Vladimir Putin says all big Russian businesses should be ready for war production (Source independent.co.uk)

Russian business should be prepared to switch to production to military needs at any time, said Vladimir Putin on Wednesday. The Russian president was speaking at a conference of military leaders in Sochi.

“The ability of our economy to increase military production and services at a given time is one of the most important aspects of military security,” Mr Putin said. “To this end, all strategic, and simply large-scale enterprise should be ready, regardless of ownership.” A day earlier, the president had spoken of a need to catch up and overtake the West in military technology. “Our army and navy need to have the very best equipment — better than foreign equivalents,” he said. “If we want to win, we have to be better.”

Since the 2008 Georgian war, which was a difficult operation, the Russian military has undergone extensive modernization. Ageing Soviet equipment has gone. There is a new testing regime. There are new command structures. The budget has also increased exponentially.

Russia blasts Trump for putting North Korea on terror list (Source nypost.com) Russia blasted the Trump administration’s decision to include North Korea on a list of states sponsoring terrorism as a “PR move” that could result in a global “catastrophe,” according to a report on Thursday.

“The answer to the question whether such actions help in lessening the tensions is clear: no, they do not,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, Agence France-Press reported.

She said the “scaremongering act and PR move” would do nothing to reduce the tension on the peninsula as President Kim Jong Un’s regime continues to develop its missile and nuclear weapons. “These sorts of actions push the situation to the extreme. This can end with a big catastrophe not only of a regional but also of global scale,” Zakharova told reporters in Moscow.

She said Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will discuss the rogue regime with his Japanese counterpart Taro Kono when he visits Russia on Friday, the wire service reported.

“They will concentrate on bilateral relations but the international situation will be discussed, including the situation in the Korean peninsula as well as the Syrian question,” Zakharova said. Trump on Tuesday announced that he was adding North Korea to the list of states that sponsor terrorism, a designation that triggered another round of sanctions “to isolate the murderous regime.”

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From an Open Internet, Back to the Dark Ages (Source globalresearch.ca) Can anyone still doubt that access to a relatively free and open internet is rapidly coming to an end in the west? As soon as next month, the net could become the exclusive plaything of the biggest such corporations, determined to squeeze as much profit as possible out of bandwidth. Meanwhile, the tools to help us engage in critical thinking. In December the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) plans to repeal already compromised regulations that are in place to maintain a semblance of “net neutrality”. Its chairman, Ajit Pai, and the corporations that are internet service providers want to sweep away these rules, just like the banking sector got rid of financial regulations so it could inflate our economies into giant ponzi schemes. That could serve as the final blow to the left and its ability to make its voice heard in the public square. It was political leaders – aided by the corporate media – who paved the way to this with their fomenting of a self-serving moral panic about “fake news”. Fake news, they argued, appeared only online, not in the pages of the corporate media – the same media that sold us the myth of WMD in Iraq, and has so effectively preserved a single party system with two faces. The public, it seems, needs to be protected only from bloggers and websites. The social media giants soon responded. It is becoming ever clearer that Facebook is interfering as a platform for the dissemination of information for progressive activists. It is already shutting down accounts, and limiting their reach. Google has changed its algorithms in ways that have ensured the search engine rankings of prominent leftwing sites are falling through the floor. It is becoming harder and harder to find alternative sources of news because they are being actively hidden from view. Google stepped up that process this week by “deranking” RT and Sputnik, two Russian news sites that provide an important counterweight – even if one skewed in its pro-Russia agenda – to the anti-Russia propaganda spouted by western corporate media. The two sites will be as good as censored on the internet for the vast majority of users.

A SWARM OF EARTHQUAKES BENEATH THE SAN ANDREAS FAULT IS MAKING SCIENTISTS NERVOUS (Source Zero Hedge) Warner Bros Pictures might want to rethink the shooting of San Andreas II – the sequel to the 2015 blockbuster about a massive earthquake striking the San Francisco Bay Area that starred the Rock, Paul Giamatti and a host of other A-list actors. Because if the US Geological Survey’s worst fears are confirmed, the seismic devastation depicted in the film might hit a little too close to home. According to the Daily Mail, 134 earthquakes have hammered a three-mile stretch around Monterey County on the San Andreas fault over the last week – a pace that’s making seismologists nervous. The San Andreas fault stretches 750 miles north to south across coastal California, forming the boundary of the Pacific plate and North American plate. Of those earthquakes, 17 were stronger than 2.5 magnitude and 6 of them were stronger than 3.0. And experts at the USGS warn that more tremors are expected in the coming weeks. The rumblings are amplifying fears raised last week that the ‘Big One’ – the mythical quake depicted in the movie ‘San Andreas’ – could be about to hit. In another sign of impending disaster, ten ‘mini quakes’ struck the same area last week. That swarm included one 4.6-magnitude quake that was felt in San Francisco more than 90 miles away. “This one has been a quite productive aftershock sequence,” said Ole Kaven, a US Geological Survey seismologist. “We suspect there will be aftershocks in the 2 to 3 magnitude range for at least a few more weeks,” he said. Fortunately, nobody was injured in the quake storm.

Last week’s swarm hit California’s Monterey County on Monday at 11:31 am ET about 13 miles northeast of Gonzales, near Salinas. It dramatically increases the likelihood of a major quake in California, at least temporarily, experts claimed.

Huge Implications of Russia’s Northern Sea Route. An Alternative to the Suez Canal? (Source globalresearch.ca)

In terms of dealing with some of the world’s harshest weather conditions no country comes close compared with Russia. Now Russia has made it a highest priority to develop a Northern Sea Route along the Russian Arctic coast to enable LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) and container freight shipments between Asia and Europe that will cut shipping time almost in half and bypass the increasingly risky Suez Canal. China is fully engaged and has now formally incorporated it into its new Silk Road Belt, Road Initiative infrastructure. Before attending the Hamburg G20 Summit in July, China’s President Xi Jinping made a stopover in Moscow where he and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin signed the “China-Russia Joint Declaration on Further Strengthening Comprehensive, Strategic and Cooperative Partnership.” The declaration includes the Northern Sea Route as a strategic area of cooperation between China and Russia, as a formal part of China’s Belt, Road Initiative (BRI) infrastructure. For its part, Russia is investing major resources in development of new LNG ports and infrastructure along the route to service a growing maritime traffic passing through its Arctic territorial waters.

The Russian Federation, under the direct supervision of President Putin is building up the economic infrastructure that will create an alternative to the Suez Canal for container and LNG shipping between Europe and Asia. In addition, the developments are opening up huge new undeveloped resources including oil, gas, diamonds and other minerals along the Russian Exclusive Economic Zone, transversing its northernmost Siberian coastline.

Officially Russian legislation defines the Northern Sea Route as the territorial waters along the Russian Arctic coast east of Novaya Zemlya in Russia’s Arkhangelsk Oblast, from the Kara Sea across Siberia, to the Bering Strait that runs between far eastern Russia and Alaska. The entire route lies in Arctic waters and within Russia’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).

Preliminary geophysical studies confirm that vast oil and gas reserves exist below the sea floor along the Northern Sea Route of Russia’s EEZ waters, increasing interest of the Chinese government in joint resource development with Russia, in addition to the potentially shorter shipping times to and from Europe.For China, which sees increasing threats to its oil supply lines by sea from the Persian Gulf and via the Straits of Malacca, the Russian Northern Sea Route offers a far more secure alternative, a Plan B, in event of US Naval interdiction of the Malacca Straits.

US Geological Survey estimates are that within the Russian Arctic EEZ some 30% of all Arctic recoverable oil and 66% of its total natural gas is to be found. The USGS estimates total Arctic oil recoverable reserves to be about one-third total Saudi reserves. In short, as Mark Twain might have said, there’s “black gold in them thar’ icy waters…”

Russian Church Says ‘End Of History’ Is Near (Source Newsweek)

The leader of the Russian Orthodox Church said Monday the world is on the brink of slipping into “the abyss of the end of history,” according to a state-run news agency. The apocalypse “is already visible to the naked eye,” Patriarch Kirill told congregants after a service at the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow, reported RIA Novosti.

He said there could be a saving grace for the world—society uniting. “Today is not the time to rock the boat of human passions. Today is the time to rally all healthy forces,” Kirill said. “That’s why the church, art, culture, our writers, scientists—all those people who love the Motherland—should come together because we are entering a critical period in human civilization.”

Kirill’s call comes at a time when world unity seems far-fetched. North Korea continues to threaten the U.S. with the prospect of launching a nuclear missile. Terrorist attacks have occurred abroad and last month in New York City, with the Islamic State group in many instances claiming responsibility. And Russian bots relentlessly spread fake news on social media, influencing the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election and prompting the FBI to investigate possible collusion between the campaign of President Donald Trump and Moscow.

Kirill, who was born Vladimir Mikhailovich Gundyayev, hasn’t always been a supporter of peace. He backed expanding Russia’s power into Crimea and eastern Ukraine before the 2014 invasion. Kirill has also led the Russian Orthodox church to a close relationship in social and cultural matters with President Vladimir Putin.

Monday is not the first time that Kirill has warned of the end of the world. In July 2013, he told a congregation at Kazan Cathedral in Moscow that the legal recognition of same-sex marriage is “a very dangerous sign of the apocalypse.”

It is also not the first time that Kirill has called on countries to unite. “Today’s war on terror should be a joint effort,” he said in October 2016. “This isn’t just Russia’s fight. It’s for all countries, we should unite to defeat this evil, and this war I call a holy one.”

EU signs defense pact in decades-long quest (Source Reuters) France and Germany edged toward achieving a 70-year-old ambition to integrate European defenses on Monday, signing a pact with 21 other EU governments to fund, develop and deploy armed forces after Britain’s decision to quit the bloc. First proposed in the 1950s and long resisted by Britain, European defense planning, operations and weapons development now stands its best chance in years as London steps aside and the United States pushes Europe to pay more for its security. Foreign and defense ministers gathered at a signing ceremony in Brussels to represent 23 EU governments joining the pact, paving the way for EU leaders to sign it in December.

Those governments will for the first time legally bind themselves into joint projects as well as pledging to increase defense spending and contribute to rapid deployments.

“Today we are taking a historic step,” Germany’s Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel told reporters. “We are agreeing on the future cooperation on security and defense issues it’s really a milestone in European development,” he said.

A Religious Revival in Europe? (Source thetrumpet.com)

“We know who we are only when we know who we are not and often only when we know whom we are against,” wrote Samuel Huntington in his classic work The Clash of Civilizations. ”For people seeking identity and reinventing ethnicity, enemies are essential.” Many of Europe’s enemies have been Muslim. And so the Continent is adopting the language, symbols and identity of Christianity—because that is what most clearly distinguishes it from these enemies.

“Instability and violence in the Middle East has led to Muslim migration to Europe,” wrote Geopolitical Futures analyst Jacob Shapiro. “Muslim migration has, in turn, stoked nationalism, sometimes to electoral effect, and has even led to limited European involvement in Muslim wars”. Terrorism, he pointed out, has been rising in Europe since 2005. Nationalism began rising at almost exactly the same time. The terrorism is already transforming Europe. “The age-old conflict between Europe and the Middle East, Christendom and Islam, is simmering once more”. Once again, religion is playing a major role in the fate of Europe!

In August 1978, Christian-living magazine Good News, stated “Europeans want their own united military power! … They have made a real effort toward union in the Common Market. … But they well know there is but one possibility of union in Europe—and that is through the Vatican.”

November-December 1954 Plain Truth, stated “Germany inevitably [will] emerge as the leader of a united Europe”—a sentiment many in southern Europe would agree with today. The September 1967 Plain Truth declared, “One thing you can count on. In fact it is so sure you can bank on it: The cry of a political union in Europe will get louder.” In April 1952, Good News stated, “Russia may give East Germany back to the Germans and will be forced to relinquish her control over Hungary, Czechoslovakia and parts of Austria” in order to complete this union.

So much of this has already happened. Bible prophecy, have proved accurate. Yet full union has not yet been achieved. Why? “In only one way can this resurrected Holy Roman Empire be brought to fruition—by the ‘good offices’ of the Vatican, uniting church and state once again, with the Vatican astride and ruling …” (Plain Truth, January 1979).

The Catholic Church has been the one missing ingredient in European unity. And now that ingredient is being added back into the mix.

The same prophecies that forecast European unity also foretell that a church will have major role in leading this new superpower. Revelation 17 describes a woman that sits “upon many waters.” Her power stretches over a vast portion of the Earth. Typically in the Bible, a woman represents a church. The “kings of the earth have committed fornication” with this woman, meaning that she is a major political power. The religious revival in Europe is paving the way for the return of this woman.

The Bible has a great deal to say about what this European religious power will look like. And so does history. Religious empires, in close alliance with the Vatican, have repeatedly risen in Europe.

MIDEAST TURMOIL: FOLLOW THE OIL, FOLLOW THE MONEY( Source blacklistednews.com)

While there are numerous dynamics at work in the turmoil roiling Saudi Arabia and by extension, the Mideast, one way to cut to the chase is to follow the oil, follow the money.

Correspondent B.D. recently proposed a factor that has been largely overlooked in the geopolitical / fate-of-the-petrodollar.

Perhaps the core dynamic is a technical one of diminished oil production. Here is Bart’s commentary:

“I think the Saudis may be quickly running out of profitable oil to produce/export. I think they tried to over-produce for a while to damage the competition and they now have production issues resulting from that. I think they may have recently slipped over the event horizon for being the world’s swing producer of ‘cheap-ish and abundant’ oil. That has huge ramifications for the global markets ability to quickly respond to supply/demand fluctuations. I suspect they’re no longer cutting production voluntarily. They are now in the grip of a technically driven decline in output. What I assume should happen is relentless severe volatility in the absence of a big swing producer that can open up or shut in production with comparative ease.” The possibility of a global recession unfolding in 2018 is rising. In a global recession, oil demand will fall, crushing the marginal pricing power of exporters. The Saudi royal family and the Kingdom’s vast state welfare system is no longer sustainable should oil fall into the $30-$35/barrel range due to a collapse of global demand. The only way out is to grab the power now that will be needed to slash domestic welfare and domestic consumption of oil/gas, i.e. the power to overcome resistance within the royal family to severe reductions in royal/central state budgets. Geopolitically speaking, very few if any oil exporters are able to prosper and fund their regional/global ambitions if oil plummets to $35/barrel and stays there for years. Every oil exporter makes brave statements about being just fine with $25/barrel oil, but the

]’`reality is every major oil exporter is dependent on oil revenues of a scale that can only be generated at $50/barral and up. The discovery of new oil fields has fallen far below global consumption.

EPA approves bacteria-infected insects to kill mosquitoes (Source cnet.com)

Lab-grown mosquitoes armed with bacterium Wolbachia pipientis could be the key to killing off insects that often transmit dangerous viruses such as Zika.

No one likes the idea of being bitten by a mosquito, especially if that pesky pest also is carrying around viruses as deadly as yellow fever, dengue and Zika. But what if you could eradicate the diseased insects by releasing assassin versions of mosquitoes to kill them off?

On Nov. 3, the Environmental Protection Agency approved a new approach from the biotech company MosquitoMate. The goal is to destroy populations of wild mosquitoes that could be carrying nasty viruses, according to a report from Nature magazine. Instead of relying on genetic engineering, MosquitoMate infects lab-grown mosquitoes with the common bacterium Wolbachia pipientis, which affects mosquitoes but not animals or humans. The Wolbachia-infected male mosquitoes (which don’t bite) mate with the wild populations of female Asian tiger mosquitoes (which do bite). The eggs fertilized by MosquitoMate’s male mosquitoes won’t hatch because the paternal chromosomes don’t form properly due to the effects of the bacterium.

NORTH KOREA ASSASSINS BUMPED OFF KIM JONG UN’S BROTHER WITH DEADLY NERVE AGENT THAT COULD KILL ‘TENS OF THOUSANDS’ IN CHEMICAL WAR: PENTAGON REPORT (Source Newsweek)

North Korea is prepared to use its stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons if war broke out with the U.S. and its allies, according to a letter Pentagon chiefs sent to lawmakers. The letter, written by Rear Adm. Michael J. Dumont, the vice director of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, details how a conflict between North Korea and the U.S. could play out. Amid rising tensions between Washington and Pyongyang, the letter notes the difficulty of establishing the “‘best- or worst-case casualty scenarios'” should war break out with North Korea, given the proximity of South Korean capital Seoul to the de-militarised zone and uncertainty over how much warning the U.S. would have of a North Korean attack. Addressed to Democrat Congressmen Ted Lieu of California and Ruben Gallego of Arizona, the letter lays out the stark potential consequences of conflict with the rogue state, and says that North Korea could resort to using its stockpile of chemical and biological weapons.