptics Are Right: End Missile Sales To Saudi Arabia

In response to the proposed sale of U.S. missiles to Saudi Arabia, Senators Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders are leading a bipartisan effort to oppose the sale. This is still a fight of David and Goliath, as Congress has never successfully stopped an arms sale. It’s time for that to change.

While President Biden has pledged to end support for “offensive operations,” U.S. support for Saudi Arabia has continued under the guise of defense. There have been advances, namely a halt on new SDB smart-bomb sales. But the U.S. has relabeled, not halted, the support, which could end Saudi involvement in the Yemeni war altogether. The U.S. continues logistical support for Saudi warplanes and helicopters, the chief means through which the Saudis conduct their offensives.

Saudi Arabia’s territorial integrity isn’t threatened. The country is actively engaged in an offensive war of its own choosing, and the U.S. tipping the scales in Saudi Arabia’s favor just perpetuates that war. U.S. neutrality, by contrast, would bring Yemen closer to a negotiated peace. As Saudi Arabia has been forced to deal with diminished U.S. support since April, it has begun brandishing diplomacy instead of bombs.

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A Peek Inside Anom, the Phone Company Secretly Used in an FBI Honeypot

A video shows a row of jet black phones laying side by side on a wooden table. A white cable extrudes from each phone, loops on itself up to the table, and connects with a mess of other cables before linking with a nearby desktop computer. The camera pans to the right, revealing a cheap looking keyboard and more phones. There are maybe around 15 in all.

The person filming the video stretches out their hand and touches one of the devices, as if to show off their handiwork. They turn around and show a second table with another 15 phones plugged into another computer. A small bonsai tree sits at the top edge of the desk.

Finally, the video shows stacks and stacks of boxes, positioned one on top of the other, ready to send the products out.

This is a peek inside Anom, an encrypted phone company that, unbeknownst to its staff, secretly sent a copy of every message on the phones to the FBI and Australian police. Anom’s clients were members of hundreds of different organized crime groups globally, according to court records. This particular video was filmed by an Anom seller who loaded phones with the company’s custom software to then mail out to customers.

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Australian Police Arrest 3 Teens for Allegedly Fleeing CCP Virus Quarantine Facility

Australian police have arrested three teenagers on Wednesday who allegedly broke out of a CCP virus quarantine facility earlier that morning, authorities said.

The teens, aged 15, 16, and 17, all tested negative for COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. The trio was asked to quarantine at the Center of National Resilience at Howards Springs after being in close contact with one or more people who recently had tested positive, Sky News reported.

“The health risk to the community was very low, so that does give cause for comfort,” Northern Territory Chief Minister Michael Gunner said, referring to the trio testing negative.

Northern Territory Police Commissioner Jamie Chalker said the teenagers, at about 4:40 a.m. local time on Wednesday, allegedly climbed over a fence at the quarantine facility near Darwin in the Northern Territory.

The center is an open-air facility and one of Australia’s main quarantine centers for people returning to the country. The facility was recently also used to house people who tested positive for the CCP virus in Katherine, a town in Australia where officials said an outbreak of COVID-19 erupted last month.

Chalker said police took the trio into custody after officers chased them on foot. They are currently being questioned but it appears they have not been in close contact with the broader public.

The commissioner said that CCTV coverage at the facility will likely be increased for future incidents, ABC News reported. People who attempt to breach a quarantine order in Australia can be fined up to A$5,024 ($3,586).

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CIA Files Say Staffers Committed Sex Crimes Involving Children. They Weren’t Prosecuted.

Over the past 14 years, the Central Intelligence Agency has secretly amassed credible evidence that at least 10 of its employees and contractors committed sexual crimes involving children.

Though most of these cases were referred to US attorneys for prosecution, only one of the individuals was ever charged with a crime. Prosecutors sent the rest of the cases back to the CIA to handle internally, meaning few faced any consequences beyond the possible loss of their jobs and security clearances. That marks a striking deviation from how sex crimes involving children have been handled at other federal agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security and the Drug Enforcement Administration. CIA insiders say the agency resists prosecution of its staff for fear the cases will reveal state secrets.

The revelations are contained in hundreds of internal agency reports obtained by BuzzFeed News through Freedom of Information Act lawsuits.

One employee had sexual contact with a 2-year-old and a 6-year-old. He was fired. A second employee purchased three sexually explicit videos of young girls, filmed by their mothers. He resigned. A third employee estimated that he had viewed up to 1,400 sexually abusive images of children while on agency assignments. The records do not say what action, if any, the CIA took against him. A contractor who arranged for sex with an undercover FBI agent posing as a child had his contract revoked.

Only one of the individuals cited in these documents was charged with a crime. In that case, as in the only previously known case of a CIA staffer being charged with child sexual crimes, the employee was also under investigation for mishandling classified material.

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WSU amplifies claim that farmer’s markets, food charity are ‘white supremacy’ in action

Washington State University is amplifying claims that farmer’s markets and food charities are examples of “white supremacy” and “white dominant culture.” It has nothing to do with helping farmers thrive. This is about creating left-wing social justice activists.

The Agriculture Program Coordinator for WSU’s San Juan County Extension Ag Program promoted a webinar event titled, “Examining Whiteness in Food Systems.” During the hour-long presentation, attendees learned that “white supremacy culture” creates food insecurity by “center[ing] whiteness across the food system.”

The materials claim that “whiteness defines foods as either good or bad” and that farmer’s markets are merely white spaces.

This webinar is the latest example of a critical race theory lens framing noncontroversial issues as racist. And given WSU operates a 4-H program, it’s worth wondering how much of this will eventually get in front of young kids.

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Jan 6 Chairman Bennie Thompson says using the 5th Amendment implies guilt

Representative Bennie Thompson, who is the chairman of the January 6 committee in the US House of Representatives, said on Thursday that when a defendant uses their right to remain silent under the 5th Amendment, “in some instances, that says you are part and parcel guilty to what occurred.”

Thompson made the remarks to Rachel Maddow, who said it was “a fascinating pivot point in this investigation.” Thompson’s belief that a defendant’s use of their 5th Amendment rights infers guilt upon that person is not upheld by the Supreme Court.

In Griffin v. California in 1965, the Supreme Court upheld that if a defendant uses their 5th Amendment right to not incriminate themselves, neither the state, nor judge, may use the use of that right to tell the jury that silence is evidence of guilt.

Thompson, from his position as chairman of the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s special committee on the events of January 6th, has no basis to make this claim and this claim could indicate that the committee is already biased against those they have subpoenaed in their case. Pelosi alone appointed all members of the committee without input from the minority leader Kevin McCarthy.

Thompson made the remarks as the committee has issued subpoenas to more and more people who the committee believes is responsible for what they have termed an “insurrection” on January 6, when some Trump supporters left a rally at the ellipse in Washington, DC, and went to the Capitol.

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As Gov’t Demands Our Trust, Here Are Multiple Examples of The State Endangering Public Health

Despite some of the tireless coverage from those of us in the independent media over the years, there still seems to be a contingent of holdouts clung to the idea that their own government would not intentionally put the well being of its citizens at risk. Particularly with regard to the closing out of 2020, it seemed no better a time to provide some historical context to the contrary.

We will begin with example from the prohibition era of the previous century, in 1928. The United States government in an attempt to act as the sole arbiter of morality took it upon themselves to defy the basic human right of self ownership and prohibited the consumption of alcohol nationally. Naturally, this was not received well by millions of individuals who believed it was their inherent right to decide what they could and could not ingest in their own bodies.

As prohibition often does, this led to a boon in black market industry of speakeasies and bootleg alcohol manufacturing and distribution. Of course the all powerful government, ever influenced by its messiah complex did not respond well to this act of defiance. How dare the peasantry exercise their rights as free thinking individuals? Thusly the government took the only next reasonable step it could think of — to poison its own citizens.

That’s right, rather than come to the logical conclusion that people should be allowed to decide what’s best for them, the federal government decided in an ill-fated attempt to enforce compliance of state-mandated moral guidelines to “save people from themselves”, to contaminate millions of barrels of alcohol with poison to dissuade people from drinking it.

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Space Force general says US satellites are attacked on daily basis

A Space Force general said American satellites are attacked by adversaries every day in ways that flirt with “acts of war,” and the US will lose a space arms race if it doesn’t take action.

China and Russia regularly strike US satellites with lasers, radiofrequency jammers, and cyber attacks, Gen. David Thompson told The Washington Post in an op-ed published Tuesday.

“The threats are really growing and expanding every single day. And it’s really an evolution of activity that’s been happening for a long time,” said Gen. Thompson, Vice Chief of Space Operations in the new military branch.

“We’re really at a point now where there’s a whole host of ways that our space systems can be threatened.”

Thompson disclosed a 2019 incident when a Russian satellite flew so close to a US “national security satellite” that authorities believed it could be an offensive. But the spacecraft backed away and tested a projectile, according to the op-ed.

“It maneuvered close, it maneuvered dangerously, it maneuvered threateningly so that they were coming close enough that there was a concern of collision,” he reportedly said. “So clearly, the Russians were sending us a message.”

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