The US State Department has expressed concern at recent reports that Iran has deployed an advanced air defense system to guard a secretive nuclear site.
On Sunday, Iranian state television claimed Tehran had stationed a recently delivered a Russian-made long-range missile system to central Iran to protect its Fordo nuclear facility, suspected to have housed nuclear arms development work.
State Department spokesman John Kirby told a press briefing Monday that the US was unhappy with the sale of the S-300 system as well as its placement at Fordo.
“We’ve seen the reports of this deployment. Obviously, that’s of concern to us because we have long objected to the sale of Iran – of these kinds of capabilities,” Kirby said.
"We’ve seen the reports of this deployment. Obviously, that’s of concern to us because we have long objected to the sale of Iran – of these kinds of capabilities,” Kirby said.
The Russian-made missile defense system is one of the most advanced of its kind in the world, offering long-range protection against both airplanes and missiles. The first shipment arrived in Iran in April.
Kirby said the US would be in contact with allies regarding the deployment of the battery.
“As we get more information, obviously, we’re going to stay in close consultation with partners going forward,"
Israel has long sought to block the sale to Iran of the S-300 system, which analysts say could impede a potential Israeli strike on Tehran’s nuclear facilities. Other officials have expressed concern that the systems could reach Syria and Hezbollah, diluting Israel’s regional air supremacy.
The Obama administration’s Department of Homeland Security is contemplating a special declaration that will allow it to control America’s elections, according to a new report.
The federal agency would declare the election a “critical infrastructure” in such a case, the Washington Examiner reported Tuesday, noting the move would give DHS “the same control over security it has over Wall Street and and the electric power grid.”
The news comes just two days after the FBI revealed foreign hackers broke into state election systems in Illinois and Arizona.
According to the Examiner, those attacks increase the likelihood of DHS making the special declaration in time for the upcoming election.
“We should carefully consider whether our election system, our election process, is critical infrastructure like the financial sector, like the power grid,” Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said.
“There’s a vital national interest in our election process, so I do think we need to consider whether it should be considered by my department and others critical infrastructure,” he said at media conference in August hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.
DHS currently has a security role in 16 facets of critical infrastructure. Other sectors may reveal what DHS and Johnson would have planned for election oversight.
A leaked document from George Soros’s Open Society Foundations exposes the billionaire’s level of involvement in attempting to build what his organization describes as a “national movement” to reform local police forces across the U.S. The reform largely consists of federal guidelines for local police forces.
The document identifies an opportunity in the police killings of African-American men in Ferguson, Staten Island, North Charleston, and Baltimore. It relates that the U.S. contingent of Open Society held a planning meeting titled, “Police Reform: How to Take Advantage of the Crisis of the Moment and Drive Long-Term Institutional Change in Police-Community Practice.”
The extensive memo further documents that Soros-financed groups and personalities influenced President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, which last May released a final report consisting of 60 recommendations providing guidance to localities on how to modify policing practices.
The information was contained in a 59-page report on an Open Society Foundations’ U.S. Programs board meeting in New York from May 7-9 of last year.
The document states that the Foundations’ U.S. Programs (USP) was seeking to use “this moment” – meaning the so-called crisis in policing following high profile shootings and charges of racism – to “create a national movement” for police reform.
With hundreds of millions of dollars poured into presidential and congressional elections in the United States it can be difficult, even for mega donors like George Soros, to truly understand how much influence is being "bought." That's why Soros is pursuing a new strategy to dump millions into the campaigns of local district attorneys, a position which "exercises the greatest discretion and power in the system." So far, Soros has funneled $3 million into seven local DA races over the past year but his support is "expected to intensify in the next few years, thanks to longer-term planning and candidate recruitment." In general, Soros looks to fund progressive DAs running on platforms to "reduce racial disparity in sentencing" and support prison "diversion programs" for drug offenders instead of trials that could result in jail time. As Politico points out:
Soros has spent on district attorney campaigns in Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico and Texas through a network of state-level super PACs and a national “527” unlimited-money group, each named a variation on “Safety and Justice.” (Soros has also funded a federal super PAC with the same name.) Each organization received most of its money directly from Soros, according to public state and federal financial records, though some groups also got donations from nonprofits like the Civic Participation Action Fund, which gave to the Safety and Justice group in Illinois.
Soros’ spending started on these races about a year ago, when he put over $1 million into “Safety and Justice” groups that helped elect two new district attorneys in Louisiana and Mississippi and reelect a third — Hinds County, Miss., DA Robert Shuler Smith — who has since been charged by the Mississippi attorney general with improperly providing information to defendants.
After the Louisiana and Mississippi races, Soros next piled money into two of the biggest jurisdictions in the country: Houston’s Harris County (his lone losing effort so far) and Chicago’s Cook County, where he funded one of several groups that helped Kim Foxx defeat incumbent state’s attorney Anita Alvarez in a high-profile primary campaign dominated by the 13-month delay between the police shooting of Laquan McDonald and the indictment of the police officer involved.
In late spring, $107,000 from a Soros-funded New Mexico super PAC helped Raul Torrez win his Democratic district attorney primary by a 2-to-1 margin in Albuquerque’s Bernalillo County. Torrez’s Republican opponent dropped out of the general election soon after, citing the potentially exorbitant cost of opposing the Soros-backed candidate in the general election.
But, for those of you worried that Soros isn't doing enough to "reshape the American justice system" please know that the plan is to "invest" far more in these races going forward. In fact, as Politico points out, the only hold back so far has been a lack of good puppetscandidates.
While Soros has spent heavily in 2015 and 2016, a broader national push into local prosecutor campaigns is expected to intensify in the next few years, thanks to longer-term planning and candidate recruitment. A Safety and Justice group has already organized in Ohio, according to campaign finance filings there. But it has not yet disclosed raising or spending any money.
“There’s been a realization that there’s not very much we can do this year, when you’re coming up to an election,” said Steele. “You have to have the right candidates. That’s a big piece of the puzzle and why I’m part of this conversation. ... A lot of the conversations I’m having are about 2017 and 2018, about looking forward to next year in Virginia and other places.”
That means more local candidates should prepare for the shock of one of the biggest donors in American politics flooding their neighborhoods with ads.
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