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On July 19, the Trump administration announced that it would end the CIA’s covert program aimed at arming and training terrorist-linked “moderate rebels” in Syria, sparking hope among some Trump supporters that he was finally enacting the anti-interventionist rhetoric of his campaign. However, a recently released report shows that the Pentagon has picked up the slack left by the end of the CIA’s program — pumping billions of dollars worth of weapons into the hands of Syrian “rebels,” while attempting to mask the paper trail and their suppliers’ ties to organized crime. The report, published Tuesday by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), provides conclusive evidence that the Pentagon plans to provide up to $2.2 billion in weapons to Syrian “rebel” groups, particularly Kurdish militant groups like the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). While the Pentagon has been arming “rebels” since 2015, the Department of Defense began requesting increased funding for the program once the CIA covert arms program was ostensibly slated to shut down

While the Pentagon has been arming “rebels” since 2015, the Department of Defense began requesting increased funding for the program once the CIA covert arms program was ostensibly slated to shut down. The Pentagon has requested an additional $322.5 million for the financial year ending October 2017 and $261.9 million for the following 12 months. For fiscal years 2017 and 2018, the budget for the program has been set at $584 million while another $900 million has been earmarked to continue the program through 2022.

Former President Barack Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice ordered U.S. spy agencies to produce “detailed spreadsheets” of legal phone calls involving Donald Trump and his aides when he was running for president, according to former U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova. “What was produced by the intelligence community at the request of Ms. Rice were detailed spreadsheets of intercepted phone calls with unmasked Trump associates in perfectly legal conversations with individuals,” diGenova told The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group Monday. “The overheard conversations involved no illegal activity by anybody of the Trump associates, or anyone they were speaking with,” diGenova said. “In short, the only apparent illegal activity was the unmasking of the people in the calls.”

Other official sources with direct knowledge and who requested anonymity confirmed to TheDCNF diGenova’s description of surveillance reports Rice ordered one year before the 2016 presidential election. Also on Monday, Fox News and Bloomberg News, citing multiple sources reported that Rice had requested the intelligence information that was produced in a highly organized operation. Fox said the unmasked names of Trump aides were given to officials at the National Security Council (NSC), the Department of Defense, James Clapper, President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, and John Brennan, Obama’s CIA Director. Joining Rice in the alleged White House operations was her deputy Ben Rhodes, according to Fox. Critics of the atmosphere prevailing throughout the Obama administration’s last year in office point to former Obama Deputy Defense Secretary Evelyn Farkas who admitted in a March 2 television interview on MSNBC that she “was urging my former colleagues,” to “get as much information as you can, get as much intelligence as you can, before President Obama leaves the administration.”

Michael Doran, former NSC senior director, told TheDCNF Monday that “somebody blew a hole in the wall between national security secrets and partisan politics.” This “was a stream of information that was supposed to be hermetically sealed from politics and the Obama administration found a way to blow a hole in that wall,” he said.

Israel is trying to “suck America into” a war with Iran that could destabilize the Middle East and lead to a world war in much the way that the imperial rivalries in 1914 led to the First World War, Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, warned in Washington last week. A war with Iran, he said, could “perhaps terminate the experiment that is Israel and do irreparable damage to the empire that America has become.” But Israeli leaders want a war, and they are pushing one with the support of their American political friends, including Democrats like Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, whose overheated rhetoric about Iran recalls Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propagandist, Wilkerson said. Another pro-war faction are “warmed-over neoconservatives” who got us into the Iraq war. “I’ve been there, done that; I don’t need the tour,” he said. Wilkerson, a retired army colonel who now teaches government at Washington-area universities, served Powell during the runup to the Iraq war. He spoke last Friday at the annual Israel lobby conference at the National Press Club, sponsored by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and Institute for Research: Middle East Policy. The conference aired on C-SPAN. I have transcribed his speech below. Wilkerson’s remarks are important because his analysis of the tail wagging the dog is so cogent and frightening at a time when the premier Israel lobby group AIPAC is pushing for action against Iran in Syria. Also for Wilkerson’s respectful take on Vladimir Putin; for his unvarnished opinion of the Israel lobby, so different from the tame piece he published in The New York Times a month ago; and for his comments about Israel attacking the USS Liberty in 1967 and stealing US uranium to build a nuclear weapon with LBJ’s knowledge.

A Syrian militia led by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) declared jihad on April 6 against US and allied forces in Syria. Since 2017, the US has twice come into direct contact with the group. The IRGC is likely to boost its military support to the group as it explores avenues to drive the US out of Syria. The Baqir Brigade (AKA Liwa al Baqir or Liwa al Imam al Baqir) published on its social media page a statement with the Baqqara Tribe, to which its members belong. The tribe claims descent from the fifth Shiite Imam, Muḥammad al Baqir, the brigade’s namesake.

It declared “the onset of the military and jihadist activists against the American occupation and its allies in Syria” and vowed to “liberate every single inch of the precious homeland” from American and Turkish troops, urging Syrians to stay away from the sites and bases of “the coward American occupier.” The militia pledged to continue the path of resistance in line with the allegiance they gave to Syrian President Bashar al Assad, saying that they would “defend the unity of the Syrian Arab Republic and the Islamic nation.”

The Baqir Brigade has repeated its threats against the US in response to a potential strike against Assad following chemical weapons use in the Damascene suburb of Douma. “If you want it to be a war, let it be a war and you will see a holocaust that will befall your bases in Syria and Iraq at first,” the militia commander Al Hajj Baqir reportedly said this week.

On March 16, Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe hours before McCabe's retirement, allegedly for showing a lack of candor under oath. A week later, McCabe penned a response in the Washington Post, calling the accusation “not true.” He stated that he “did not knowingly mislead or lie to investigators,” and that, at worst, he “was not clear in [his] responses.” On Friday, April 13, the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released a report on the allegations related to McCabe, concluding that he “lacked candor, including under oath, on multiple occasions in connection with describing his role in connection with a disclosure to the [Wall Street Journal]” in violation of FBI policy, and that his “disclosure of the existence of an ongoing investigation in the manner described in this report violated the FBI’s and the Department’s media policy and constituted misconduct.” The report makes no comment on whether McCabe's dismissal was justified. McCabe’s lawyer, Michael Bromwich, quickly responded with a statement refuting the claims in the OIG report.

McCabe’s lawyer, former Justice Department Inspector General Michael Bromwich, responded to the OIG report in a statement released on Friday. Bromwich expresses concerns about the speed at which the process of McCabe’s dismissal proceeded, describing the “rush to termination” as “nothing short of extraordinary.” He disputes the lack of candor findings, which he also discusses in more depth in a separate statement described below.

The report on McCabe is only part of a larger investigation by the OIG. Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz is reportedly planning to release a broader report on the FBI’s actions during the 2016 election in the coming weeks.

The Justice Department Inspector General’s report on Andrew McCabe, the fired Deputy Director of the FBI, is as scathing as press reports say. According to the Inspector General, McCabe leaked dirt on the Justice Department, then misled FBI Director James Comey about the source of the leak, then misled leak investigators over and over again. It’s hard to read the report and feel that McCabe’s firing wasn’t earned. And yet, for all that, there’s a bit of low tragedy in McCabe’s tale. For he was disgraced not because he was evil, but because events conspired to turn his talent for regular old government information management into a fatal flaw.  What McCabe did is probably indistinguishable from the kind of lying and half-lying that happens in every corner of government every day of the week. He would have gotten away with it if the FBI and Justice Department had not become the focus of historic partisan ire.  Here’s an overview of the mess, as the Inspector General’s report lays it out

The huge story about bribery by a New York hedge fund in Africa should have been on the front page, but the New York Times buried it in the financial section. And the paper did not even name one of the men at the heart of it, the billionaire Israeli businessman Dan Gertler. The Democratic Republic of Congo is one of the poorest countries in the world, parts of it torn by chronic violence, and Dan Gertler is one of the people most responsible for its awful state. But the New York Times has never sent any of its army of reporters to look into the crimes of Dan Gertler. Here’s what just happened: a $39 billion New York hedge fund, Och-Ziff Capital Management, pleaded guilty to conspiring to bribe African officials, and agreed to pay a $413 million fine. The U.S. government prosecution brief did not directly name bribers and bribees. But broad hints in government documents made it clear that Gertler, on behalf of the hedge fund, had given $100 million, some of it in cash, to, among others, the DR Congo president, Joseph Kabila, for investment opportunities in diamonds and mining. Other media, including Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal, were not squeamish about naming Gertler. The Journal‘s running coverage of the Och-Ziff/DR Congo story has repeatedly put Gertler at front and center of the corruption.

The revelations in the bribery case are earth-shaking. Although rumors of mega-corruption in DR Congo are nothing new, Jason Stearns of the respected Congo Research Group points out it is the first time that “we have a solid paper trail proving that the senior Congolese officials including the Congolese president himself were direct beneficiaries of over $100 million in bribes from foreign companies.” The 42-year-old Gertler is a notorious shadowy figure in the poor central African nation. He befriended President Joseph Kabila two decades ago, and he is widely suspected of snapping up mining concessions at bargain prices and promptly selling them to mining companies at enormous profit. One estimate, a few years ago, was that the Congolese people have been cheated out of as much as $5.5 billion — a significant sum anywhere, but especially painful in a poor nation whose entire government budget for everything one year was as little as $7.2 billion.

The top commander and clerical representative of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) external operations wing, the Qods Force, recently delivered speeches in Tehran and Damascus commemorating the first anniversary of the death of Brigadier General Hossein Hamedani, the most senior IRGC commander killed in the Syrian civil war. IRGC-QF commander Major General Qassem Soleimani delivered a speech on Oct. 5 in Tehran. Senior IRGC commanders and Iranian government officials were in attendance. “The problem of the enemies is the centrality of Syria in the resistance front and relations with the Islamic Republic,” Soleimani said. “We do not only defend Syria in this country, but we defend Islam and the Islamic Republic of Iran, as well, because DAESH [pejorative for the Islamic State] and takfiri groups were not formed for Syria, these were formed for Iran.” Soleimani’s statement underscores the strategic importance of Syria to Tehran. He and other senior officials justify their involvement in Syria by claiming that the fight there keeps Iran safe from threats like the Islamic State and Sunni extremists.

“The takfiris have been or are being defeated in all fronts today,” Soleimani said. “I believe that the Syrian people are undefeatable with the support of their government. Europe today pays a heavy security price, and the reason is their support of these terrorist groups.

The US has launched missiles against three radar sites in the Houthi-controlled part of Yemen. The strikes came in response to two attacks on the USS Mason, which operates in international waters off the Red Sea coast of Yemen. The Houthis are also thought to have fired rockets at an United Arab Emirates military vessel earlier this month. The US military “targeted radar sites involved in the recent missile launches threatening USS Mason and other vessels operating in international waters in the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandeb,” according to a statement by Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook. The Bab al-Mandeb is a strait located between Yemen and the Horn of Africa. “These limited self-defense strikes were conducted to protect our personnel, our ships, and our freedom of navigation in this important maritime passageway,” Cook continued. Cook added that the “United States will respond to any further threat to our ships and commercial traffic, as appropriate, and will continue to maintain our freedom of navigation in the Red Sea, the Bab al-Mandeb, and elsewhere around the world.”

The US has launched missiles against three radar sites in the Houthi-controlled part of Yemen. The strikes came in response to two attacks on the USS Mason, which operates in international waters off the Red Sea coast of Yemen. The Houthis are also thought to have fired rockets at an United Arab Emirates military vessel earlier this month. The US military “targeted radar sites involved in the recent missile launches threatening USS Mason and other vessels operating in international waters in the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandeb,” according to a statement by Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook. The Bab al-Mandeb is a strait located between Yemen and the Horn of Africa. “These limited self-defense strikes were conducted to protect our personnel, our ships, and our freedom of navigation in this important maritime passageway,” Cook continued. Cook added that the “United States will respond to any further threat to our ships and commercial traffic, as appropriate, and will continue to maintain our freedom of navigation in the Red Sea, the Bab al-Mandeb, and elsewhere around the world.”

Separately, the US Navy released a video, just over one minute long, of the USS Nitze launching Tomahawk cruise missiles at the radar sites. The cruise missile were fired just hours after the USS Mason was forced to respond to an incoming missile for the second time this week. No one was injured in the failed missile attacks, but the USS Mason had to employ “defensive countermeasures.”

Russia is ordering all of its officials to fly home any relatives living abroad amid heightened tensions over the prospect of global war, it has been claimed.Politicians and high-ranking figures are said to have received a warning from president Vladimir Putin to bring their loved-ones home to the 'Motherland', according to local media.It comes after Putin cancelled a planned visit to France amid a furious row over Moscow's role in the Syrian conflict and just days after it emerged the Kremlin had moved nuclear-capable missiles near to the Polish border.Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has also warned that the world is at a 'dangerous point' due to rising tensions between Russia and the US.According to the Daily Star, administration staff, regional administrators, lawmakers of all levels and employees of public corporations have been ordered to take their children out of foreign schools immediately.Failure to act will see officials jeopardising their chances of promotion, local media has reported.The exact reason for the order is not yet clear.But Russian political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky is quoted by the Daily Star as saying: 'This is all part of the package of measures to prepare elites to some 'big war'.' Relations between Russia and the US are at their lowest since the Cold War and have soured in recent days after Washington pulled the plug on Syria talks and accused Russia of hacking attacks.

The Kremlin has also suspended a series of nuclear pacts, including a symbolic cooperation deal to cut stocks of weapons-grade plutonium. Just days ago, it was reported that Russia had moved nuclear-capable missiles near to the Polish border as tensions escalated between the world’s largest nation and the West.The Iskander missiles sent to Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave on the Baltic Sea between Nato members Poland and Lithuania, are now within range of major Western cities including Berlin.Polish officials – whose capital Warsaw is potentially threatened – have described the move as of the 'highest concern'. Putin's decision to cancel his Paris visit came a day after French President Francois Hollande said Syrian forces had committed a 'war crime' in the battered city of Aleppo with the support of Russian air strikes.Putin had been due in Paris on October 19 to inaugurate a spiritual centre at a new Russian Orthodox church near the Eiffel Tower, but Hollande had insisted his Russian counterpart also took part in talks with him about Syria.The unprecedented cancellation of a visit so close to being finalised is a 'serious step... reminiscent of the Cold War', said Russian foreign policy analyst Fyodor Lukyanov.'This is part of the broader escalation in the tensions between Russia and the West, and Russia and NATO,' he told AFP.The Kremlin has also been angered over the banning of the Russian Paralympic team from the Rio Olympics amid claims of state-sponsored doping of its athletes.

Meanwhile, the top advisor to US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has said the FBI is investigating Russia's possible role in hacking thousands of his personal emails.But Russian officials have vigorously rejected accusations of meddling in the US presidential elections and dismissed allegations that Moscow was behind a series of recent hacks on US institutions. Retired Russian Lt. Gen. Evgeny Buzhinsky told the BBC: 'Of course there is a reaction. As far as Russia sees it, as Putin sees it, it is full-scale confrontation on all fronts. If you want a confrontation, you'll get one.'But it won't be a confrontation that doesn't harm the interests of the United States. You want a confrontation, you'll get one everywhere.'Earlier this week British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson waded into the row, calling for anti-war campaigners to protest outside the Russian embassy in London.Johnson said the 'wells of outrage are growing exhausted' and anti-war groups were not expressing sufficient outrage at the conflict in Aleppo.'Where is the Stop the War Coalition at the moment? Where are they?' he said during a parliamentary debate.

Much is due to the fame of the White Helmets Syrians, if they're coming in a few days than 1.5 million signatures the petition on Avaaz  Protect Aleppo's children, now! Asking for no-fly zone (a successful workhorse for Avaaz also to time of Libya, on the basis of false information). And award-winning source doc The White Helmets or white helmets, autodefinitisi Syria Civil Defense, active in areas controlled Syrian armed opposition, have recently received the Right Livelihood Award , or "alternative Nobel", normally assigned since 1990 to people who have really helped mankind - the first to receive it were an Egyptian architect of the poor and organization solutions for the vegetable against world hunger. In the words of the founder, " the award is intended to help the North find a wisdom to match the science he possesses, and the South to find a science to match the ancient wisdom that has ." Good intentions. The White Helmets Syrians are the "source" credited with many of the news coming from Aleppo East - for example on the use of "barrel bomb" or the "deliberate shelling of hospitals" - days ago in a twitter have put together the two crimes talking about a cowardly "attack on a hospital with bomb barrels." To be believed on bombs and hospital nature of the affected buildings, the helmets do not need proof, just a few photos of rubble. Of course, what they fail to tell the same International Red Cross admitted to our question (we preserve their email): the 'hospitals' in opposition areas are in no way signaled, rather they are well hidden.

Those who support them and what they really do, they know a few. censored The White Helmets spread video in which always appear in the rubble with babies in their arms (parents, where are they?). But, nevertheless, their deeds are other videos that are real autodenunce, but that the world has chosen to ignore, or to censor. It 'just been cleared from the site of Change the petition that the anti-war activists network Syria Solidarity Movement had addressed to the organizers of the Nobel Prize (which have already been received from: Obama, Kissinger, pears, European Union ...). The petition was titled very clearly , " Do not give the Nobel Prize in 2016 to the Syrian White Helmets ". But a few days, if you try to type on the search engine, you will see this inscription: " The petition is not available ." The authors denounce the removal, stating : " He had collected 2,800 signatures and thousands of comments. This is a clear case of censorship . " So we summarize the news on the White Helmets contained in the aforesaid petition, supported with a video (more pictures can be found at the link above). Activists wrote: " Please watch the video of Steve Ezzedine Al Qaeda with a facelift  . The White Helmets will say neutral, independent, self-financed, exclusively civilian. It does not. Have received more than $ 40 million from USAID and the British Foreign Office, entities directly involved in the conflict in Syria. I am not helpless: there are photographs and films of the group members who support Al Nusra Front / Al Qaeda. More photos and video showing their 'activists' while attending the execution of civilians or while cheering on the bodies of dead soldiers. The White Helmets work only in areas controlled by armed extremist groups. Fomenting sectarianism in Syria, asking for example to set fire Kafarya and Foua two Shiite villages besieged by five years in the area of Idlib. They have repeatedly called for the no-fly zone in Libya, whose results are seen. " Added: the White Helmets or Syria Civil Defense are the highlight of the stated Maydayrescue , organization "humanitarian" founded by former British Colonel James Le Mesurier based in Dubai and Amsterdam, and training centers in Turkey and Jordan.

How did you do? One explanation for this world enchantment for a group to say the least objectionable? And 'the effect' chain of suffering. " In April their leader Raed Saleh had been invited to the United States to pick up a humanitarian award assigned by InterAction, a platform of 180 non-governmental organizations with development projects in all countries of the world "The voice united for global change with lay and religious members, small and large, engaged with the most vulnerable populations. " (For a mixup in communication, Saleh had been dismissed as a suspect of terrorism immigration Use on arrival. Then the US State Department had the face to say that this was not about the White Helmets). Interaction between members of perhaps counted on the fingers of one hand those that have to do with the Syrian armed opposition. There is, for example, the Syrian American Medical Association, specializes in the complaints of hospitals bombed. But all the other organizations that Syria do not know and do not mind (because maybe riforestano the Sahel, or dealing with the blind, or fair trade in Asia, Latin America or build latrines) they trust their sisters' informed ». And so, in one stroke, 180 NGOs all over the world take the White Helmets as heroes, they spread the word ...

As reports of a second Clinton-funded dossier have emerged, some in Washington are wondering who may have seen the alleged document.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has officially gained agency-wide access to a nationwide license plate recognition database, according to a contract finalized earlier this month. The system gives the agency access to billions of license plate records and new powers of real-time location tracking, raising significant concerns from civil libertarians. The source of the data is not named in the contract, but an ICE representative said the data came from Vigilant Solutions, the leading network for license plate recognition data. “Like most other law enforcement agencies, ICE uses information obtained from license plate readers as one tool in support of its investigations,” spokesperson Dani Bennett said in a statement. “ICE is not seeking to build a license plate reader database, and will not collect nor contribute any data to a national public or private database through this contract.”

While it collects few photos itself, Vigilant Solutions has amassed a database of more than 2 billion license plate photos by ingesting data from partners like vehicle repossession agencies and other private groups. Vigilant also partners with local law enforcement agencies, often collecting even more data from camera-equipped police cars. The result is a massive vehicle-tracking network generating as many as 100 million sightings per month, each tagged with a date, time, and GPS coordinates of the sighting.

ICE agents would be able to query that database in two ways. A historical search would turn up every place a given license plate has been spotted in the last five years, a detailed record of the target’s movements. That data could be used to find a given subject’s residence or even identify associates if a given car is regularly spotted in a specific parking lot. “Knowing the previous locations of a vehicle can help determine the whereabouts of subjects of criminal investigations or priority aliens to facilitate their interdiction and removal,” an official privacy assessment explains. “In some cases, when other leads have gone cold, the availability of commercial LPR data may be the only viable way to find a subject.” ICE agents can also receive instantaneous email alerts whenever a new record of a particular plate is found — a system known internally as a “hot list.” (The same alerts can also be funneled to the Vigilant’s iOS app.) According to the privacy assessment, as many as 2,500 license plates could be uploaded to the hot list in a single batch, although the assessment does not detail how often new batches can be added. With sightings flooding in from police dashcams and stationary readers on bridges and toll booths, it would be hard for anyone on the list to stay unnoticed for long. Those powers are particularly troubling given ICE’s recent move to expand deportations beyond criminal offenders, fueling concerns of politically motivated enforcement. In California, state officials have braced for rumored deportation sweeps targeted at sanctuary cities. In New York, community leaders say they’ve been specifically targeted for deportation as a result of their activism. With automated license plate recognition, that targeting would only grow more powerful. For civil liberties groups, the implications go far beyond immigration.

Today at joint press appearance with Benjamin Netanyahu in Davos, Switzerland, Donald Trump bragged that the U.S. had taken “the toughest issue” — Jerusalem– “off the table” with his embassy announcement. “We don’t have to talk about it anymore.” But if the Palestinians don’t accept his Jerusalem announcement and don’t agree to negotiate peace with the Israelis, the U.S. was “going to have nothing to do with it any longer.” Trump issued that warning in the context of threatening to withdraw hundreds of millions of aid from Palestine unless its leaders negotiate. When they disrespected us a week ago by not allowing our great Vice President to see them — and we give them hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and support… That money is on the table, and that money is not going to them unless they sit down and negotiate peace. Because I can tell you that Israel does want to make peace. And they’re going to have to want to make peace too, or we’re going to have nothing to do with it any longer. The president also said that the U.S. will have a “small version” of the Embassy opened in Jerusalem ahead of schedule in 2019.

hough last month’s unilateral bombing of Syria by the U.S., U.K. and France came and went, the threat of foreign military intervention targeting the Syrian government remains, particularly given Syria’s success in defeating the foreign-funded terrorist proxies that have prolonged the Syrian conflict for seven long years. While Israel seems to have taken it upon itself to militarily intervene in Syria to prevent the Syrian government from continuing to reclaim its lost territory, the other major powers that have long sought the end of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have seemed to step back from intervening in Syria, unless another chemical weapons attack were to take place and be blamed on Assad. For that reason, a recent article, published in early May by Russian news agency RIA Novosti, should raise concern, as it exposes alleged plans for another gas-attack provocation in Syria. According to the report, preparations for a staged chemical weapons attack began late last month as civilians were relocated to a territory near Jafra oil field in Eastern Syria, where they will participate in a staged filming of a chemical-weapons attack scene. According to South Front, a U.S. military garrison was recently established in this area. The report, based on the testimony of an anonymous member of the Syrian security services, claimed that an attack was being planned by U.S. security services and would employ “prohibited substances” against a group of civilians. The source also noted that the operation itself was being led by a former Daesh (ISIS) militant, Mishan Idris Hamash. Though this may seem unusual, the U.S. and its proxy force in Eastern Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), have been known to collaborate with former Daesh forces, including militias composed of former Daesh fighters under the SDF banner.

While no new information has since emerged that would corroborate Novosti’s report, it is true that the U.S. — as the occupying force in the area where the provocation is allegedly being planned – does have a motive to conduct such a false flag attack, as the U.S. and Israel stand to benefit the most were the worst to occur. As MintPress has reported over the course of the war in Syria, the U.S. has long had the goal of regime change in Syria and it – along with many of its allies – have helped foment and prolong the Syrian conflict in pursuit of this end. However, timing here is key. Such a provocation, and the retaliation it would inspire, would come just as Israel and Syria are the closest to outright war in decades, as Israeli airstrikes targeting Syria earlier this week were extensive and have led to the relocation of significant military assets, including tanks, to the Golan Heights, the portion of southern Syria under illegal Israeli occupation. Were a U.S. and Western military intervention – provoked by another alleged chemical weapons attack blamed on Assad – to occur while Israel is actively preparing for a major conflict with Syria, it would put pressure on Assad from the U.S.-occupied east while Israel attacks from the south, making any military campaign against the Syrian government much more effective for those forces that have long sought the destruction of the Syrian state.

The Taliban are operating in all regions of Afghanistan and casualties among Afghan police have increased, according to the Ministry of Interior (MoI). The MoI statements confirms reporting by FDD’s Long War Journal and contradicts a recent press briefing by General John Nicholson, the outgoing commander of Resolute Support and US Forces- Afghanistan. The Taliban has launched “military offensives on multiple fronts across the country” and security forces “are tackling insurgents as part of their preplanned operations in at least 14 provinces,” TOLONews reported based on statements made by the spokesman for the MoI. “This year the activities of the enemy has increased compared to previous years. The number of our operations also indicates that this year the number of casualties unfortunately has also increased,” MoI spokesman Najib Danish said, according to TOLONews. TOLONews claims that its sources within the Interior Ministry state that “currently on average 50 members of the security forces are being killed and wounded each day.” Danish’s statement that the Taliban are operating in all areas of the country confirms a mid-May report by published by FDD’s Long War Journal. In that report, LWJ determined that the Taliban has targeted Afghan government forces in nearly all of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, as the military focuses on the Taliban threat in Helmand and Kandahar. Additionally, LWJ reported, based on statements from Afghanistan’s Ministry of Defense, that the Taliban directly threaten seven provincial capitals. Additionally, the MoI’s confirmation that the Taliban is on the offensive is backed by data compiled by LWJ on the status of Afghanistan’s districts. Currently the Taliban controls or contests 60 percent of Afghanistan’s 407 districts. These statements directly contradict the highly optimistic assessment of the situation in Afghanistan given by Nicholson, as well as statements by Pentagon Spokesperson Dana White, who has described the Taliban as “desperate,” and said it “has lost ground” and “has not had the initiative.”

In its last months the Obama administration ordered the intelligence agencies to collect and distribute information of contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia. This to prevent any change by the Trump administration of the hostile policy towards Russia that the Obama administration instituted. The intent was also to give the intelligence services blackmail material against the Trump crew to prevent any changes in their undue, freewheeling independence. The above is reported in a little discussed New York Times piece published yesterday. The reporting angle captured in the headline is biased to set the Obama efforts into a positive light: Obama Administration Rushed to Preserve Intelligence of Russian Election Hacking.

Make no mistake by straight-reading that headline. Not single shred of evidence has been provided that "Russia hacked the election" or had anything to do with various leaks of Clinton related emails. A lot of fluff and chaff was thrown around but not even one tiny bit of evidence. The Obama effort was clearly to sabotage the announced policy of the incoming administration of seeking better relations with Russia. Obama intended to undermine the will of the voters by abusing instruments of the state. Excerpts from the piece: In the Obama administration’s last days, some White House officials scrambled to spread information about  ... possible contacts between associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump and Russians — across the government. Former American officials say they had two aims: to ensure that such meddling isn’t duplicated in future American or European elections, and to leave a clear trail of intelligence for government investigators.

A month after President Trump ordered a military strike on the Syrian regime as punishment for using chemical weapons, his administration has yet to offer a rationale for what lawful authority he had to carry out the attack.Now, a government watchdog group run by former Obama administration lawyers is suing to force the Trump administration to disclose its legal theory — or concede that it launched the April 6 attack without thinking about the law. While the attack attracted bipartisan support as a political and policy matter, its legal basis was disputed.The United States had no self-defense rationale, and neither Congress nor the United Nations Security Council authorized the attack, raising questions about the scope and limits of Mr. Trump’s power as a matter of domestic law and the United States’ power as a matter of international law. The Trump administration has not answered them.On Monday, the watchdog group, Protect Democracy, filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act for all emails, memos and other records discussing Mr. Trump’s legal authority to launch the strike.

(But according to an oft-cited Pew Poll, 33% of Democrats sympathize with Israel versus 31% who sympathize with Palestine, indicating this majority no longer exists among Democrats. And according to a recent Brookings poll, 60% of Democrats “now support imposing economic sanctions or more serious action” against Israel in reaction to Israeli settlement expansion.)

More than a month after Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) requested information about US Customs and Border Protection's practice of searching cell phones at US borders and airports, he's still waiting for answers—but he's not waiting to introduce legislation to end the practice. "It's very concerning that [the Department of Homeland Security] hasn't managed to answer my questions about the number of digital searches at the border, five weeks after I requested that basic information," Wyden, a leading congressional advocate for civil liberties and privacy, told Mother Jones on Tuesday through a spokesman. "If CBP were to undertake a system of indiscriminate digital searches, that would distract CBP from its core mission, dragging time and attention away from catching the bad guys." Wyden's request to DHS and CBP came on the heels of a February 18 report from the Associated Press of a "fivefold increase" in electronic media searches in fiscal year 2016 over the previous year, from fewer than 5,000 to nearly 24,000. It also followed Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly's suggestion that visitors from a select group of countries, mainly Muslim, might be required to hand over passwords to their social media accounts as a condition of entry. (That comment came a week after President Donald Trump first unveiled his executive order⁠ banning travel from seven majority-Muslim countries.) The Knight First Amendment Institute, which advocates for freedom of speech, sued DHS on Monday for records relating to the seizure of electronic devices at border checkpoints. Wyden requested similar data on CBP device searches and demands for travelers' passwords. "There are well-established legal rules governing how law enforcement agencies may obtain data from social media companies and email providers," Wyden wrote in the February 20 letter to DHS and CBP. "By requesting a traveler's credentials and then directly accessing their data, CBP would be short-circuiting the vital checks and balances that exist in our current system." The senator wrote that the searches not only violate civil liberties but could reduce international business travel or force companies to outfit employees with "burner" laptops and mobile devices, "which some firms already use when employees visit nations like China."

"Folks are going to be less likely to travel freely to the US with the devices they need if they don't feel their sensitive business information is going to be safe at the border," Wyden said Tuesday, noting that CBP can copy the information it views on a device. "Then they can store that information and search it without a warrant." Wyden will soon introduce legislation to force law enforcement to obtain warrants before searching devices at the border. His bill would also prevent CBP from compelling travelers to reveal passwords to their accounts. A DHS spokesman said in a statement that "all travelers arriving to the US are subject to CBP inspection," which includes inspection of any electronic devices they may be carrying. Access to these devices, the spokesman said, helps CBP agents ascertain the identity and admissibility of people from other countries and "deter the entry of possible terrorists, terrorist weapons, controlled substances," and other prohibited items. "CBP electronic media searches," the spokesman said, "have resulted in arrests for child pornography, evidence helpful in combating terrorist activity, violations of export controls, convictions for intellectual property rights violations, and visa fraud discoveries." In a March 27 USA Today op-ed, Joseph B. Maher, DHS acting general counsel, compared device searches to searching luggage. "Just as Customs is charged with inspecting luggage, vehicles and cargo containers upon arrival to the USA, there are circumstances in this digital age when we must inspect an electronic device for violations of the law," Maher wrote.

But in a unanimous 2014 ruling, the Supreme Court found that police need warrants to search cell phones. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the opinion that cell phones are "such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life that the proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude they were an important feature of human anatomy." In response to a Justice Department argument that cell phones were akin to wallets, purses, and address books, Roberts wrote: "That is like saying a ride on horseback is materially indistinguishable from a flight to the moon." The law, however, applies differently at the border because of the "border search doctrine," which has traditionally given law enforcement wider latitude under the Fourth Amendment to perform searches at borders and international airports. CBP says it keeps tight controls on its searches and is sensitive to personal privacy. Wyden isn't convinced. "Given Trump's worrying track record so far, and the ease with which CBP could change its guidelines, it's important we create common-sense statutory protections for Americans' liberty and security," he says.