Islamic State is believed to have seized enough radioactive material to build a large “dirty” bomb, according to Australian intelligence reports. NATO has expressed concerned about the supplies, according to Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop.
According to Australian intelligence reports cited by The Independent, ISIS militants possess radioactive material, mostly stolen from government facilities, enough to build a large and devastating dirty bomb – a conventional explosive that is meant to disperse radioactive material over a large area.
In an interview with The Australian, Bishop also said that Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) extremists “did not just clear out the cash from local banks” when they swept across large swathes of Iraq and Syria.
Bishop said that her statements stemmed from reports filed by the Australian Department of Defense, as well as the Foreign Office.
She added that NATO has expressed concern about the materials, which were reportedly seized from hospitals and research centers and would typically only be available to governments.
In addition to concern from NATO, Bishop also noted that the Australia Group – a 40-nation bloc dedicated to ending chemical weapons – held a session on the situation during a summit in Perth last week.
“This is really worrying them,” she said.
At the Australia Group meeting, Bishop spoke about fears that ISIS is weaponizing poisonous gases such as chlorine.
"The use of chlorine by Daesh [the Arabic term for IS], and its recruitment of highly technically trained professionals, including from the west, have revealed far more serious efforts in chemical weapons development," she said at the time.
"Daesh is likely to have amongst its tens of thousands of recruits the technical expertise necessary to further refine precursor materials and build chemical weapons,”Bishop added, stating that the rise of militant groups such as ISIS is “one of the gravest security threats we face today.”
Bishop’s warning was backed by the former commander of the British army’s chemical weapons unit Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, The Australian reported.
De Bretton-Gordon said that Bishop was the “first senior politician from a major Western government”to speak on the issue.
The comments came just three months after the Kurdish Regional Government said that its Peshmerga fighters came under attack from an IS suicide bomber driving a truck with toxic chlorine gas.
Australia is not the only country to publicly express concern about ISIS developing weapons of mass destruction. India also warned last month that the extremists could obtain a weapon from Pakistan.
In May, ISIS announced in its propaganda magazine Dabiq that the group was aiming to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD). It suggested that it was expanding at such a rapid pace that it could buy its first WMD within a year.
There’s nothing free about free trade.
The only reason Congress is holding out until Friday to vote on the TPP according to Politico is “They’re trying to resolve a last-minute hangup over aid for workers who lose their jobs to free trade”:
This means Congress is WELL AWARE a lot of people are about to lose their jobs once the TPP that none of us have even gotten to read goes through.
They should be; secret negotiations for this thing have only been underway now for SIX YEARS.
NAFTA on steroids doesn’t even really begin to cover what we do know of the TPP. It’s not like any previous trade agreement we’ve ever seen. Where should we begin? The fact that it’s going to make Obamacare look like a happy fun time stroll down a sunny lane, or the fact that it’s basically facilitating the U.S. merger with China? (Bye bye national sovereignty, hello TPP!)
Former Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., may be polar opposites politically, but they see eye-to-eye on one thing: They both consider Obamatrade an abomination.
Bachmann had a succinct summation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, trade deal, telling WND: “I hate it.
Warren said much the same thing in an op-ed for the Washington Post, not long ago.
Perhaps not surprisingly, they both fear it will hurt employment by sending American jobs overseas, a critique voiced by a number of conservatives and liberals.
Perhaps more surprisingly, they both fear it will cause a loss of American sovereignty, a criticism expressed much more frequently by those on the right than the left.
Trade is the talk of the town in Washington right now because the House is due to vote any day on the Trade Promotion Authority, or TPA, bill. It would give President Obama the power to negotiate massive trade deals with other countries, cut Congress out of the negotiations and limit lawmakers’ participation to a simple yes or no vote when such treaties are concluded.
TPA has passed in the Senate. If it passes in the House, TPP, a far-reaching trade deal between the U.S. and Pacific Rim nations, is considered certain to pass.
And it is TPP that has Bachman, Warren and many others across the political spectrum up in arms.
In fact, TPP has something for almost everyone to hate.
- Unions such as the powerful AFL-CIO are concerned it will hurt the American job market and depress wages.
- Environmentalists fear the deal will lead to lax protections.
- Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Rush Limbaugh have both criticized the secrecy of the details in the deal, which the public cannot see until 60 days before Congress votes.
- Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., is concerned it will turn over important congressional powers to a new international body, create an economic union akin to a “nascent European Union,” and prevent lawmakers from removing any objectionable provisions. He is also alarmed that the deal could be used to accelerate the immigration of foreign workers at a time when Americans are hurting for jobs.
Bachmann told WND she objected to the way TPP would, “Empower the president and cut out congressional influence.”
And she was in accord with the unions and Warren when she said it would “lead to American jobs leaving the U.S.”
But it was Bachmann’s critique of what the deal would do to America’s place in the world that really seemed to be echoed by Warren’s concerns.
The lioness of the right told WND that the TPP deal “will culminate in less U.S. sovereignty and easier assimilation towards one world, global economic and political structuring. This leads to a further reducing of America’s best interests.”
Warren spelled out very similar thinking in great detail in her op-ed piece.
She zeroed in on a little-known aspect of the deal previously leaked to the press called “Investor-State Dispute Settlement,” or ISDS, which would especially “undermine U.S. sovereignty.”
That provision, Warren wrote, would give “foreign corporations special rights to challenge our laws outside of our legal system,” and allow them to potentially “pick up huge payouts from taxpayers — without ever stepping foot in a U.S. court.”
To illustrate, she gave a hypothetical example of the U.S. banning a toxic gasoline additive out of health and environmental concerns.
“If a foreign company that makes the toxic chemical opposes the law, it would normally have to challenge it in a U.S. court. But with ISDS, the company could skip the U.S. courts and go before an international panel of arbitrators. If the company won, the ruling couldn’t be challenged in U.S. courts, and the arbitration panel could require American taxpayers to cough up millions — and even billions — of dollars in damages.”
It gets worse, she noted.
That arbitration panel wouldn’t consist of independent judges, but “highly paid corporate lawyers would go back and forth between representing corporations one day and sitting in judgment the next.”
What incentive would they have, she wondered rhetorically, to ever rule against companies with which they might hope to do business the next day?
Worse yet, only international investors would get to use the arbitration panel. And international investors are , by and large, giant corporations.
Saying, “This isn’t a partisan issue,” Warren explicitly called upon right-leaning politicians to oppose the deal.
“Conservatives who believe in U.S. sovereignty should be outraged that ISDS would shift power from American courts, whose authority is derived from our Constitution, to unaccountable international tribunals.”
She also saw reasons for Americans of all political persuasions to oppose TPP.
Meanwhile, another controversial aspect of TPA has suddenly erupted.
Immigration specialists have told Breitbart that leaked details of another trade deal would “massively expand” Obama’s power to increase immigration without regard for U.S. law.
The paper reported, “The president’s Trade in Services Act (TiSA) documents, one of the three different close-to-completely-negotiated deals that would be fast-tracked making up the president’s trade agreement, show Obamatrade, in fact, unilaterally alters current U.S. immigration law.”
Does the Army expect that there will soon be “disaster stricken” areas all over the country? As you will see in this article, a job advertisement has been posted on a federal website seeking workers that “will provide emergency support to disaster stricken areas throughout the US“.
This was originally reported by Shepard Ambellas of Intellihub, but it is not receiving nearly as much attention as it perhaps should. What parts of the nation does the U.S. Army believe will soon be “disaster stricken”? By itself, this job ad wouldn’t be raising that many eyebrows, but when you combine this with the unusual number of “military training exercises” that are taking place all around the country and with the very strange movements of military equipment that have been reported recently, it gives the appearance that the U.S. military is feverishly making preparations for something big.
You can find the job advertisement that I mentioned above right here. The following is an excerpt from that job posting…
Employees occupying these positions will provide emergency support to disaster stricken areas throughout the US. Employees must pass a stringent medical screening and be prepared to live and work in extremely austere conditions. Work schedule will initially be arduous, with much overtime. Sleeping arrangements may be limited to using a sleeping bag or in the vehicle used to move from location to location. The duty station for pay purposes for these positions is Kennewick, WA with possible 75% or Greater Business Travel in various locations throughout the US.
Provides emergency support to disaster stricken areas throughout the US.
The duty station for pay purposes for these positions is Kennewick, WA.
The duty station for pay purposes for these positions is Kennewick, WA.
On the surface, this ad could certainly be interpreted quite a number of different ways. And maybe there is nothing strange about this ad at all. But the reason why it is raising so many eyebrows is because of the overall context of what is happening right now.
An unusual number of large scale military exercises are being held all over America in 2015. In the alternative media, most of the focus has been on the upcoming Jade Helmexercise, but that is only one of many that are being conducted.
And sometimes, local residents are not even being warned in advance that a major exercise is going to be held in their community. This was certainly the case with one that took place in Flint, Michigan recently…
Yes, holding military exercises in U.S. cities is certainly nothing new. But in 2015 it appears that we are witnessing an unprecedented amount of activity. It is almost as if preparations are being made for some really big event. A recent Intellihub articlesummarized some of the things that we have been witnessing lately…
Do those at the top of the food chain anticipate that some very unusual event will happen later this year?
I wish that I had all the answers. But without a doubt, all of this military activity around the nation seems quite unusual. And of course if the purpose for all of this activity is to prepare for some big event that is coming, they are not going to tell us in advance anyway.
So what do you think is going on? Please feel free to add to the discussion by posting a comment below…
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