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President Donald Trump at a press conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington on Oct. 2, 2019. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

 

There has been heavy press coverage about recent comments by President Donald Trump to the effect that we are at war over the impeachment proceedings related to the Ukraine debacle. The president is both right and wrong in making that statement.

He is correct that the Democrats have transitioned into a full “war” footing and have moved past all limits set by truth and justice and are using the Ukraine phone call as an excuse. They are foisting the whole impeachment discussion on the American people and no longer care what they have to do or say to try to get their way.

Read the transcript of the telephone conversation and it’s very hard to argue anything illegal was done. Any intellectually honest person with even a basic understanding of the facts can see the president has done nothing illegal.

New information on the whistleblower that kicked off the uproar over the conversation between the president of the United States and the president of Ukraine is being uncovered almost daily. We have now learned that the so-called whistleblower is in fact a CIA officer who was assigned to the White House.

In a strange twist, we also learned that the CIA secretly changed the whistleblower rules so that someone could be a whistleblower without firsthand knowledge of the incident in question. Previously, firsthand knowledge was an absolute requirement. The timing of the unprecedented secret change of rules at the CIA is extraordinarily interesting as well. This change in rules took place in August, just in time for the whistleblower to come forward with his report, even though he didn’t have firsthand information.

Those changes in the rules couldn’t have been done without the knowledge and agreement of the CIA leadership, and Trump needs to take a close look at the integrity of current CIA Director Gina Haspel and her leadership team. Which brings us to where Trump is wrong about the war being about the current impeachment hearings.

The president is mistaken in his estimation of the problem. It is much larger. Something I have often written about is the leadership at the FBI, Department of Justice (DOJ), and CIA specifically. At a recent closed-door event with U.S. diplomats in New York, Trump was recorded stating that “we’re at war” over impeachment caused by a “sick” whistleblower who is “almost a spy.”

If the rules were indeed changed by the CIA leadership in order to facilitate bringing the whistleblower forward, then it was done with planning and forethought, and the whistleblower was in fact a spy planted in the White House by the CIA. In other words, it was done on purpose to set the president up. There are even reports that someone else wrote the complaint for the whistleblower, which is solid evidence of a conspiracy.

While much of this remains to be seen, it certainly appears at this point that the whole Russia collusion hoax was created and implemented by the leadership at the FBI and DOJ, likely with support of the CIA. Now we’re faced with what is shaping up to be known as the Ukraine hoax, which appears to have been created and implemented by the leadership at the CIA.

At the very least, this can only be described as worse than a war over impeachment. At worst, we have an organized coup attempt by senior government officials, which may in fact approach the level of treason.

The Ukraine hoax emerged immediately after the allegation of Russian collusion was ended with the delivery of the Mueller Report. Democrats, the mainstream media, and the potentially traitorous elements within the intelligence community seemed to have acted at a furious pace to come up with this new scenario to oust Trump.

It’s getting more desperate and is taking place at a rapid-fire pace. This is for a simple and self-serving reason: the FISA investigation. It appears there will be a large number of indictments against senior FBI and DOJ officials who appear to have been trying to frame Trump.

Everyone in Washington, Republicans and Democrats alike, the press and senior government officials, all know these indictments are coming. Once they hit, and the deep corruption within the Democratic ranks shows, they will be horrifically damaged in the upcoming 2020 elections.

The Democrats really only have one defense, and that is to get rid of Trump before the disaster befalls them.

Short of that, they need to badly smear the president to reduce the impact of the likely indictments against Democratic operatives. They’re playing their final cards, which is also a full-court press to discredit U.S. Attorney General William Barr in advance of the indictments. This is just the beginning, and it’s not going to stop.

Brad Johnson is a retired CIA senior operations officer and a former chief of station. He is president of Americans for Intelligence Reform.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

 

 

 

Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko and U.S. President Donald Trump wait for a meeting at the Palace Hotel during the 72nd United Nations General Assembly Sept. 21, 2017 in New York City. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)

 

Last month, The Washington Post broke the story that an unidentified person filed a whistleblower complaint against President Donald Trump based on a phone call to Ukraine, during which Trump requested the completion of an investigation started long ago regarding former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

As a retired CIA operations/intelligence officer and swamp-dweller of 25 years, let me lay out what it means and why the complaint really took place.

An aspect that is troubling to anyone that is an honest intellectual or informed reader is that this latest accusation against the president is made from the precise same mold as the completely discredited “Spygate” accusations and Mueller investigation, which we now know falsely claimed the president had colluded with the Russians.

In a very “here we go again” moment, the president was initially accused of making a “promise” to the Ukrainian leader that was very “troubling.” We have since learned it was a request, not a promise, and that request was for the Ukrainian justice system to move forward.

By his own admission, when Joe Biden was still vice president and visiting Ukraine, he insisted that Ukraine fire the prosecutor who was investigating his son in a criminal matter, or else he would block a desperately needed billion-dollar aid package. This seems to be a textbook example of obstruction of justice, albeit in Ukraine.

According to the mainstream media reporting, the implication is, of course, that the president did something that once again constitutes collusion with a foreign power or is in some way illegal or immoral. There is an immediate problem with this story and how it is being covered by the mainstream media.

As we all know, whistleblower is a term for someone on the inside who reports on illegal activity. Here is the rub: Foreign policy is set by the president, and he’s fully within the rights and responsibilities of his office to promise or request of a foreign leader anything he wants.

I doubt we have ever had a U.S. president who hasn’t requested something of a foreign leader. To suggest that there is something inherently wrong with that is misleading at best and an outright lie at worst.

What has been reported specifically is that Trump made a promise that is so troubling that an official from the intelligence community, who was aware of the promise, filed a complaint. The complaint was filed with the appropriate authority, in this case, Inspector General (IG) of the Intelligence Community (IC) Michael Atkinson.

The IG looked at the whistleblower’s report and found it credible enough to forward it to his boss, acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire. Maguire has stated that there are issues with the report and he seeking legal advice before proceeding.

Here is his conundrum: Biden admitted to pressuring Ukraine to fire a prosecutor who happened be investigating his son. Trump requested that the Ukrainian justice system be allowed to continue that investigation. To be clear, by all accounts, Trump didn’t request an outcome of the judicial process, only that it be allowed to continue after it was stopped in its tracks by Biden.

How should Maguire proceed with a “whistleblower” complaint that is about the person seeking justice and not the person who obstructed justice? How is this anything other then a politically motivated hit job by an anti-Trump individual who puts his personal political views above national interests?

Just in case there is anyone who still thinks the IC is a professional nonpolitical structure, let me remind everyone of the 2019 National Intelligence Strategy (NIS), which provides the IC with its strategic guidance for a four-year period and to which all IC agencies contribute. In the most recent NIS, global warming was listed as one of the most serious dangers we face.

At a time when terrorism and aggressive Chinese global ambitions are a real danger, just to name two issues, the IC is worried about a narrative that has been wrong in its predictions for decades. At that moment, the IC and its leadership were proven to be nothing more than political and no longer interested in serious national security concerns.

The very same IC leadership included senior FBI leaders who appear to have attempted to overthrow a legally elected U.S. president and apparently are now in the process of being investigated; indictments are possible. Coming directly from the IC, I have warned the president in earlier opinion pieces that IC leadership can’t and shouldn’t be trusted.

The problem is that, over the past two decades, to get into the leadership pipeline anywhere in the IC, you have to be a liberal. Had I not seen it myself, I would doubt it, too.

The largest factor that makes someone promotable is their current job. Certain choice jobs give experience in areas that are required for promotion. Here’s where the system has been perverted. Who is given what job doesn’t have any protections, so choice jobs are handed out to party loyalists without regard to who is the most qualified.

Those better positions make the person filling them the most promotable; this is exactly how the leadership pipeline is controlled by the left in all of government. When we learn the identity of the “whistleblower,” I bet we will find he or she is someone of the left who had been favorably promoted, putting them in a position to harm the president.

Brad Johnson is a retired CIA senior operations officer and a former chief of station. He is president of Americans for Intelligence Reform.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

 

 

U.S. President Donald Trump (R) and China’s President Xi Jinping (L) along with members of their delegations, hold a dinner meeting at the end of the G20 Leaders’ Summit in Buenos Aires, on December 01, 2018. – US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping had the future of their trade dispute — and broader rivalry between the world’s two top economies — on the menu at a high-stakes dinner Saturday. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

 

In a completely unexpected turn of events, China’s Ministry of Finance recently announced its plan to suspend tariffs on 16 types of U.S. products.

This 180-degree policy shift by Beijing is by no means an accident or change of heart. It’s because of a calculated and hard-nosed trade strategy championed by the experienced negotiator President Donald Trump.

The United States is now clearly winning the standoff with China and, for the first time in modern history, is making progress on trade agreements that are finally beginning to resemble something approaching fair.

Beijing has blinked first and is still reeling as Trump continues to ratchet up the pressure on the Chinese economy. Significantly, and revealing of the Chinese desire to lower trade tensions, some of the exempted items will also be “refundable.” In other words, the Chinese government will reimburse companies for tariffs they’ve already paid on those products.

China also is retroactively reducing some tariffs that it previously imposed, in response to Trump’s economic pressure campaign. In a culture in which saving face is fundamentally important, a reversal of this sort is a difficult step to take for the Chinese government, and an indicator that they’re still struggling to better understand how to deal with Trump.

U.S. officials are also expected to resume trade negotiations with China early next month. Beijing’s tariff capitulation suggests that China’s leaders are feeling the squeeze and growing eager to reach a bilateral trade deal with the White House. In fact, just one day after China’s tariff suspension, the president revealed that our adversary is expected to start purchasing “large amounts” of U.S. agricultural products: another significant about-face on the part of the Chinese.

Of course, Beijing’s recent overtures to Washington are not acts of benevolence, but of desperation. Trump has applied steady pressure on China throughout his presidency, imposing strategic counter-tariffs in retaliation for China’s decades of trade abuses, and has then gradually escalated those tariffs whenever the communist regime has reneged on its previous commitments. China has used the vast profits from unfair trade practices to fund many of its nefarious destabilizing activities and remains the largest long-term national security threat to the United States.

The president’s strategy has been steadily eroding the Chinese government’s confidence in its own economy, with numerous reports suggesting that the regime’s leaders were already expressing concerns about the impact of Trump’s strategic tariffs as far back as August 2018. Their worst fears were quickly realized as China’s decades-long economic expansion started to falter for the first time. In the second quarter of this year, for instance, China posted its slowest GDP growth rate in nearly 30 years.

China is well known to manipulate the economic numbers it publicly reports, and the true state of the Chinese economy is almost certainly far worse than the official data indicate. Even China’s food market has taken a major hit from U.S. tariffs in recent months, with overall food costs increasing by about 10 percent over the past year. The price of pork has risen by a staggering 50 percent over the same time period, although that’s largely due to a shortage caused by an outbreak of African swine fever.

While Trump’s counter-tariffs are most certainly putting immense pressure on Beijing to negotiate a genuinely fair trade deal with the United States, the real knockout punch to Beijing’s aggressive aspirations has been the ongoing economic boom here in the United States, which has taken place despite the so-called trade war.

In contrast to China’s growing economic crisis, the U.S. economy has been steadily expanding for the past two and a half years, creating more than 6 million new jobs since Trump took office. As a result, the U.S. unemployment rate recently hit a 50-year low, and the tight labor market has produced the biggest wage gains for U.S. workers in more than a decade, along with the lowest poverty rates ever recorded among blacks and Hispanics.

China can’t hope to go toe-to-toe with the United States on trade in the face of this stark economic imbalance, and its recent retreat on tariffs is clear evidence that the communist regime is well aware of that fact.

Trump has stated publicly all along that the United States holds all the cards in these negotiations, and once again, he’s been proven right.

Brad Johnson is a retired CIA senior operations officer and a former chief of station. He is president of Americans for Intelligence Reform.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

 

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Friday, 27 September, al-Jazeera Arabic reported that the call for demonstrations against President as-Sisi asked for the people to hit the streets after the Friday prayers.

That has already happened early Friday morning U.S. time.

In the meantime the security services blocked off all the streets and bridges leading to midaan at-tahreer (Cairo’s center plaza which was the focus of the January 2011 Arab Spring demonstrations that brought Mubarrak down). Other areas of the city were also locked down.

This seemed to stifle the demonstrations at first, but then it seemed like the numbers picked up as the day went on as people began to gather in side streets to demonstrate. There were also demonstrations in a number of other cities in Egypt.

Since the only major Arabic news entity reporting on these events is al-Jazeera, which has an anti-President as-Sisi bias, and al-Jazeera’s only video feed are images from participators’ cell phones, It is difficult to judge exactly how extensive these demonstrations are and how numerous the demonstrators. (Note, all western news entities mentioning the demonstrations in Egypt are relying on the accounts coming out of al-Jazeera.)

My gut feeling though, is that it is not as big a deal as were those last Friday. Meaning that the heavy hand, and the lock-down of Cairo, may have succeeded in dampening the protests to some extent–in spite of al-Jazeera’s wishes.

The arrest count from last week’s protest is now at 1900 and includes people from all walks of life. There is no word yet as to the numbers arrested today, although tear gas has been used in some areas. There is some video feed of people burning pictures of as-Sisi. Unlike last week, there seems to be a lot more children and African immigrants participating in these protests.

Talk show host ‘Amru Adeeb reported on his al-hakaya (the Story) show that Muslim Brotherhood members who fled to Turkey have called for the formation of a new group which would be able to get the people out onto the streets to protest the regime. This new group is needed, according to the MB, because the regime has penetrated the previous groups it has formed.

(Note: Since the Egyptian government has declared the MB to be a terrorist group, it has been banned in Egypt. Therefore, they tried to get around that by forming new groups such as al-hasm, and al-murabitoun. Note also that the above-mentioned talk show host ‘Amru Adeeb is reputed to be close to the regime in general, and close to Egyptian intelligence in particular.)

Issues related to the current demonstrations (other than those delineated in previous reporting) include:

–The government’s oppression.

–The never-ending war in the Sinai which the protestors claim the government is intentionally extending so they can use the excuse of “the War on Terror” to keep the country virtually under martial law.

–The “renaissance dam” in Ethiopia which Egyptians fear will cut off the flow of the Nile, Egypt’s only source of water. They blame as-Sisi for signing a protocol with Ethiopia allowing Ethiopia to go ahead with the dam’s construction.

–General corruption in the regime, but more specifically:

–The appointment of as-Sisi’s son, Mahmoud, as the head of Egyptian General Intelligence (EGI). The EGI includes all intelligence functions, foreign and domestic. In U.S. terms it would be like housing the FBI, CIA, DHS, and NSA all in the same agency headed by the same bureaucracy. President as-Sisi appointing his twenty-something son Mahmoud as head of the DGI would be like Donald Trump appointing Ivanka as head of the CIA, NSA, FBI, and DHS all at the same time. Imagine the uproar that would cause.

ANALYSIS: One of the major conundrums for U.S. policy makers with regards to the Middle East, is that in the Islamic Middle East it seems that the only choices for government are either a corrupt Monarchy (such as Saudi Arabia), a corrupt military dictatorship (such as Mubarak, Assad, Saddam, Qadhafi, etc.), or an equally corrupt Islamist regime such as the one Khomeini set up in Iran when the Shah was pulled down, or the MB regime in Egypt that took over when Mubarrak was pulled down.

The military dictatorships tend to become family mafia fiefdoms. We saw that in Saddam’s Iraq as he was grooming his two sons to take over. Syria is in the second generation of a family mafia rule, with both the father and the son appointing their brothers to head up Syria’s intelligence organization.

One of the final straws that broke the Mubarrak camel’s back was Mubarrak grooming one of his sons to take over after him. So, now we see as-Sisi making the same mistake by appointing his “still wet behind the ears” son to head the EGI.

President as-Sisi, on paper, has done a lot for his country. In the foreign policy arena he has developed good relations with virtually every country on the planet from the wealthy oil countries of the Gulf to the great powers of the north: Russia, Japan, China, U.S., and Europe (regardless of their antagonisms towards each other). He has good relations with both Pakistan and India, as well as both Koreas. Egypt, under as-Sisi, is at odds only with the Islamist regimes of Turkey, Iran, and Qatar.
President as-Sisi’s foreign policy successes have led to a massive uptick in foreign investments in Egypt allowing him to beef up the country’s infrastructure. This in turn has led to a roaring economy producing a Chinese-esque 5% annual GDP growth.
The carrot and stick approach as-Sisi has used to keep his people both happy and under control seemed to boost his actual popularity for awhile. However, I believe that the turning point came when he had the constitution changed Putin style allowing him to remain in office until the mid-2030s.
After the dethroning of the MB president Mursi in 2013 the new constitution that was voted in, and signed by as-Sisi after his assuming the office of president in 2014, called for the office of president to be up for election every four years, with a term limit of just two terms, as in the United States. President as-Sisi “won” re-election in 2018 (in an election in which all credible candidates were disqualified), meaning that based on the constitution he would still have to step down in 2022.
But, then (perhaps over-estimating his popularity with the folks) he had the constitution changed to make the presidential term six years, instead of four. Then, because the rules of the game were changed he had a judicial decision made that since he had never had the opportunity to run for a six-year term, he had to be granted that opportunity, i.e. to start all over under the new system with a blank slate.
Translation: When his current four-year term ends in 2022, he will now legally be able to run for one of the new six-year terms beginning in 2022, which would take him until 2028 at which time he could run for a second six-year term taking him to 2034 before he would have to retire—barring any additional changes to the constitution—and you can just imagine how “fair and legitimate” the 2022 and 2028 elections are going to be.
This move towards a Putin-esque “president for life” situation was so blatant that it embarrassed even his staunchest supporters, and no doubt poured fuel on the fire of his critics.
Thus, the appointment of his son to head the EGI may turn out to be the final straw to break the back of as-Sisi’s camel. His carrot and stick policy may have won this current round of Arab Spring 2.0, but my advice to U.S. policy makers is: don’t put all of your chickens in the pot in terms of as-Sisi’s long term survival.
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Barry Webb had a 25-year career as an Arabic translator/analyst for the NSA, and holds two MA degrees in related subject matter. He is currently a senior fellow with Americans for Intelligence Reform at: www.intelreform.org and is the author of “Confessions of an (ex) NSA spy: Why America and its Allies are Losing the War on Terror. His website is: www.barrywebbauthor.com

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) working group III co-chair Jim Skea (2nd L) answers a question during a press conference on a special IPCC report on climate change and land on August 8, 2019 in Geneva. – Humanity faces increasingly painful trade-offs between food security and rising temperatures within decades unless it curbs emissions and stops unsustainable farming and deforestation, a landmark climate assessment said the IPCC. Negotiators from 195 countries on August 8, 2019 finalised the most comprehensive scientific assessment yet of how the land we live off affects climate change, after marathon talks in Geneva. (Photo by FABRICE COFFRINI / AFP) (Photo credit should read FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images)

 

September 18, 2019

A recent report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a draft of which was leaked before publication, states that there needs to be a transformation in food production and land management if we’re to keep global temperatures at “safe” levels.

The report goes on to explain that humans exploit 72 percent of the planet’s ice-free surface to maintain the Earth’s population, and that agriculture, forestry, and other land use produces almost a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions. They predict disastrous results for the entire planet if their measures aren’t adopted.

It’s important to understand what all of this means and implies. A small group of unelected U.N. officials, each of whom has individual political perspectives and goals, are attempting to set a world policy that would completely transform how land is used and how people live and eat.

The list of problems with this concept is long, but it always eventually boils down to that only the United States will be expected to abide by the draconian recommendations, whenever they are finally trotted out.

However, before breaking this down further, let’s take a step back first and look at the general concept of global warming. The theory is that certain specific “greenhouse” gases, which all already naturally exist in the atmosphere in very small amounts, are augmented by human activity. According to the theory, the very slight increase in greenhouse gases introduced by mankind then subsequently causes the Earth’s temperature to go up.

A few facts not publicized in this debate: 99 percent of the Earth’s atmosphere is composed of nitrogen and oxygen; argon makes up about 93 percent of the remaining 1 percent of the Earth’s atmosphere. The remaining .07 of a percent is more than half carbon dioxide, the rest being composed of neon, helium, and krypton, which aren’t designated as greenhouse gases, and methane, nitrous oxide, ozone, chlorofluorocarbons, and hydrofluorocarbons, which are designated as greenhouse gases.+

There’s also a wildcard in the mix, which is water vapor (designated as a greenhouse gas), which tends to vary based on a number of factors and can represent about 1 percent of the atmosphere at sea level.

Everyone freely admits that the amounts of greenhouse gases released by mankind into the mix are much smaller than what already exists naturally, so we’re probably talking about less than 0.0001 of a percent of the atmosphere theorized as being the cause of the destruction of the Earth’s climate. Considering that Earth’s atmosphere naturally varies by much larger amounts than anything done by mankind, it makes the theory of global warming look pretty lame.

That said, the overall man-made global warming theory is actually even more lame. What’s left out by virtually everyone is the single-most-important factor: the sun. The one indisputable factor that affects the temperature of the Earth is the sun. The amount of heat from the sun also varies cyclically and randomly, sometimes by a lot and sometimes by a little, sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly.

There are other major factors in determining the Earth’s temperature, such as ocean currents and tectonic plate shifts. The ever-shifting gases in the atmosphere, the heat from the sun, and the other major factors are so large, and anything done by man is so tiny as to be unmeasurable as a separate factor.

This is why there are no mathematical models that can even approximate how changes in the atmosphere, the sun, the currents, and so on affect each other and predict the resulting changes to the environment. The math is just too complex because the measurements are too difficult and vary from moment to moment, and no one knows how they affect each other.

The real name for this process of changing the environment is terraforming, and it’s an old theory that no one has yet figured out. There are models out there that show what happens if the temperature does go up or down, but not how to make it go up or down—a big difference. When temperatures go up or down, no one knows how to separate out any man-made activities from the natural changes.

All of this complicated mess is hard to discuss purely on the facts, because, let’s face it, the facts are kind of boring. Atmospheric percentages and so on don’t catch the attention of voters or donors. But as a propaganda issue, when facts don’t matter, it’s a thing of beauty, and perfect for the Democratic presidential hopefuls who discuss it often.

It’s an absolutely perfect propaganda issue because of its strong ability to stir emotional values that can be manipulated, and it’s coldly exploited on a daily basis—better than any intelligence influence operation could ever be. Being told you can save the Earth and that the Earth will die without your help, even without any proof or evidence, is perfect for a campaign issue, highly appealing to both voters and donors.

There’s another fabulous positive from this calculated propaganda campaign: control. Revisiting the IPCC, their recommendations focus on cattle and agriculture including, in particular, rice fields. The solutions they discuss are in large part returning agricultural land to its original state by reducing demand for large-scale food production through a change in the worldwide diet and living conditions. The new diet proposed is mostly vegetarian and vegan based on coarse grains, vegetables, nuts, and seeds.

Though not explicitly stated, by my reading, the new sustainable farms will likely be smaller and will have to surround population centers. So left unstated is the fact that the people will all have to be forcibly moved to population centers in order for this plan to work.

Imagine the power in your hands to tell people where they must live and what they are allowed to eat. God forbid.

Brad Johnson is a retired CIA senior operations officer and a former chief of station. He is president of Americans for Intelligence Reform.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

 

 

 

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