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Report: Trump Tells Allies He Plans to Remove U.S. From Paris Climate Agreement
U.S. President Donald Trump has informed multiple individuals, including EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, that he intends to remove the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement, according several sources.
On Saturday night, Axios reported the news based on “three sources with direct knowledge.”
Breitbart News has independently confirmed this reporting and that Trump has told others the same thing: that he plans to withdraw the U.S. from the agreement.
Earlier on Saturday, the President tweeted from Italy that he would make his final decision next week as to whether the U.S. will remain in the Paris Accord. He was in Italy for the G7 summit at the end of his first overseas trip, which was preceded by visits to Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Vatican, and Brussels.
While at the G7 summit, Trump was heavily lobbied to endorse the Paris Climate Agreement, but he declined to do so. The agreement was entered into under the Obama Administration. German Chancellor Angela Merkel characterized climate change talks with Trump as “very unsatisfying.”
On Friday, White House economic advisor Gary Cohn characterized President Trump’s position on climate change as “evolving,” though it was not clear exactly what that meant.
An AFP report from early March which cited the New York Times stated that the Trump Administration team was divided over whether the United States should withdraw or remain in the Paris Climate Agreement.
Secretary of Defense James Mattis told CBS Face the Nation, in an interview set to air on Sunday, that he sat in on some policy discussions on the issue while in Brussels and that President Trump is “wide open on this issue as he takes in the pros and cons of that accord.”
Evidence Proves DNC Fabricated Russian Conspiracy In June 2016
New evidence proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the Democrats manufactured the Russian interference story as a disinformation campaign as far back as June 2016.
Information gathered by internet sleuths proves that the DNC, Clinton campaign and Obama administration conspired to concoct the Russia-Trump story, and provides a brand new motive for why Seth Rich was murdered.
Reddit.com reports: Understanding the order in which the events happened will be important to understand why it was the DNC and only the DNC could have manufactured the Russian campaign.
| Date | Event | Source |
|---|---|---|
| June 14, 2016 | The DNC releases a statement stating they have been hacked. | Washington Post |
| June 15, 2016 | Crowdstrike (cybersecurity firm) releases reports suggesting the DNC was hacked by Russians | Crowdstrike |
| June 15, 2016 | Guccifer 2.0 publishes first DNC email documents and claims he has sent them to Wikileaks.Guccifer insists he is not Russian. | Guccifer 2.0 blog |
| June 16, 2016 | Vice publishes article titled “‘Guccifer 2.0’ Is Likely a Russian Government Attempt to Cover Up Its Own Hack.” Other media outlets follow suit calling Guccifer a Russian government job | Vice |
| July 22, 2016 | Wikileaks releases the DNC email documents | Wikileaks |
| July 27, 2016 | Trump makes infamous “Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing” joke that starts allegations of Russian collusion | Politico |
In bullet point form:
- DNC announces they’ve been hacked.
- The day after, a hacker calling himself Guccifer 2.0 claims to have taken credit for the hack and announces he will be giving his documents to Wikileaks. Guccifer 2.0 vehemently denies being Russian, a façade he keeps up throughout his activity.
- Bolstered by Crowdstrike’s report and the metadata in Guccifer 2.0’s documents, media outlets immediately start screaming that Guccifer 2.0 must be Russian agents.
- Finally, Wikileaks releases the DNC documents a month after Guccifer 2.0 did.
This post unmasks Guccifer 2.0’s identity as none other than the DNC.
What did Guccifer 2.0 do?
Guccifer 2.0 hosted a WordPress site where the DNC documents could be publicly downloaded. June 15th was the date of the first Guccifer 2.0 leak; further leaks would continue thereafter. I focus only on the first leak, as they contain the metadata which are essential to proving it was a DNC operation.
What were in the leaked Guccifer documents?
Guccifer 2.0 leaked a total of 10 Office documents from the DNC in the first batch (many more would come, but none contain the same “mistakes” as the ones I shall detail).
All Microsoft Office documents have metadata entries which contain attributes about the document itself such as the user that created them, the user that modified them, and so on. This metadata is usually invisible to viewers but can be viewed with a raw text editor like Notepad, or on Mac OS, vim.
It would be unusual for a leaker to modify the metadata, but Guccifer 2.0 did, claiming that it was his “watermark.”
In Office, the metadata includes the owner of the Office application who created the file and the owner of the Office application who modified the file. I present a list of the document names having metadata values for original author & modified author:
| Document name | Original author | Modified author |
|---|---|---|
| 1.doc | Warren Flood | Феликс Эдмундович |
| 2.doc | Warren Flood | Феликс Эдмундович |
| 3.doc | Warren Flood | Феликс Эдмундович |
| 4.doc | Blake | |
| 5.doc | jbs836 | Феликс Эдмундович |
Феликс Эдмундович, or Felix Dzerzhinsky in the English alphabet, was an early Soviet statesman who died in 1926.
So what… Warren Flood, Blake, and jbs836 were the original authors?
Short answer: No. Non-technical answer: For one thing, we can cross-reference the actual authors from the Wikileaks dump. 1.doc is in the “verified” Wikileaks release as the attachment which can be downloaded from here which has the original author of “Lauren Dillon.” So, wait, who is Warren Flood et al? Each of these documents had a creation date of June 15, and were modified by “Феликс Эдмундович” a few minutes later.
In Office 2007 format specification, there is a certain stylesheet template which dictates overall formatting for the document. In three of the documents by Warren Flood, we find the identical metadata.
{\s108\ql \li0\ri0\widctlpar\wrapdefault\aspalpha\aspnum\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0\contextualspace \rtlch\fcs1 \af1\afs20\alang1025 \ltrch\fcs0\f1\fs20\lang1049\langfe1049\cgrid\langnp1049\langfenp1049\sbasedon0 \snext108 \slink107 \sqformat \spriority1 \styrsid11758497 No Spacing;}
The above line appears across all three of Warren Flood’s documents. styrsid11758497 is an unique identifier that is author-associative. The fact that it does not appear in the other documents indicates it’s associated with Warren Flood and not Феликс Эдмундович.
Why is this important? Well, the \langfe1049 portion is a setting saying that Russian language should be used as the default language for the document.
Had Феликс Эдмундович been setting the “watermark,” it would be the same across all documents. But instead, distinct watermarks were created for each document creator, suggesting inconsistent application or three different creators applying their own watermark.
In other words, document creators set the document properties to use Russian language and created three distinct so-called ‘watermarks’ in doing so, not ‘Феликс Эдмундович.’
Also, cross-reference to Wikileaks shows that Warren Flood did not author any of the documents. And given that the timestamps are all on June 15th, this is the sequence of events:
- Warren Flood opens a DNC document, copies it, and pastes it as a new document to his computer.
- Warren Flood sets the theme language to Russian in some way (this process is different for all authors).
- Warren Flood modifies the document’s author to Феликс Эдмундович.
- The modified document is then uploaded to the Guccifer website and publicly published a short time thereafter.
Who is Warren Flood?
Warren Flood is a high-ranking technology official for Democratic operatives, having worked for Obama for America, DNC, and Joe Biden. It’s a unique name.
His name does not appear in any of the Wikileaks emails, meaning that he appears to be a third party as far as the DNC email leaks are concerned.
Other than his (professional Internet) profile, he is a social media ghost, never having made any Tweets nor any evidence of real social media activity.
The pertinent point is that: the metadata forensic proof is irrefutable that Warren Flood, or someone who owned a copy of Word registered to Warren Flood, shoehorned in obvious “Russian” fingerprints all over the documents.
Guccifer 2.0 is none other than a botched DNC creation to create a false flag for Russia.
Impact of Guccifer 2.0 being a DNC creation
The “Russian influenced the US election” campaign all started from the DNC leak.
Allegations of Russian influence was built on a completely fabricated foundation of lies.
In hindsight, we now know that Obama administration unmasking of US campaign officials on the pretext of “Russian interference” started in June 2016, same date as when Guccifer 2.0 began. The implications that the unmasking all was predicated on a DNC psy-ops is staggering.
Who cares why the DNC did it?
Because it proves that “Russian interference” started as a total DNC fabrication that persists to today. The whole Russian campaign started before Trump made his infamous joke about Russians getting Hillary’s emails.
Illegal unmasking of Trump campaign officials over Russian interference began June 2016. Was this predicated on Russian interference with the DNC hacks? If so, this means that the leaks not only implicate DNC and plague President Trump himself, but also implicates Obama administration officials and all the involved intelligence agencies.
Why did DNC leak their own documents?
It’s right in Guccifer 2.0’s blog. Pertinent quote: “The main part of the papers, thousands of files and mails, I gave to Wikileaks. They will publish them soon.” TheDNC knew they were having their documents leaked to Wikileaks, and wanted to make sure a Russian hacker took credit for the leaks.
How did the DNC know Wikileaks was going to release the DNC emails?
Great question. It’s hard to imagine them knowing without assistance from intelligence agencies – and indeed unmasking of campaign officials started in June 2016.
This is, of course, highly illegal, and would mean that the Russian disinformation campaign wasn’t just a DNC operation, it was also created from collusion with the Obama administration using highly illegal means including violations of the Fourth Amendment.
Since Guccifer 2.0 was a botched operation, that might make the continued existence of the real leaker who might draw scrutiny that much more precarious…
What about Crowdstrike report?
The metadata I described above can be independently verified by a non-technical person with access to any text editor like vim (which is available on Mac OS terminal command line). It does not require special forsenic analysis to identify. There are only two explanations: staggering incompetence, or DNC collusion.
I cannot say if Crowdstrike is competent, but I can say that their co-founder and CTO, Dmitri Alperovitch, is a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council, a think tank whose policies could be termed as anti-protectionist.
Who leaked the DNC emails to Wikileaks?
In short, all circumstantial evidence points to Seth Rich.
Seth Rich was killed on July 10, after the Guccifer drops and before the Wikileaks release. Wikileaks offered a 20,000 reward for information on Seth Rich’s death.
Craig Murray, a British national connected with Wikileaks, claims a disgusted Democrat insider was the leaker and he personally flew overseas to make the drop.
Was Seth Rich murdered by the DNC?
We are getting in speculative territory here. The circumstances of his death are suspicious – there had never been a homicide prior or after in his area. The assailants did not steal any of his valuables.
Conspiracy theorists assume Seth Rich was murdered by the DNC to “set an example.”
Personally, I think that as long as Seth Rich existed, he could have spoken up as the leaker at any moment and drawn scrutiny to Guccifer 2.0 being a DNC operation. To our knowledge, the unmasking of Trump and related officials started in June 2016 using the DNC hacks as a pretext. Seth Rich’s continued existence could have lead to the fall of the White House and intelligence agencies.
Is that motive enough for a political hit? You tell me.
News sources say that the “documents contain DNC metadata” is disproven.
In addition to hosting them on the official WordPress website, DNC documents were sent directly by Guccifer 2.0 to media outlets such as The Hill (despite Guccifer 2.0 himself claiming hatred of these very same media outlets accusing him of being Russian).
What Guccifer 2.0 sent was not always the same as what was on the official Guccifer 2.0 website. My speculation is that Guccifer 2.0 revised the documents to remove the metadata, and sent those corrected documents to media outlets. He could not do the same on his WordPress site for without drawing intense scrutiny, so the botched documents remained.
Bottom line:it is unimpeachable that watermarked Russian metadata in Guccifer’s first document drop are associated with a DNC tech worker named Warren Flood who otherwise has nothing to do with the DNC emails.Any media outlet reporting otherwise are probably either working from their own “corrected” copy from Guccifer or spinning hard or both.
Trump’s Message to NATO Was the Right One to Deliver
President Donald Trump’s very first conference with NATO heads of state, coming after so many months of NATO bashing during last year’s campaign, can’t be described as anything but awkward and uncomfortable. These kinds of meetings are designed to be rehearsed, with every single speech by a leader heavily scripted and prepared weeks in advance and every handshake and hug between presidents and prime ministers perfectly choreographed. Of course, Trump is immune to choreography—the guy is a bull in a china shop, running around like a tornado, breaking the china.
There were so many cringe worthy moments that one wonders if German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau regretted making the trip to Brussels. Before the ribbon cutting ceremony commemorating the new NATO headquarters, a camera caught Trump shoving the Montenegrin Prime Minister (Montenegro is NATO’s newest member) out of the way to he could get at the front of the pack. Trump’s puffing up his chest after the minor altercation was an apt illustration of his Type A, hyper-intensive personality—the same image-obsessed personality that has gotten his administration into trouble. The handshake between Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron almost turned into a twenty-first-century version of a gladiator match. When Trump delivered his speech, reminding the Europeans and Canadians that they’ve been slacking off the NATO military spending guidelines that they all agreed too over a decade ago, it looked as if the pack of politicians to the side of the podium was a funeral procession.
Despite all of these strange Twitter moments, President Trump’s message to the allies—that they have been riding on the backs of the United States for far too long—was the right one to deliver. When Trump remarked that the current funding trends are “not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States,” he was right on the money. It’s almost inexplicable why a bloc of countries that is the wealthiest in the world is reticent to increase their defense budgets to 2 percent of GDP, a goal that some military strategists believe is too small given the weight of Europe’s problems. From a pure numerical standpoint, this isn’t too much to ask; the United States spends 3.6 percent of its GDP on defense, so the least that rich economic powerhouses like Germany can do is strive for 2 percent. Nobody is asking the Europeans (and the Canadians) to meet this target in a year or even five years, a demand that would be unrealistic to the point of looking foolish. All Washington is asking is that Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and the rest of the slackers start pulling their own weight and meeting the promises that they themselves set.
Critics of the 2 percent benchmark will argue that it’s a completely arbitrary figure, a random number plucked out of a list that doesn’t correspond to any legitimate defense need. And they would be right; there’s nothing special about 2 percent. But it’s a commitment that the transatlantic alliance made nonetheless, and commitments are pointless if the people making them don’t bother to take them seriously. President’s George W. Bush and Barack Obama had the same complaints about European dilly dallying. Donald Trump is just continuing the argument, albeit in his own unique way.
You don’t have like the messenger to agree with the message: NATO’s credibility as an alliance and as an institution suffers when its members can’t even build up the political will to follow their own rules. Trump can certainly smooth the rough edges, because he doesn’t do himself any favors when he publicly scolds America’s closest friends and provides leaders like Merkel and Macron with another reason to worry about United States staying power in Europe. But it’s difficult to disagree with the underlying sentiment—NATO isn’t sustainable if only five member states are upholding their responsibility.
US buying a second Virginia class nuclear attack submarine in 2021
The Navy plans to buy a second Virginia-class attack submarine in Fiscal Year 2021 to keep the industrial base building two SSNs a year even during Columbia-class ballistic-missile submarine procurement, several Navy officials confirmed today.
Due to concerns about overwhelming the two sub construction yards – Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding and General Dynamics Electric Boat – with too much new work, as the Block V boats are set to include a new Virginia Payload Module section around the same time SSBN construction will begin, the Navy previously planned to buy just one SSN in years it also bought an SSBN. Due to an impending attack sub shortfall, though, Navy plans have continued to up and up the amount of work that could come to the two builders.
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson told USNI News after the Senate hearing this morning that the Navy desired as many submarines as it could get without breaking the industrial base or breaking the bank.
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (Oct. 5, 2012) The Virginia-class attack submarine Pre-Commissioning Unit (PCU) Minnesota (SSN 783) under construction at Newport News Shipbuilding. The U.S. Navy is reliable, flexible, and ready to respond worldwide on, above, and below the sea. Join the conversation on social media using #warfighting. (U.S. Navy photo by Chris Oxley/Released)
US Air Force requests more next generation aircraft and other new technology funding
The US Air force 2018 budget request released Tuesday includes $25.4 billion for research, development, test and evaluation programs — an increase of $5 billion, or 26 percent, from the amount enacted for the current year, according to budget documents.
While some of the funding would go toward top acquisition programs such as the KC-46A Pegasus tanker, F-35A Lightning II and B-21 Long Range Strike Bomber, some would also support advanced technology initiatives.
For example, the “Next Gen Air Dominance” program aims to secure $295 million for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, up from just $21 million under the current year.
11 page Air Superiority
2030 Flight Plan – Enterprise Capability Collaboration Team
2. Cyber-based capabilities. Development of cyber capabilities and Airmen who can operationally employ those capabilities is essential to air superiority in 2030 and beyond. The Air Force should develop cyber forces tailored for air component missions and priorities, including the protection of mission critical systems.
3. Increased contributions from space-based assets. The Air Force and the joint force will increasingly rely on advantages provided by on-orbit assets for air superiority. As such, ensuring survivable space assets is essential. Development of the Space Mission Force and implementation of the Space Enterprise Vision are key components of the AS 2030 family of capabilities.
5. Continue to pursue “game-changing” technologies. Directed energy, hypersonic weapons, and autonomy are potential game-changing technologies for air superiority. The Air Force roadmaps for these and similar technologies should include targeted decision points to assess the maturity and readiness to on-ramp these technologies into a variety of systems.
6. Low Cost Systems. The focus of this capability development area is to continue development of manufacturing technologies that enable the affordable and rapid fielding of larger quantities of capability. While several concepts utilizing mass show promise, all are predicated on bending the cost curve first. The Air Force should therefore focus low cost efforts on the development of key technological enablers prior to attempting to instantiate any particular capability. This includes development of low cost and additive manufacturing techniques, automated manufacturing, modular component development, streamlined certification, and autonomous operations. Follow-on prototyping and experimentation efforts will demonstrate the maturity of technology concepts and operational employment.
DHS: ‘We Are Watching a Number of Very, Very Sophisticated, Advanced Threats Right Now’
(CNSNews.com) – On March 21, the Department of Homeland Security announced that personal electronic devices larger than a cell phone would have to be placed in checked baggage at ten of the 250 overseas airports that serve as last points of departure to the United States.
On Thursday, Homeland Security Secretary Gen. John Kelly said the so-called laptop ban “possibly” could be expanded to other overseas airports.
“What I have learned in the last 120 days…is this relentless attempt on the part of terrorists to blow up airplanes in flight: ideally, big airplanes with a lot of people; ideally, a U.S. carrier; ideally on the way to the United States.
“We are watching, can’t get into it in this group — but we are watching a number of very, very sophisticated, advanced threats right now.”
Kelly said he obviously wouldn’t have put ten airports on the list in March if the threat weren’t real. “But as we look at the threat and how it’s morphed, we are looking at perhaps other ways to reinforce security procedures at every airport in the world. So it’s possible that it would expand.”
Kelly also said current airport screening technology has “just about” reached its limit, and his department is “looking at advancing that.”
Asked to explain the 21 percent reduction in research and development in President Trump’s proposed FY ’18 budget, Kelly said the U.S. is working with its international partners and the airlines to share the cost of R&D aimed at improving screening technology.
“But ultimately we have to spend what we need to spend to find the technology to protect air travelers.”
Earlier in the hearing, Kelly said he worries about the threat of homegrown terrorism all time, especially as the U.S. military makes progress in crushing ISIS’ self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria:
“We’re doing very, very good, the Department of Defense, the coalition, doing very good overseas to reduce this threat.
“But the end result of reducing that threat is that the terrorists that are fighting in the caliphate — you know, Syria and Iraq — they’re going home. They’re not going home to live normal lives. In fact, they’re being encouraged to not be killed in the caliphate fight. Go back to where you came from and just create Manchester-type fights.”
Kelly said these are people, born in Europe, who are traveling on legal passports, but their countries don’t know they’ve been in the fight.
“And now they’re hardened warriors that will do things like Manchester, so as horrible as Manchester was, my expectation is we’re going to see a lot more of that kind of attack.”
Kelly told “Fox & Friends” on Friday that if Fox host Steve Doocy “knew what I knew about terrorism, he’d never leave the house in the morning.” Kelly said the terror threat is “everywhere,” “constant,” and “nonstop.”
ISIS reportedly issued a call for attacks on Western target to mark the start of Ramadan tomorrow.
U.S. Set To Track Citizens Using Face-Reading Mini Drones
A new portable mini drone is in the process of being blueprinted for the DHS that will have the capabilities of tracking a citizen that is on foot, on horseback or in a car while identifying them with facial recognition technology.
A pilot program conducted by the Department of Homeland Security has been closed early due to an unexpected swamp in proposals submitted to design a new compact drone for the government organization.
Over $1 million has been awarded through the DHS Science and Technology Directorate, giving startups between $100,000 and $200,000 to develop sections of the mini drone, such as sensor and cybersecurity systems.
Ultimately, once finished, the drones would identify individuals through the implementation of “facial recognition or other biometric at range,” as well as tracking people on horseback, foot or vehicles within a 3 mile range.
According to Homeland Security’s Small Unmanned Aircraft System (sUAS) report, the drones would also be capable of assisting U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) officers in “support during distinct events such as detection, tracking, interdiction and apprehension.”
The new drones, according to NBC would be small enough for an officer to transport and launch with ease. Privacy advocates are concerned, however.
Matthew Feeney, a policy analyst at Cato Institute says he is worried about the governing of the facial recognition technology when coupled with drone technology. “I can understand why DHS is interested in these kinds of drones. Drones are a potentially very useful tool for law enforcement,” Feeney said. “The concern I have is drones and facial recognition are two technologies that really could — without adequate oversight — change for the worse the state of surveillance in the United States.”
Jay Stanly, a senior policy analyst and policy expert at the American Civil Liberties Union, questions what it means by the word “border” saying the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) use of the drones could open up two thirds of Americans to the new facial recognition-tracking technology.
Jennifer Garbis, spokeswoman for CBP said the drones would be used “where there is a mission need, which extends to areas other than the southwest border [of the United States.” The drones, she said, would be subjected to a limited storage of 180 days before data was deleted in accordance with Obama-era federal law.
The ACLU’s Jay Stanley suggests a possible new age of surveillance against the American citizen. “If they were going to be deployed on the border proper — what every American thinks of as the border when you say border — then the surveillance issues are much diminished,” he said. “”Once you get into areas where Americans work and live, the privacy problems escalate.”
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