During a Nov. 15 House Armed Services Committee review of a congressional commission’s report assessing the nation’s nuclear forces, fears surfaced that potential adversaries—namely Russia and China—are developing capacities from space, from cyber, from under the sea, from everywhere all at once, to elude U.S. early warning systems and launch a surprise strike.

Chair Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) and ranking member Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) both cited such a scenario as not merely speculative, but as an urgent threat that must be addressed.

“In terms of resiliency and survivability, regardless how many nuclear weapons or what platforms we have, our command-and-control structures and the ability to make them less vulnerable” is vital, Mr. Smith said.

The UN Security Council passed a resolution earlier this week (Wed) that called for a temporary pause to the fighting in Gaza. Tel Aviv said the call for a short peace was a decision "disconnected from reality and holds no significance."

The resolution passed the UN’s most powerful body in a vote of 12-0. The US and UK did not vote for the motion because it did not condemn Hamas. Russia abstained over concerns that the resolution did not make a strong enough call for peace. Moscow’s representative said Washington is responsible for removing the word "ceasefire" from the text.

Webmaster addition: The UN should eject Israel. But they won't.

Think back to those grim days of mid-March 2020. Many things didn't make sense. There were screams about a new virus but no tests available for anyone to find out if we had the dreaded disease or not. The main question in everyone’s mind was, “How can I find out if I have this strange new bug?”

Hold on just a moment there. If there were no tests, how do we know that there was a reason to panic? If there were only a handful of positive tests, how do we know for sure that the virus wasn’t here and spreading months earlier? Maybe what they were calling COVID-19 was here for a year or more.

Was there really any way to know? Sure, we could have done seroprevalence tests on the population, but there were none underway. The one that came out earliest, in May 2020, showed that exposure had already happened by March, a fact which completely undermines the entire cockamamie policy response. The study was brutally attacked.

Why precisely was it mid-March 2020 when all official institutions, including media, not just in the United States but all over the world, decided suddenly to freak out? Why not in January 2020? Why at all?

Indeed, it wasn't even clear what the point of the lockdowns was. Were we trying to make the virus go away through brute force? Early on, then-Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci even told The Washington Post that the virus would be defeated by social distancing alone.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's career appears to be fading to blackface - as his approval ratings, which now suck, have plummeted thanks in no small part to housing and inflation woes fueling a firestorm of disapproval. Despite a safety net agreement with a left-leaning opposition that defers his political reckoning until 2025, the rumblings within his own party suggest Trudeau's leadership is skating on increasingly thin ice.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has in recent days gone on a US media blitz, at a moment American public opinion has become increasingly divided on Israel's military action in Gaza and the soaring civilian death toll.

But in a new interview with CBS, he made a surprising admission - surprising especially given the current scrutiny on him after international institutions, including a panel of UN experts - have accused Israel of conducting "genocide" and "war crimes". Netanyahu acknowledged to CBS that Israel has not been successful in minimizing civilian casualties among civilians.

Webmaster addition: No kidding.

In a new Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) response, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now admits that it recommended COVID-19 vaccines for people who had recovered from COVID-19 despite the fact that CDC subject matter experts didn't have access to the underlying data.

The stunning disclosure came in reply to a FOIA request for information on the CDC’s claim, first made on Oct. 29, 2021, that unvaccinated people with previous infection were five times more likely to get COVID-19 than vaccinated people.

The CDC’s claim was based on a CDC study published in the Nov. 9, 2021, edition of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The conflicts-of-interest section of the study had noted that a number of the study’s authors were being sponsored by pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Merck, Sanofi, and GlaxoSmithKline. At least four of the listed pharmaceutical companies were involved in the manufacturing and sale of COVID-19 vaccines.

Given that the conflict-of-interest disclosures were made at the time the study was first published, the CDC would have been aware of the heightened need to scrutinize its findings. However, this appears not to have happened. Notably, the CDC’s public pronouncement about unvaccinated COVID-19 survivors being five times more likely to get reinfected was made on the same day that the study was released as a preprint. This would have left no time for any review.

A Turkish vessel carrying materials for field hospitals arrived Monday in Egypt's port of El Arish near the Rafah border crossing with the war-ravaged Gaza Strip, a port official said.

It is the first such aid vessel to arrive in Egypt since war broke out on October 7. A Turkish health official told AFP that the vessel was carrying "materials, generators, ambulances to establish eight field hospitals".

The Turkish official added that Ankara had requested Cairo's approval to build the field hospitals in El Arish, which lies about 40 kilometres
from the Rafah border, the only crossing to Gaza not controlled by Israel.

"We received the green light from Egyptian authorities. We will set up these hospitals to the areas shown by the Egyptian authorities," the official said.

A wave of murders, violence, and harassment waged against Palestinians has been unleashed by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) personnel and illegal settlers alike in the occupied West Bank, according to the Time of Israel. Nearly 200 Palestinians have been killed, including 48 children, in the West Bank since Tel Aviv’s massive bombing campaign against the besieged Gaza Strip was launched last month.

B’tselem, the premier Israeli human rights organization, reports that since the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel, 963 Palestinians have been displaced in these rampant attacks. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates the number of people forced from their homes and villages is even higher.

On Friday the UN said that it was no longer able to continue aid deliveries into Gaza as an Israeli fuel blockade of the enclave has led to a widespread communications blackout. The World Health Organization warned that the ending of aid deliveries means the “immediate possibility of starvation” for the 2.3 million people in Gaza.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) announced it was forced to halt aid shipments into Gaza. “The communications network in #Gaza is down because there is NO fuel,” the agency said in a statement on social media. “This makes it impossible to manage or coordinate humanitarian aid convoys.”

Israeli aircraft dropped leaflets on a city in the southern half of the Gaza Strip, instructing Palestinians to flee the area. The evacuation notice suggests that Tel Aviv plans to ramp up its military operation in south Gaza. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant confirmed a ground invasion of the area would happen at some point.

In the first days of Israel’s military operation in Gaza, it instructed Palestinians to flee to the southern half of the besieged enclave. At the time, human rights groups warned the forced displacement of the million people who live in the northern half of Gaza would create a humanitarian crisis. The Norwegian Refugee Council slammed Tel Aviv, calling the evacuation order a “war crime of forcible transfer.”

As Israel’s onslaught in Gaza concludes its sixth week, the northern half of the strip has been decimated. While south Gaza has been bombed, Israel’s main ground operations have been limited to the north.

The Chinese owner of a makeshift biolab discovered in a remote California city has ties to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and a Chinese military program, according to a report by the House Select Subcommittee on the CCP.

Jia Bei Zhu, 62, was arrested in October for distributing misbranded medical devices and lying to the FDA.

The lab, located near Fresno, California (less than 200 miles from where Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Joe Biden on Wednesday), was discovered serendipitously when a local code enforcement officer noticed a garden hose attached to the facility. This led to the discovery of thousands of vials, some labeled in Mandarin, others in an undeciphered code. However, the inaction by the FBI and CDC in this matter, as reported by the committee, is perplexing and concerning.

On Wednesday, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a briefing in a case challenging the prohibition of marijuana users owning firearms out of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

The case, United States v. Erik Matthew Harris, is one of many court cases challenging the federal prohibition on marijuana users possessing guns. Erik Harris was charged and convicted of being a person “who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance” and having a firearm. After the conviction, Harris’s legal team filed an appeal claiming the law was unconstitutional.

The DOJ Criminal Division has now filed its brief to the Circuit Court, and to many, it reads like the 1936 movie, “Reefer Madness.” It is hard to distinguish between propaganda and fact in the government’s briefing. The DOJ seems to conflate hard drugs with a drug that is legal in many states and is used by many medical patients, although it is still federally banned.

Oh, how much the times have changed!

The United States Army is now begging COVID unvaccinated soldiers, who underwent involuntary discharge for their refusal to take the vaccine, to return to service and also permits them to correct their military records!

Yair Lapid, former Israeli prime minister of the Yesh Atid opposition party, this week called for Benjamin Netanyahu to be replaced as premier.

In an interview with Hebrew news outlet Channel 12, Lapid said: "The public has lost faith in Netanyahu… we can’t run an extended [military] operation with a prime minister we do not have faith in."

Auto research firm Cox Automotive - the owner of the closely followed Manheim price index - published new data this week for the first 15 days of November that shows wholesale used-vehicle prices continue to slide and have stumbled into a bear market.

The Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index fell to 206.1, marking a 5.3% decrease from November 2022. There was a 2.3% decline in prices in the first half of November compared to October. After reaching its peak at 257.7 in December 2021, the index has officially entered a bear market with a 20% decline. Last month, the index experienced its most significant drawdown in its history, a trend continuing to gain momentum. 

One Day after the resignation of Anheuser-Busch InBev's US chief marketing officer, attributed to plummeting US sales amid an ongoing boycott of Bud Light following the controversial ad campaign featuring transgender TikTok personality Dylan Mulvaney in April, a new report has surfaced indicating just how much the brewer spent on Mulvaney. 

On Thursday, Steven Crowder posted a video on social media platform X revealing a "never before seen financial statement" that shows Bud Light allegedly paid Mulvaney $185,000 for the early April campaign. 

The United States will not share any Israeli intelligence or elaborate on its own intelligence assessment that Hamas used Gaza's Al Shifa hospital as a command center and possibly as a storage facility, White House spokesman John Kirby said on Thursday.

The United States is confident in an assessment from its own intelligence agencies on Hamas activities in the Gaza facility, Kirby said. He has refused to elaborate or provide details over the past several days.

Webmaster addition: From the same folks who told you Saddam had nuclear weapons!

Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper said to defeat the militant Palestinian group Hamas fully, Iran must be confronted “once and for all.”

“[T]o ultimately defeat Hamas, in the extent that we understand it [in] military terms, you have to prevent their ability to reconstitute their military forces,” Esper said in a Thursday interview on CBS.

“To do that, that means you have to deal with Iran once and for all,” Esper continued. “You have to cut off the supply of arms and money and other support. And that’s the bigger issue that we’re not facing.”

At the beginning of last month, U.S. deputy national security adviser Jonathan Finer said Iran was “broadly complicit” in the attack by Hamas that began its current war with Israel. He noted the U.S. rival’s efforts to train and provide Hamas with arms.

Thomas Hamilton, a spokesperson for the Army Criminal Investigation Division, confirmed that the individuals involved in the incident have been identified. However, he declined to disclose whether any suspects have been apprehended or are currently being pursued.

Here are 15 things you should never have to say to a country:

1. Stop bombing children.

As an Army veteran, Taylor respected orders and deadlines and the chain of command. But he sat under his own boss within a corporate structure that prized moving its cargo as quickly as possible. Bakken crude was big business, and that year, as oil production outstripped pipeline capacity, there had been significant increase in shipping crude by rail.

Taylor’s boss, who had been with him during the inspection, gave him a conflicting order, Taylor would later recall in a court deposition and in interviews with ProPublica; the words marked the start of the seven worst years of his life:

If you keep reporting these track defects, you will no longer have a job at Union Pacific.

The Australian government is moving to ban all physical cash and mandate that all members of the public will require a “digital passport” to take part in society.

The World Economic Forum-infiltrated government is laying the groundwork for the establishment of “cashless societies” as part of a broader scheme to clamp down on public freedoms, according to a news report from Australia.

The government is claiming that the “digital passport” seeks to tackle “bad behavior” from dissenting citizens.

“Essentially it will work the same as a passport,” said the Today Show reporter.

“Australians will be forced to submit 100 points of identification like their driver’s license or their passport when using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.”

Saudi Arabia is detaining worshippers displaying shows of solidarity for Gaza and praying for Palestine at holy sites in Mecca and Medina. 

A British actor and presenter who was on a religious pilgrimage with his family in Mecca said he was detained by soldiers for wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh. 

Islah Abdur-Rahman decided to go on the Islamic pilgrimage in late October, and has raised concerns over the crackdown on any symbols or displays of solidarity for Palestine in Saudi Arabia. 

“I was stopped by four soldiers for wearing a white keffiyeh around my head and a Palestinian coloured tasbih [rosary beads] around my wrist,” he told Middle East Eye.

The latest detentions came after a fifth Palestinian died in Israeli jails since 7 October. On Tuesday, both the Palestinian Prisoners' Club and Addameer Prisoner Support Association reported the death of 33-year-old Abdul Rahman Marei from the village of Qarawa Bani Zeid, near Salfit, in the Megiddo prison in northern Israel.

Marei was the father of four children, the oldest at 11 and the youngest at four years old. His older brother, Mohammad Marei, was killed by Israeli forces in 2005. He was arrested in February, and according to Addameer, he had no health issues at the time of his arrest.

The United States will tighten sanctions on Iran’s oil industry amid the Israel-Hamas conflict aiming to bring exports down by more than 1 million bpd, White House energy security adviser Amos Hochstein told Bloomberg.

“We are going to enforce those sanctions,” Hochstein said. “Those numbers will come down.”

“I think the best anecdote to revenues in Iran is keeping their exports at a lower level, but also to make sure prices are lower,” he said.

Talk about tighter sanctions against Iran’s oil industry intensified in the wake of the latest war in the Middle East with hawks in Congress blaming Iran of helping plan the Hamas attacks and advising pre-emptive action against Tehran before it became more involved in the conflict.

Tehran has denied any involvement in the Hamas attacks on Israel that ignited the war. At the same time it has repeatedly warned that the violence will escalate.

Central banks are stuck, and the way governments handle money is causing trouble. Many people who suggest where to invest don’t have much gold in their plans right now. 

As you can see from the chart, a rise in bond yields typically ends with a financial accident. 

Under heavy bombardment, manhunts and food shortages, 19-year-old Ghassan Jnaynati and his friends set up their own bakery to allow people a space to prepare food with what they still had left.

Israel’s siege of Beirut in 1982 cut the western half of the city of food, water, electricity, and transportation - a situation that has some similarities with what is currently happening in Gaza.

Recalling his experience, however, Jnaynati believes the situation in Gaza is too dire to entirely resemble what happened in Beirut.