U.S. air strikes in Deir Ez-Zor, Syria, killed 62 Syrian servicemen and injured at least another 100. The Syrian General Command denounced the air strikes as blatant aggression and evidence that the USA supports the Islamic State. The Syrian Foreign Ministry called on the UN Security Council to condemn the aggression. The U.S.’ Department of Defense said it immediately halted the attacks after receiving information that Syrian military had been struck instead of ISIL. Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin described the air strikes as a violation of the ceasefire agreement.
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62 Syrian Soldiers Killed in US Air Strikes against ISIL - nsnbc international | nsnbc ... - 0 views
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The General Command (GC) of the Syrian Army and Armed Forces reported that US alliance aircrafts targeted at 5 pm on Saturday, a Syrian Arab Army (SAA) position at the al-Tharda Mountain in the surroundings of Deir Ez-Zor Airport. The GC stressed that the air strikes, besides costing lives and equipment, paved the way for ISIS (Islamic State, ISIL, Daesh) to attack the position and take control of it. SAA forces have since reasserted control over the area. The General Command issued a statement saying that this is a serious and blatant aggression against the Syrian Arab Republic and its army, and constitutes conclusive evidence that the United States and its allies support ISIS and other terrorist organizations. The GC also underpinned that this incident reveals the falseness of claims that members of the U.S.-led coalition are fighting terrorism. The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed the air strikes, stating that 4 American jet fighters (2 F-16 jets and 2 A-10 jets) entered the Syrian airspace across the Iraqi border, and attacked a Syrian Arab Army position in al-Tharda Mountain in Deir Ez-Zor’s southeastern countryside.
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The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) explained that Syrian forces were mistakenly targeted and cited the complexity of the situation as one of the reasons for the incident. The DoD quotes the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) as stating that coalition officials halted an air strike in progress against an ISIL fighting position they had been tracking for a significant amount of time before the strike when Russian officials told them it was possible the personnel and vehicles targeted were part of the Syrian military. The location of the strike, south of Dayr Az Zawr, is in an area the coalition has struck in the past, CENTCOM officials said, and coalition members in the Combined Air Operations Center had earlier informed Russian counterparts of the upcoming strike. “It is not uncommon for the Coalition Air Operations Center to confer with Russian officials as a professional courtesy and to deconflict coalition and Russian aircraft, although such contact is not required by the current U.S.- Russia Memorandum of Understanding on safety of flight,” officials said in a statement. “Syria is a complex situation with various military forces and militias in close proximity, but coalition forces would not intentionally strike a known Syrian military unit,” officials said in the statement. “The coalition will review this strike and the circumstances surrounding it to see if any lessons can be learned.”
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It is worth noting that all military activities by the United States and members of the U.S.-led coalition in Syria are carried out in violation of international law which requires that such forces either have an authorization from the Syrian government, or act based on a UN Security Council resolution that has been adopted with the concurrent vote of all five permanent UN Security Council members.
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Where would we be today had the Syrian Army fired back with anti-aircraft missiles and downed their attackers? Or what if the Syrian Army had called in the Russian Air Force to defend them? Would we now be in World War III? There be profound dangers in a foreign policy that ignores international law.
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shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Nov 16
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NYPD Blows Whistle on New Hillary Emails: Money Laundering, Sex Crimes with Children, C... - 1 views
www.blacklistednews.com/...M.html
Auction 2016 Hillary-emails FBI NYPD Huma Weiner sex-crimes perjury Clinton-Foundation money-laundering obstruction
shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Nov 16
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New York Police Department detectives and prosecutors working an alleged underage sexting case against former Congressman Anthony Weiner have turned over a newly-found laptop he shared with wife Huma Abedin to the FBI with enough evidence “to put Hillary (Clinton) and her crew away for life,” NYPD sources told True Pundit. NYPD sources said Clinton’s “crew” also included several unnamed yet implicated members of Congress in addition to her aides and insiders. The NYPD seized the computer from Weiner during a search warrant and detectives discovered a trove of over 500,000 emails to and from Hillary Clinton, Abedin and other insiders during her tenure as secretary of state. The content of those emails sparked the FBI to reopen its defunct email investigation into Clinton on Friday.
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But new revelations on the contents of that laptop, according to law enforcement sources, implicate the Democratic presidential candidate, her subordinates, and even select elected officials in far more alleged serious crimes than mishandling classified and top secret emails, sources said. NYPD sources said these new emails include evidence linking Clinton herself and associates to: Money laundering Child exploitation Sex crimes with minors (children) Perjury Pay to play through Clinton Foundation Obstruction of justice Other felony crimes NYPD detectives and a NYPD Chief, the department’s highest rank under Commissioner, said openly that if the FBI and Justice Department fail to garner timely indictments against Clinton and co- conspirators, NYPD will go public with the damaging emails now in the hands of FBI Director James Comey and many FBI field offices. “What’s in the emails is staggering and as a father, it turned my stomach,” the NYPD Chief said. “There is not going to be any Houdini-like escape from what we found. We have copies of everything. We will ship them to Wikileaks or I will personally hold my own press conference if it comes to that.”
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The NYPD Chief said once Comey saw the alarming contents of the emails he was forced to reopen a criminal probe against Clinton. “People are going to prison,” he said. Meanwhile, FBI sources said Abedin and Weiner were cooperating with federal agents, who have taken over the non-sexting portions the case from NYPD. The husband-and-wife Clinton insiders are both shopping for separate immunity deals, sources said. “If they don’t cooperate they are going to see long sentences,” a federal law enforcement source said. NYPD sources said Weiner or Abedin stored all the emails in a massive Microsoft Outlook program on the laptop. The emails implicate other current and former members of Congress and one high-ranking Democratic Senator as having possibly engaged in criminal activity too, sources said. Prosecutors in the office of US Attorney Preet Bharara have issued a subpoena for Weiner’s cell phones and travel records, law enforcement sources confirmed. NYPD said it planned to order the same phone and travel records on Clinton and Abedin, however, the FBI said it was in the process of requesting the identical records. Law enforcement sources are particularly interested in cell phone activity and travel to the Bahamas, U.S. Virgin Islands and other locations that sources would not divulge.
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The new emails contain travel documents and itineraries indicating Hillary Clinton, President Bill Clinton, Weiner and multiple members of Congress and other government officials accompanied convicted pedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein on his Boeing 727 on multiple occasions to his private island in the U.S Virgin Islands, sources said. Epstein’s island has also been dubbed Orgy Island or Sex Slave Island where Epstein allegedly pimps out underage girls and boys to international dignitaries. Both NYPD and FBI sources confirm based on the new emails they now believe Hillary Clinton traveled as Epstein’s guest on at least six occasions, probably more when all the evidence is combed, sources said. Bill Clinton, it has been confirmed in media reports spanning recent years, that he too traveled with Epstein over 20 times to the island.
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According to other uncovered emails, Abedin and Clinton both sent and received thousands of classified and top secret documents to personal email accounts including Weiner’s unsecured campaign web site which is managed by Democratic political consultants in Washington D.C. Weiner maintained little known email accounts that the couple shared on the website anthonyweiner.com. Weiner, a former seven-term Democratic Congressman from New York, primarily used that domain to campaign for Congress and for his failed mayoral bid of New York City. At one point, FBI sources said, Abedin and Clinton’s classified and top secret State Department documents and emails were stored in Weiner’s email on a server shared with a dog grooming service and a western Canadian bicycle shop. However, Weiner and Abedin, who is Hillary Clinton’s closest personal aide, weren’t the only people with access to the Weiner’s email account. Potentially dozens of unknown individuals had access to Abedin’s sensitive State Department emails that were stored in Weiner’s email account, FBI sources confirmed. FEC records show Weiner paid more than $92,000 of congressional campaign funds to Anne Lewis Strategies LLC to manage his email and web site. According to FBI sources, the D.C.-based political consulting firm has served as the official administrator of the anthonyweiner.com domain since 2010, the same time Abedin was working at the State Department. This means technically Weiner and Abedin’s emails, including top secret State Department emails, could have been accessed, printed, discussed, leaked, or distributed by untold numbers of personnel at the Anne Lewis consulting firm because they can control where the website and it emails are pointed, FBI sources said.
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According to FBI sources, the bureau’s newly-minted probe into Clinton’s use and handling of emails while she served as secretary of state, has also been broadened to include investigating new email-related revelations, including: Abedin forwarded classified and top secret State Department emails to Weiner’s email Abedin stored emails, containing government secrets, in a special folder shared with Weiner warehousing over 500,000 archived State Department emails. Weiner had access to these classified and top secret documents without proper security clearance to view the records Abedin also used a personal yahoo address and her Clintonemail.com address to send/receive/store classified and top secret documents A private consultant managed Weiner’s site for the last six years, including three years when Clinton was secretary of state, and therefore, had full access to all emails as the domain’s listed registrant and administrator via Whois email contacts. Because Weiner’s campaign website is managed by the third-party consultant and political email guru, FBI agents are burdened with the task of trying to decipher just how many people had access to Weiner’s server and emails and who were these people. Or if the server was ever compromised by hackers, or other actors.
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Abedin told FBI agents in an April interview that she didn’t know how to consistently print documents or emails from her secure Dept. of State system. Instead, she would forward the sensitive emails to her yahoo, Clintonemail.com and her email linked to Weiner. Abedin said, according to FBI documents, she would then access those email accounts via webmail from an unclassified computer system at the State Dept. and print the documents, many of which were classified and top secret, from the largely unprotected webmail portals. Clinton did not have a computer in her office on Mahogany Row at the State Dept. so she was not able to read timely intelligence unless it was printed out for her, Abedin said. Abedin also said Clinton could not operate the secure State Dept. fax machine installed in her Chappaqua, NY home without assistance. Perhaps more alarming, according to the FBI’s 302 Report detailing its interview with Abedin, none of the multiple FBI agents and Justice Department officials who conducted the interview pressed Abedin to further detail the email address linked to Weiner. There was never a follow up, according to the 302 report. But now, all that has changed, with the FBI’s decision to reopen the Clinton email investigation and the husband and wife seeking immunity deals to testify against Clinton and other associates about the contents of the laptop’s emails.
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"New York Police Department detectives and prosecutors working an alleged underage sexting case against former Congressman Anthony Weiner have turned over a newly-found laptop he shared with wife Huma Abedin to the FBI with enough evidence "to put Hillary (Clinton) and her crew away for life," NYPD sources told True Pundit. NYPD sources said Clinton's "crew" also included several unnamed yet implicated members of Congress in addition to her aides and insiders. The NYPD seized the computer from Weiner during a search warrant and detectives discovered a trove of over 500,000 emails to and from Hillary Clinton, Abedin and other insiders during her tenure as secretary of state. The content of those emails sparked the FBI to reopen its defunct email investigation into Clinton on Friday. But new revelations on the contents of that laptop, according to law enforcement sources, implicate the Democratic presidential candidate, her subordinates, and even select elected officials in far more alleged serious crimes than mishandling classified and top secret emails, sources said. NYPD sources said these new emails include evidence linking Clinton herself and associates to: Money laundering Child exploitation Sex crimes with minors (children) Perjury Pay to play through Clinton Foundation Obstruction of justice Other felony crimes NYPD detectives and a NYPD Chief, the department's highest rank under Commissioner, said openly that if the FBI and Justice Department fail to garner timely indictments against Clinton and co- conspirators, NYPD will go public with the damaging emails now in the hands of FBI Director James Comey and many FBI field offices. "What's in the emails is staggering and as a father, it turned my stomach," the NYPD Chief said. "There is not going to be any Houdini-like escape from what we found. We have copies of everything. We will ship them to Wikileaks or I will personally hold my own press conference if it comes to that." The NYPD
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shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Jan 17
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Russia Hysteria Infects WashPost Again: False Story About Hacking U.S. Electric Grid - 0 views
theintercept.com/...bout-hacking-u-s-electric-grid
war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Russophobia fake-news WaPo electrical-grid-hack MSM-propaganda
shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Jan 17
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The Washington Post on Friday reported a genuinely alarming event: Russian hackers have penetrated the U.S. power system through an electrical grid in Vermont. The Post headline conveyed the seriousness of the threat: The first sentence of the article directly linked this cyberattack to alleged Russian hacking of the email accounts of the DNC and John Podesta — what is now routinely referred to as “Russian hacking of our election” — by referencing the code name revealed on Wednesday by the Obama administration when it announced sanctions on Russian officials: “A code associated with the Russian hacking operation dubbed Grizzly Steppe by the Obama administration has been detected within the system of a Vermont utility, according to U.S. officials.” The Post article contained grave statements from Vermont officials of the type politicians love to issue after a terrorist attack to show they are tough and in control. The state’s Democratic governor, Peter Shumlin, said: Vermonters and all Americans should be both alarmed and outraged that one of the world’s leading thugs, Vladimir Putin, has been attempting to hack our electric grid, which we rely upon to support our quality of life, economy, health, and safety. This episode should highlight the urgent need for our federal government to vigorously pursue and put an end to this sort of Russian meddling.
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Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy issued a statement warning: “This is beyond hackers having electronic joy rides — this is now about trying to access utilities to potentially manipulate the grid and shut it down in the middle of winter. That is a direct threat to Vermont and we do not take it lightly.” The article went on and on in that vein, with all the standard tactics used by the U.S. media for such stories: quoting anonymous national security officials, reviewing past acts of Russian treachery, and drawing the scariest possible conclusions (“‘The question remains: Are they in other systems and what was the intent?’ a U.S. official said”). The media reactions, as Alex Pfeiffer documents, were exactly what one would expect: hysterical, alarmist proclamations of Putin’s menacing evil: Our Russian "friend" Putin attacked the U.S. power grid. https://t.co/iAneRgbuhF — Brent Staples (@BrentNYT) December 31, 2016
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The Post’s story also predictably and very rapidly infected other large media outlets. Reuters thus told its readers around the world: “A malware code associated with Russian hackers has reportedly been detected within the system of a Vermont electric utility.” What’s the problem here? It did not happen. There was no “penetration of the U.S. electricity grid.” The truth was undramatic and banal. Burlington Electric, after receiving a Homeland Security notice sent to all U.S. utility companies about the malware code found in the DNC system, searched all its computers and found the code in a single laptop that was not connected to the electric grid. Apparently, the Post did not even bother to contact the company before running its wildly sensationalistic claims, so Burlington Electric had to issue its own statement to the Burlington Free Press, which debunked the Post’s central claim (emphasis in original): “We detected the malware in a single Burlington Electric Department laptop not connected to our organization’s grid systems.” So the key scary claim of the Post story — that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. electric grid — was false. All the alarmist tough-guy statements issued by political officials who believed the Post’s claim were based on fiction.
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UPDATE: Just as The Guardian had to do just two days ago regarding its claim about WikiLeaks and Putin, the Washington Post has now added an editor’s note to its story acknowledging that its key claim was false:
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Is it not very clear that journalistic standards are being casually dispensed with when the subject is Russia?
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Arnold Ahlert: Russia Would Love a Third Obama Term - The Patriot Post - 0 views
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New York Post columnist John Crudele obliterates the despicable word-parsing. “Clinton was so careless when using her BlackBerry that the Russians stole her password,” he writes. “All Russian President Vladimir Putin’s gang had to do was log into Clinton’s account and read whatever they wanted.” When it comes to the DNC hack, “The Russians did it” is the theme-du-jour. Clinton campaign manager, Robby Mook stated Sunday that “experts are telling us that Russian state actors broke into the DNC, stole these emails, [and are] releasing these emails for the purpose of helping Donald Trump.” The campaign itself echoed that assertion. “This is further evidence the Russian government is trying to influence the outcome of the election.”
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The reliably leftist Politico — so far left that reporter Ken Vogel remains employed there despite sending a story to the DNC before he sent it to his own editor — is quite comfortable advancing that agenda, using it as a vehicle to buff up Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. “Former U.S. officials who worked on Russia policy with Clinton say that Putin was personally stung by Clinton’s December 2011 condemnation of Russia’s parliamentary elections, and had his anger communicated directly to President Barack Obama,” Politico reports. “They say Putin and his advisers are also keenly aware that, even as she executed Obama’s ‘reset’ policy with Russia, Clinton took a harder line toward Moscow than others in the administration. And they say Putin sees Clinton as a forceful proponent of ‘regime change’ policies that the Russian leader considers a grave threat to his own survival.” Yet even Politico is forced to admit the payback angle is “speculation,” and that some experts remain “unconvinced that Putin’s government engineered the DNC email hack or that it was meant to influence the election in Trump’s favor as opposed to embarrassing DNC officials for any number of reasons.”
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Americans would also be wise to remain highly skeptical of this claim for any number of reasons. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange asserts there is “there is no proof whatsoever” Russia is behind the hack and that “this is a diversion that’s being pushed by the Hillary Clinton campaign.” To be fair, Assange is a Russian sympathizer, and leftists aren’t the only ones attributing the hack to the Russians. The same FBI that gave Clinton a pass will be investigating the DNC hack, and at some point the bureau will reach a conclusion. In the meantime, it might be worth considering that this smacks of a carefully orchestrated disinformation campaign similar to the one Clinton and several other Obama administration officials engineered with regard to Benghazi. While Clinton was never held personally or legally accountable for the deaths of four Americans, it is beyond dispute that she lied unabashedly about a video causing the attack, while sending her daughter a damning email at 11:12 p.m. on Sept. 11, 2012, admitting the administration knew “the attack had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack, not a protest.” The theme of this coordinated narrative? Clinton campaign chair John Podesta referred Monday night to “a kind of bromance going on” between Putin and Trump. Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook echoed that assertion, insisting the email dump comes on the heels of “changes to the Republican platform to make it more pro-Russian.”
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The Leftmedia were equally obliging. “The theory that Moscow orchestrated the leaks to help Trump … is fast gaining currency within the Obama administration because of the timing of the leaks and Trump’s own connections to the Russian government,” reports the Daily Beast. Other Leftmedia examples abound. “Until Friday, that charge, with its eerie suggestion of a Kremlin conspiracy to aid Donald J. Trump, has been only whispered,” shouted the New York Times. “Because the leaks are widely suspected of being the result of a Russian hacking operation, they can be used to reinforce the narrative that Russian President Vladimir Putin is rooting for Trump and that Trump, in turn, would be too accommodating to Moscow,” adds the Los Angeles Times. “Why would Russian President Vladimir Putin want to help Donald Trump win the White House?” asks NPR. “If you want to indulge in a bit of conspiracy theory, remember that Russian President Vladimir Putin has praised candidate Trump as recently as June,” states the Burlington Free Press.
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Ultimately, here’s the question: If the Russians could access the DNC server, they could certainly access Clinton’s unsecure server. And if they could access Clinton’s server, including the 33,000 emails she deleted (maybe some were about how the Clintons profited from selling American uranium to Russia), ask yourself who they’d rather have in the Oval Office: Donald Trump, who professed admiration for Putin but remains a highly unpredictable individual — or Hillary Clinton, who could be subjected to blackmail for as long as eight years? Russia’s clear objective would be to have the weakest American leadership they can get. Blackmail aside, what would be weaker than an extension of Obama’s presidency?
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Moreover, it is just as likely a number of the so-called “experts” as well as Clinton’s useful idiot media apparatchiks have considered the blackmail possibility and are trying to divert attention from it with a phony Trump connection story. Democrats can theorize, complain and blame to their hearts' content, but none of it obscures the reality that the DNC — and by extension Hillary Clinton and the entire Democrat Party — are a conglomeration of morally bereft, utterly incompetent individuals wholly ill-equipped to handle internal security, much less national security. And they are aided and abetted by an equally corrupt media, more than willing to abide that potentially catastrophic reality as long as it gets a Democrat in the Oval Office. WikiLeaks has promised additional dumps with be forthcoming. How much deeper Democrats sink is anyone’s guess.
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"If one lives by the vulnerable server, one dies by the vulnerable server. As the week unfolds, America is witnessing the ultimate unmasking of the Democrat Party, an entity whose self-aggrandizing claims of unity, fairness and intellectual honesty have been revealed as utterly fraudulent by a flood of DNC emails released by WikiLeaks. Moreover, a stunning level of hypocrisy attends the entire exposure, as DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz is sent packing for this breach of confidential party information, while Hillary Clinton, whose equally accessible private server contained far more critical top-secret information, officially became the party's standard-bearer. But not to worry, assured FBI Director James Comey, who insisted there was no direct evidence that Clinton's server had been hacked by hostile actors - before adding it was possible that hostile actors "gained access" to Clinton's accounts. Clinton was equally adept at making semantical distinctions. "If you go by the evidence, there is no evidence that the system was breached or hacked successfully," Clinton said. "And I think that what's important here is follow the evidence. And there is no evidence. And that can't be said about a lot of other systems, including government systems.""
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shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Feb 17
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Trump Walks Back Promise To Move Israeli Embassy To Jerusalem - 0 views
www.mintpressnews.com/...224835
war & peace Trump U.S.-foreign-policy Israel Palestine U.S.-embassy Jerusalem
shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Feb 17
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Following a flurry of regional concern about the possibility, and the direct intervention of the King Abdullah of Jordan, the Trump Administration has sent a message to the Palestinian Authority to assure them that they will not be moving the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The Trump campaign made much of its intention to move the US Embassy in the lead-up to the election, though official comments have not been nearly so cut and dry since the vote, with officials saying they were very early in the decision making process. Top Trump Administration officials also reportedly spoke with Palestinian leadership in recent days on issues beyond the embassy, assuring them of the American position on Israel’s settlement expansion. Administration officials have criticized the settlement growth, though Israeli officials have so far spun this as a “green light” to keep building. Even beyond this, officials say that President Trump is expected to personally brief Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas following his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, another attempt that seems designed to assure the Palestinians that the US is trying to get the peace process going.
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A sign of intelligence taking hold in The White House. The Mideast would have erupted had the embassy been moved to Jerusalem
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U.S. Military and Intelligence Officials to Obama: "Assad NOT Responsible for Chemical ... - 1 views
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MEMORANDUM FOR: The President FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) SUBJECT: Is Syria a Trap? Precedence: IMMEDIATE We regret to inform you that some of our former co-workers are telling us, categorically, that contrary to the claims of your administration, the most reliable intelligence shows that Bashar al-Assad was NOT responsible for the chemical incident that killed and injured Syrian civilians on August 21, and that British intelligence officials also know this. In writing this brief report, we choose to assume that you have not been fully informed because your advisers decided to afford you the opportunity for what is commonly known as “plausible denial.” We have been down this road before – with President George W. Bush, to whom we addressed our first VIPS memorandumimmediately after Colin Powell’s Feb. 5, 2003 U.N. speech, in which he peddled fraudulent “intelligence” to support attacking Iraq. Then, also, we chose to give President Bush the benefit of the doubt, thinking he was being misled – or, at the least, very poorly advised.
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The fraudulent nature of Powell’s speech was a no-brainer. And so, that very afternoon we strongly urged your predecessor to “widen the discussion beyond … the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.” We offer you the same advice today. Our sources confirm that a chemical incident of some sort did cause fatalities and injuries on August 21 in a suburb of Damascus. They insist, however, that the incident was not the result of an attack by the Syrian Army using military-grade chemical weapons from its arsenal. That is the most salient fact, according to CIA officers working on the Syria issue. They tell us that CIA Director John Brennan is perpetrating a pre-Iraq-War-type fraud on members of Congress, the media, the public – and perhaps even you. We have observed John Brennan closely over recent years and, sadly, we find what our former colleagues are now telling us easy to believe. Sadder still, this goes in spades for those of us who have worked with him personally; we give him zero credence. And that goes, as well, for his titular boss, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who has admitted he gave “clearly erroneous” sworn testimony to Congress denying NSA eavesdropping on Americans.
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That Secretary of State John Kerry would invoke Clapper’s name this week in Congressional testimony, in an apparent attempt to enhance the credibility of the four-page “Government Assessment” strikes us as odd. The more so, since it was, for some unexplained reason, not Clapper but the White House that released the “assessment.” This is not a fine point. We know how these things are done. Although the “Government Assessment” is being sold to the media as an “intelligence summary,” it is a political, not an intelligence document. The drafters, massagers, and fixers avoided presenting essential detail. Moreover, they conceded upfront that, though they pinned “high confidence” on the assessment, it still fell “short of confirmation.”
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There is a growing body of evidence from numerous sources in the Middle East — mostly affiliated with the Syrian opposition and its supporters — providing a strong circumstantial case that the August 21 chemical incident was a pre-planned provocation by the Syrian opposition and its Saudi and Turkish supporters. The aim is reported to have been to create the kind of incident that would bring the United States into the war. According to some reports, canisters containing chemical agent were brought into a suburb of Damascus, where they were then opened. Some people in the immediate vicinity died; others were injured. We are unaware of any reliable evidence that a Syrian military rocket capable of carrying a chemical agent was fired into the area. In fact, we are aware of no reliable physical evidence to support the claim that this was a result of a strike by a Syrian military unit with expertise in chemical weapons. In addition, we have learned that on August 13-14, 2013, Western-sponsored opposition forces in Turkey started advance preparations for a major, irregular military surge. Initial meetings between senior opposition military commanders and Qatari, Turkish and U.S. intelligence officials took place at the converted Turkish military garrison in Antakya, Hatay Province, now used as the command center and headquarters of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and their foreign sponsors.
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Senior opposition commanders who came from Istanbul pre-briefed the regional commanders on an imminent escalation in the fighting due to “a war-changing development,” which, in turn, would lead to a U.S.-led bombing of Syria. At operations coordinating meetings at Antakya, attended by senior Turkish, Qatari and U.S. intelligence officials as well as senior commanders of the Syrian opposition, the Syrians were told that the bombing would start in a few days. Opposition leaders were ordered to prepare their forces quickly to exploit the U.S. bombing, march into Damascus, and remove the Bashar al-Assad government The Qatari and Turkish intelligence officials assured the Syrian regional commanders that they would be provided with plenty of weapons for the coming offensive. And they were. A weapons distribution operation unprecedented in scope began in all opposition camps on August 21-23. The weapons were distributed from storehouses controlled by Qatari and Turkish intelligence under the tight supervision of U.S. intelligence officers.
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We hope your advisers have warned you that retaliation for attacks on Syrian are not a matter of IF, but rather WHERE and WHEN. Retaliation is inevitable. For example, terrorist strikes on U.S. embassies and other installations are likely to make what happened to the U.S. “Mission” in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, look like a minor dust-up by comparison. One of us addressed this key consideration directly a week ago in an article titled “Possible Consequences of a U.S. Military Attack on Syria – Remembering the U.S. Marine Barracks Destruction in Beirut, 1983.”
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This report by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity is almost certainly the most credible report contradicting the White House's "intelligence summary" that included zero evidence supporting the claim that Syrian government forces had unleashed the August 21, 2013 chemical attack in Ghoutu, near Damascus and less than five miles away from the just-arrived UN investigative team. Spread it far and wide.
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Wow!! The cover-up of this false flag operation designed to get us into another civil war is incredible. Yet the truth continues to leak out. The ruling elites must be so pissed right now. The Internet is changing the world balance of power - in real time no less. And we are witness. Awesome stuff Paul.
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Iranian Officials: Israel Will Be First Victim of a Syria Attack | TIME.com - 0 views
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Iranian officials have issued warnings that if a U.S.-led coalition attacks Syria Israel could find itself in the line of fire. “If such an incident takes place, which is impossible, the Zionist regime will be the first victim of a military attack on Syria,” Iran’s Fars new agency quoted senior parliamentary official Hossein Sheikholeslam as saying on Monday. Iranian officials often refer to Israel as the “Zionist regime” or “Zionist entity”.) Sheikholeslam’s warning follows a similar one from a senior Syrian official on Monday: Khalaf Muftah, a former assistant information minister in Syria, claimed that Damscus would hold Israel as being “behind the (Western) aggression and (it) will therefore come under fire,” reports the Times of Israel. On Tuesday another Iranian parliamentarian, Mansur Haqiqatpur, also emphasized the threat of retaliation against Israel in the event of a military strike on Syria. If it were to occur, “the flames of outrage of the region’s revolutionaries will point toward the Zionist regime,” said Haqiqatpur.
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Google News - 0 views
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An incredible story is unfolding in Egypt where the new military government is digging through volumes of documents seized in raids on the Muslim Brotherhood. The documents are said to show that Barak Obama has been funneling Billions of dollars into the Muslim Brotherhood. excerpt: "Bare Naked Islam has done extensive reporting on the "bribes." The ... Evidence we have obtained lends credibility to the charges of "gifts" (bribes) being taken in U.S. dollars from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo" that were distributed to top ministerial level officials in the Mursi government. Via Almesryoon: "A judicial source stated that over the past few days, a number of complaints have beenfiled with the Attorney General Hisham Barakat. These complaints accuse the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood and leaders of the centrist party of receiving gifts from the American embassy in Cairo. The sponsors of these complaints stated that among these leaders are Mohamed Badie, General Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, Khairat Al-Shater, deputy leader and businessman, Mohamed Beltagy leading the group, Essam el-Erian, deputy head of the Freedom and Justice Party of, and Abu Ela Mady, head of the Wasat Party, Essam Sultan, deputy head of the Wasat Party." The strength of these allegations is seemingly bolstered by another case alluded to by the newspaper in which a document is referenced. This document reportedly reveals monthly "gifts" being paid to Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Egypt by the Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabor Al Thani, Minister of Foreign Affairs to the Mursi government. These monthly payments were said to be denominated in U.S. dollars to each leader. Evidence for such allegations are substantiated by a document we have obtained. It includes the names of several recipients of funds and even includes their signatures acknowledging receipt of the funds. This ledger, obtained from inside the Mursi government, lends additional credibility to the rep
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shared by Paul Merrell on 31 Jan 14
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Afghanistan Exit Is Seen as Peril to C.I.A. Drone Mission - NYTimes.com - 0 views
www.nytimes.com/...as-peril-to-drone-mission.html
war & peace Afghanistan drone attacks Pakistan Karzai Obama negotiations
shared by Paul Merrell on 31 Jan 14
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The risk that President Obama may be forced to pull all American troops out of Afghanistan by the end of the year has set off concerns inside the American intelligence agencies that they could lose their air bases used for drone strikes against Al Qaeda in Pakistan and for responding to a nuclear crisis in the region. Until now, the debate here and in Kabul about the size and duration of an American-led allied force in Afghanistan after 2014 had focused on that country’s long-term security. But these new concerns also reflect how troop levels in Afghanistan directly affect long-term American security interests in neighboring Pakistan, according to administration, military and intelligence officials.
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The concern has become serious enough that the Obama administration has organized a team of intelligence, military and policy specialists to devise alternatives to mitigate the damage if a final security deal cannot be struck with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, who has declined to enact an agreement that American officials thought was completed last year. If Mr. Obama ultimately withdrew all American troops from Afghanistan, the C.I.A.’s drone bases in the country would have to be closed, according to administration officials, because it could no longer be protected. Their concern is that the nearest alternative bases are too far away for drones to reach the mountainous territory in Pakistan where the remnants of Al Qaeda’s central command are hiding. Those bases would also be too distant to monitor and respond as quickly as American forces can today if there were a crisis in the region, such as missing nuclear material or weapons in Pakistan and India.
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Their base inside Pakistan was closed after a shooting involving a C.I.A. security contractor, Raymond Davis, and the raid into Pakistani territory that killed Osama bin Laden, both in 2011. Crucial to the surveillance of Bin Laden’s house in Abbottabad was the use of an RQ-170 drone. Pakistani officials talked openly in the weeks after that raid about their fear that the unmanned aircraft was also being used to monitor their nuclear arsenal, now believed to be the fastest growing in the world. The raid, and those drones, came out of American facilities just over the Afghan border.
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The C.I.A.’s drone bases in Afghanistan, including one in the eastern part of the country, allow operators to respond quickly to fresh intelligence. The proximity to Pakistan’s tribal areas also allows the Predator drones and their larger, faster cousin, the Reaper, to fly longer missions without having to return to base.
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The Reapers, the newest, largest and most capable of the unmanned armed vehicles, have a range of up to 1,100 miles. That puts Pakistan’s tribal areas within range of some bases the American military has flown from, especially in Kyrgyzstan, where for more than a decade the Pentagon has conducted air operations, include cargo and troop flights, out of a base at Manas. But the United States said last fall that it would pull out of that base in July. Other allied countries are within the Reaper’s range — in the Persian Gulf, for example. But the distances would be too great to carry out drone operations effectively, officials said, and it is very unlikely that any of those nations would approve launching the diplomatically sensitive strikes missions from their soil.“There’s no easy alternative to Afghanistan,” one former senior American counterterrorism official said.
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Leaked conversation about Ukraine fans U.S.-Russian tensions - The Globe and Mail - 0 views
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Ukraine’s protest standoff came dangerously close to becoming a direct confrontation between Russia and the United States on Thursday as shockingly unguarded words from Washington and Moscow officials reached public ears, either voluntarily or otherwise.A recording of a phone conversation between two senior U.S. diplomatic officials, in which they discussed their efforts to influence the membership of the Ukrainian government that would be formed to replace the one dismissed under protester pressure by President Viktor Yanukovych, was leaked to the public – almost certainly by an intelligence agency – just as one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top aides issued a direct threat to the United States over its involvement in Ukrainian affairs.
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Mr. Yanukovych’s explicitly pro-Russian government has long been accused of being a puppet of Mr. Putin – especially after it abandoned a European Union open-borders treaty in November to instead endorse a trade-and-aid deal with Russia, a move that angered many Ukrainians and provoked the protests that have convulsed the nation for two months.But now, with the leak of the apparently bugged State Department call, the Kremlin and Mr. Yanukovych have new ammunition with which it can accuse the protesters of being puppets of U.S. and European agendas.
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The call, if it is genuine, was posted on YouTube by an anonymous source on Tuesday under the headline “puppets of Maidan,” a reference to the protests in Kiev’s central square. It was then linked on Twitter by Russian government officials on Thursday – exactly as U.S. and European Union officials were descending on Kiev to try to broker a resignation, a new election and a constitutional change from Mr. Yanukovych.The voices the audio resemble those of Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. They appear to be talking about their preference of political party leaders to form a new Ukrainian government, and about their efforts, including several phone calls to Mr. Yanukovych by Vice President Joe Biden, to influence that outcome. The EU was prepared to begin negotiating government-opposition talks toward a new government on Friday.Much of the call is devoted to efforts to keep Ukrainian liberal parties in government, and to prevent right-wing ultranationalist parties, which have been prominent in the protest movement, from gaining influence.
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“I’m just thinking in terms of sort of the process moving ahead, we want to keep the moderate democrats together,” Mr. Pyatt says at one point. Ms. Nulund explicitly endorses moderate opposition party leader Arseniy Yatseniuk and argues that “what he needs” is fellow opposition leaders Vitali Klitschko, a former boxer with a populist style, and Oleh Tiahnybok, a far-right leader whose party is known for intolerance.“I think Yats [Yatseniuk] is the guy who’s got the economic experience, the governing experience … what he needs is Klitsch and Tiahnybok on the outside,” she adds. Mr. Pyatt says: “Let me work on Klitschko, and I think we get a Western personality to come out here and midwife this thing.”And then Ms. Nuland says, a propos of nothing: “And you know, fuck the EU.” This was an apparent reference to the EU’s hesitancy to threaten to impose sanctions on the Yanukovych government, something the U.S. – and Canada – have done. On Thursday, the European Parliament voted to impose limited sanctions, including the stripping of visas, on Ukrainian officials directly responsible for violence.
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Sergei Glazyev, a top adviser to the Russian president, said that U.S. “interference” contravened a 1994 treaty that granted Ukraine its independence from the Soviet Union and guaranteed that outside nations would not intervene. Russian leaders, he told the paper, “are obliged to intervene when conflict situations of this nature arise.”Asked if violence should be used to remove the protesters, Mr. Glazyev said: “As for starting to use force, in a situation where the authorities face an attempted coup d’état, they simply have no other course of action. Otherwise, the country will be plunged into chaos.”
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shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Feb 14
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In Secret, Court Vastly Broadens Powers of N.S.A. - NYTimes.com - 0 views
www.nytimes.com/...ly-broadens-powers-of-nsa.html
surveillance state FISA-Court special-needs-doctrine
shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Feb 14
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In more than a dozen classified rulings, the nation’s surveillance court has created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans while pursuing not only terrorism suspects, but also people possibly involved in nuclear proliferation, espionage and cyberattacks, officials say.
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The rulings, some nearly 100 pages long, reveal that the court has taken on a much more expansive role by regularly assessing broad constitutional questions and establishing important judicial precedents, with almost no public scrutiny, according to current and former officials familiar with the court’s classified decisions. The 11-member Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, was once mostly focused on approving case-by-case wiretapping orders. But since major changes in legislation and greater judicial oversight of intelligence operations were instituted six years ago, it has quietly become almost a parallel Supreme Court, serving as the ultimate arbiter on surveillance issues and delivering opinions that will most likely shape intelligence practices for years to come, the officials said.
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“We’ve seen a growing body of law from the court,” a former intelligence official said. “What you have is a common law that develops where the court is issuing orders involving particular types of surveillance, particular types of targets.” In one of the court’s most important decisions, the judges have expanded the use in terrorism cases of a legal principle known as the “special needs” doctrine and carved out an exception to the Fourth Amendment’s requirement of a warrant for searches and seizures, the officials said. The special needs doctrine was originally established in 1989 by the Supreme Court in a ruling allowing the drug testing of railway workers, finding that a minimal intrusion on privacy was justified by the government’s need to combat an overriding public danger. Applying that concept more broadly, the FISA judges have ruled that the N.S.A.’s collection and examination of Americans’ communications data to track possible terrorists does not run afoul of the Fourth Amendment, the officials said. That legal interpretation is significant, several outside legal experts said, because it uses a relatively narrow area of the law — used to justify airport screenings, for instance, or drunken-driving checkpoints — and applies it much more broadly, in secret, to the wholesale collection of communications in pursuit of terrorism suspects. “It seems like a legal stretch,” William C. Banks, a national security law expert at Syracuse University, said in response to a description of the decision. “It’s another way of tilting the scales toward the government in its access to all this data.”
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shared by Gary Edwards on 20 Aug 13
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You Won't BELIEVE What's Going On with Government Spying on Americans - BlackListedNews... - 1 views
www.blacklistednews.com/...M.html
NSA-Patriot-Act-NDAA NSA-Whistleblower Edward-Snowden Tyranny-by-Executive-Order spying
shared by Gary Edwards on 20 Aug 13
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"New Revelations Are Breaking Every Day" This web page is very well sourced and filled with links where you will get lost for hours. Excellent reference document ............................ Revelations about the breathtaking scope of government spying are coming so fast that it's time for an updated roundup: - Just weeks after NSA boss Alexander said that a review of NSA spying found not even one violation, the Washington Post published an internal NSA audit showing that the agency has broken its own rules thousands of times each year - 2 Senators on the intelligence committee said the violations revealed in the Post article were just the "tip of the iceberg" - Glenn Greenwald notes: "One key to the WashPost story: the reports are internal, NSA audits, which means high likelihood of both under-counting & white-washing".(Even so, the White House tried to do damage control by retroactively changing on-the-record quotes) - The government is spying on essentially everything we do. It is not just "metadata" … although that is enough to destroy your privacy - The government has adopted a secret interpretation of the Patriot Act which allows it to pretend that "everything" is relevant … so it spies on everyone - NSA whistleblowers say that the NSA collects all of our conversations word-for-word - It's not just the NSA … Many other agencies, like the FBI and IRS - concerned only with domesticissues - spy on Americans as well - The information gained through spying is shared with federal, state and local agencies, and they are using that information to prosecute petty crimes such as drugs and taxes. The agencies are instructed to intentionally "launder" the information gained through spying, i.e. to pretend that they got the information in a more legitimate way … and to hide that from defense attorneys and judges - Top counter-terror experts say that the government's mass spying doesn't keep us
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Quitting Over Syria | The American Conservative - 0 views
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The release of the White House “Government Assessment” on August 30, providing the purported evidence to support a bombing attack on Syria, defused a conflict with the intelligence community that had threatened to become public through the mass resignation of a significant number of analysts. The intelligence community’s consensus view on the status of the Syrian chemical-weapons program was derived from a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) completed late last year and hurriedly updated this past summer to reflect the suspected use of chemical weapons against rebels and civilians. The report maintained that there were some indications that the regime was using chemicals, while conceding that there was no conclusive proof. There was considerable dissent from even that equivocation, including by many analysts who felt that the evidence for a Syrian government role was subject to interpretation and possibly even fabricated. Some believed the complete absence of U.S. satellite intelligence on the extensive preparations that the government would have needed to make in order to mix its binary chemical system and deliver it on target was particularly disturbing. These concerns were reinforced by subsequent UN reports suggesting that the rebels might have access to their own chemical weapons. The White House, meanwhile, considered the somewhat ambiguous conclusion of the NIE to be unsatisfactory, resulting in considerable pushback against the senior analysts who had authored the report.
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In a scenario unfortunately reminiscent of the lead up to Iraq, the National Security Council tasked the various intelligence agencies to beat the bushes and come up with more corroborative information. Israel obligingly provided what was reported to be interceptions of telephone conversations implicating the Syrian army in the attack, but it was widely believed that the information might have been fabricated by Tel Aviv, meaning that bad intelligence was being used to confirm other suspect information, a phenomenon known to analysts as “circular reporting.” Other intelligence cited in passing by the White House on the trajectories and telemetry of rockets that may have been used in the attack was also somewhat conjectural and involved weapons that were not, in fact, in the Syrian arsenal, suggesting that they were actually fired by the rebels. Also, traces of Sarin were not found in most of the areas being investigated, nor on one of the two rockets identified. Whether the victims of the attack suffered symptoms of Sarin was also disputed, and no autopsies were performed to confirm the presence of the chemical.
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With all evidence considered, the intelligence community found itself with numerous skeptics in the ranks, leading to sharp exchanges with the Director of Central Intelligence John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. A number of analysts threatened to resign as a group if their strong dissent was not noted in any report released to the public, forcing both Brennan and Clapper to back down. This led to the White House issuing its own assessment, completely divorcing the process from any direct connection to the intelligence community. The spectacle of CIA Director George Tenet sitting behind Secretary of State Colin Powell in the United Nations, providing him with credibility as Powell told a series of half-truths, would not be repeated. Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National Interest.
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More detail about backing up previous reports that the information supplied in the White House "Government Assessment of the Syrian Government's Use of Chemical Weapons on August 21, 2013" cooking of intelligence to justify missile strikes on Syria. Note that the same day the Assessment was published by the White House Offiice of the Press Secretary, active duty intelligence officials passed a message to Obama through veteran intelligence officers that the intelligence in the report was unreliable and that there was strong evidence that it was the "rebels" rather than Syrian government that had used sarin gas. http://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-military-and-intelligence-officials-to-obama-assad-not-responsible-for-chemical-attack/5348576 Next came a report three days later citing and quoting an anonymous former intelligence official who said the format used and its publication by the White House rather than by the Chief of Intelligence were both strong indications that the document was not the product of the intelligence community. http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/09/obamas-case-for-syria-didnt-reflect-intel-consensus/ Now we learn the reason the White House had to cook its own "public summary of intelligence," because many top intelligence threatened to resign if the cherry-picked version of events without reservations explaining the likelihood that it was the rebels who did it. So the Obama Administration, like the Bush II Administration, deliberately lied to the public in an attempt to stampede the nation into another foreign war in the Mideast. The only relevant difference is that Obama didn't get away with launching his own "shock and awe" campaign. Impeachable offense? Yes. Likely to happen? No. Too many hawks in Congress who want war against both Syria and Iran.
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N.S.A. Report Outlined Goals for More Power - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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Officials at the National Security Agency, intent on maintaining its dominance in intelligence collection, pledged last year to push to expand its surveillance powers, according to a top-secret strategy document.
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In a February 2012 paper laying out the four-year strategy for the N.S.A.’s signals intelligence operations, which include the agency’s eavesdropping and communications data collection around the world, agency officials set an objective to “aggressively pursue legal authorities and a policy framework mapped more fully to the information age.” Written as an agency mission statement with broad goals, the five-page document said that existing American laws were not adequate to meet the needs of the N.S.A. to conduct broad surveillance in what it cited as “the golden age of Sigint,” or signals intelligence. “The interpretation and guidelines for applying our authorities, and in some cases the authorities themselves, have not kept pace with the complexity of the technology and target environments, or the operational expectations levied on N.S.A.’s mission,” the document concluded. Using sweeping language, the paper also outlined some of the agency’s other ambitions. They included defeating the cybersecurity practices of adversaries in order to acquire the data the agency needs from “anyone, anytime, anywhere.” The agency also said it would try to decrypt or bypass codes that keep communications secret by influencing “the global commercial encryption market through commercial relationships,” human spies and intelligence partners in other countries. It also talked of the need to “revolutionize” analysis of its vast collections of data to “radically increase operational impact.”
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The N.S.A. document, titled “Sigint Strategy 2012-2016,” does not make clear what legal or policy changes the agency might seek. The N.S.A.’s powers are determined variously by Congress, executive orders and the nation’s secret intelligence court, and its operations are governed by layers of regulations. While asserting that the agency’s “culture of compliance” would not be compromised, N.S.A. officials argued that they needed more flexibility, according to the paper. Senior intelligence officials, responding to questions about the document, said that the N.S.A. believed that legal impediments limited its ability to conduct surveillance of terrorism suspects inside the United States. Despite an overhaul of national security law in 2008, the officials said, if a terrorism suspect who is under surveillance overseas enters the United States, the agency has to stop monitoring him until it obtains a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. “N.S.A.’s Sigint strategy is designed to guide investments in future capabilities and close gaps in current capabilities,” the agency said in a statement. “In an ever-changing technology and telecommunications environment, N.S.A. tries to get in front of issues to better fulfill the foreign-intelligence requirements of the U.S. government.”
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Critics, including some congressional leaders, say that the role of N.S.A. surveillance in thwarting terrorist attacks — often cited by the agency to justify expanded powers — has been exaggerated. In response to the controversy about its activities after Mr. Snowden’s disclosures, agency officials claimed that the N.S.A.’s sweeping domestic surveillance programs had helped in 54 “terrorist-related activities.” But under growing scrutiny, congressional staff members and other critics say that the use of such figures by defenders of the agency has drastically overstated the value of the domestic surveillance programs in counterterrorism. Agency leaders believe that the N.S.A. has never enjoyed such a target-rich environment as it does now because of the global explosion of digital information — and they want to make certain that they can dominate “the Sigint battle space” in the future, the document said. To be “optimally effective,” the paper said, “legal, policy and process authorities must be as adaptive and dynamic as the technological and operational advances we seek to exploit.” Intent on unlocking the secrets of adversaries, the paper underscores the agency’s long-term goal of being able to collect virtually everything available in the digital world. To achieve that objective, the paper suggests that the N.S.A. plans to gain greater access, in a variety of ways, to the infrastructure of the world’s telecommunications networks.
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Yet the paper also shows how the agency believes it can influence and shape trends in high-tech industries in other ways to suit its needs. One of the agency’s goals is to “continue to invest in the industrial base and drive the state of the art for high performance computing to maintain pre-eminent cryptanalytic capability for the nation.” The paper added that the N.S.A. must seek to “identify new access, collection and exploitation methods by leveraging global business trends in data and communications services.” And it wants to find ways to combine all of its technical tools to enhance its surveillance powers. The N.S.A. will seek to integrate its “capabilities to reach previously inaccessible targets in support of exploitation, cyberdefense and cyberoperations,” the paper stated. The agency also intends to improve its access to encrypted communications used by individuals, businesses and foreign governments, the strategy document said. The N.S.A. has already had some success in defeating encryption, The New York Times has reported, but the document makes it clear that countering “ubiquitous, strong, commercial network encryption” is a top priority. The agency plans to fight back against the rise of encryption through relationships with companies that develop encryption tools and through espionage operations. In other countries, the document said, the N.S.A. must also “counter indigenous cryptographic programs by targeting their industrial bases with all available Sigint and Humint” — human intelligence, meaning spies.
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Above all, the strategy paper suggests the N.S.A.’s vast view of its mission: nothing less than to “dramatically increase mastery of the global network.” Other N.S.A. documents offer hints of how the agency is trying to do just that. One program, code-named Treasure Map, provides what a secret N.S.A. PowerPoint presentation describes as “a near real-time, interactive map of the global Internet.” According to the undated PowerPoint presentation, disclosed by Mr. Snowden, Treasure Map gives the N.S.A. “a 300,000 foot view of the Internet.” Relying on Internet routing data, commercial and Sigint information, Treasure Map is a sophisticated tool, one that the PowerPoint presentation describes as a “massive Internet mapping, analysis and exploration engine.” It collects Wi-Fi network and geolocation data, and between 30 million and 50 million unique Internet provider addresses — code that can reveal the location and owner of a computer, mobile device or router — are represented each day on Treasure Map, according to the document. It boasts that the program can map “any device, anywhere, all the time.” The documents include addresses labeled as based in the “U.S.,” and because so much Internet traffic flows through the United States, it would be difficult to map much of the world without capturing such addresses.
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The program takes advantage of the capabilities of other secret N.S.A. programs. To support Treasure Map, for example, the document states that another program, called Packaged Goods, tracks the “traceroutes” through which data flows around the Internet. Through Packaged Goods, the N.S.A. has gained access to “13 covered servers in unwitting data centers around the globe,” according to the PowerPoint. The document identifies a list of countries where the data centers are located, including Germany, Poland, Denmark, South Africa and Taiwan as well as Russia, China and Singapore.
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The List: Unnecessarily Shut Down by Obama to Inflict Public Pain - 0 views
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"The media may or may not report on these individual occurrences, but what they will never do is provide the American people with the full context and scope of Obama's shrill pettiness. Below is a list of illogical, unnecessary, and shockingly spiteful moves our government is making in the name of essential and non-essential. This list will be regularly updated, and if you have something you feel should be added, please email me at jnolte@breitbart.com or tweet me @NolteNC.Please include a link to the news source. -- 1. Treatments for Children Suffering From Cancer - The GOP have agreed to a compromise by funding part of the government, including the National Institutes of Health, which offers children with cancer last-chance experimental treatment. Obama has threatened to veto this funding. 2. The World War II Memorial - The WWII memorial on the DC Mall is a 24/7 open-air memorial that is not regularly staffed. Although the White House must have known that WWII veterans in their eighties and nineties had already booked flights to visit this memorial, the White House still found the resources to spitefully barricade the attraction. The Republican National Committee has offered to cover any costs required to keep the memorial open. The White House refused. Moreover, like the NIH, the GOP will pass a compromise bill that would fund America's national parks. Obama has threatened to veto that bill. 3. Furloughed Military Chaplains Not Allowed to Work for Free - Furloughed military chaplains willing to celebrate Mass and baptisms for free have been told they will be punished for doing so. 4. Business Stops In Florida Keys - Although the GOP have agreed to compromise in the ongoing budget stalemate and fund the parks, Obama has threatened to veto that funding. As a result, small businesses, hunters, and commercial fisherman can't practice their trade. While the feds have deemed the personnel necessary to keep this area open "non-essential," the "enforcement office
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Obama confidant's spine-chilling proposal - Salon.com - 0 views
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Cass Sunstein has long been one of Barack Obama’s closest confidants. Often mentioned as a likely Obama nominee to the Supreme Court, Sunstein is currently Obama’s head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs where, among other things, he is responsible for “overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs.” In 2008, while at Harvard Law School, Sunstein co-wrote a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-”independent” advocates to “cognitively infiltrate” online groups and websites — as well as other activist groups — which advocate views that Sunstein deems “false conspiracy theories” about the Government. This would be designed to increase citizens’ faith in government officials and undermine the credibility of conspiracists. The paper’s abstract can be read, and the full paper downloaded, here. Sunstein advocates that the Government’s stealth infiltration should be accomplished by sending covert agents into “chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups.” He also proposes that the Government make secret payments to so-called “independent” credible voices to bolster the Government’s messaging (on the ground that those who don’t believe government sources will be more inclined to listen to those who appear independent while secretly acting on behalf of the Government). This program would target those advocating false “conspiracy theories,” which they define to mean: “an attempt to explain an event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role.” Sunstein’s 2008 paper was flagged by this blogger, and then amplified in an excellent report by Raw Story‘s Daniel Tencer.
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There’s no evidence that the Obama administration has actually implemented a program exactly of the type advocated by Sunstein, though in light of this paper and the fact that Sunstein’s position would include exactly such policies, that question certainly ought to be asked. Regardless, Sunstein’s closeness to the President, as well as the highly influential position he occupies, merits an examination of the mentality behind what he wrote. This isn’t an instance where some government official wrote a bizarre paper in college 30 years ago about matters unrelated to his official powers; this was written 18 months ago, at a time when the ascendancy of Sunstein’s close friend to the Presidency looked likely, in exactly the area he now oversees. Additionally, the government-controlled messaging that Sunstein desires has been a prominent feature of U.S. Government actions over the last decade, including in some recently revealed practices of the current administration, and the mindset in which it is grounded explains a great deal about our political class. All of that makes Sunstein’s paper worth examining in greater detail.
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Initially, note how similar Sunstein’s proposal is to multiple, controversial stealth efforts by the Bush administration to secretly influence and shape our political debates. The Bush Pentagon employed teams of former Generals to pose as “independent analysts” in the media while secretly coordinating their talking points and messaging about wars and detention policies with the Pentagon. Bush officials secretly paid supposedly “independent” voices, such as Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher, to advocate pro-Bush policies while failing to disclose their contracts. In Iraq, the Bush Pentagon hired a company, Lincoln Park, which paid newspapers to plant pro-U.S. articles while pretending it came from Iraqi citizens. In response to all of this, Democrats typically accused the Bush administration of engaging in government-sponsored propaganda — and when it was done domestically, suggested this was illegal propaganda. Indeed, there is a very strong case to make that what Sunstein is advocating is itself illegal under long-standing statutes prohibiting government ”propaganda” within the U.S., aimed at American citizens: As explained in a March 21, 2005 report by the Congressional Research Service, “publicity or propaganda” is defined by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) to mean either (1) self-aggrandizement by public officials, (2) purely partisan activity, or (3) “covert propaganda.” By covert propaganda, GAO means information which originates from the government but is unattributed and made to appear as though it came from a third party.
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Covert government propaganda is exactly what Sunstein craves. His mentality is indistinguishable from the Bush mindset that led to these abuses, and he hardly tries to claim otherwise. Indeed, he favorably cites both the covert Lincoln Park program as well as Paul Bremer’s closing of Iraqi newspapers which published stories the U.S. Government disliked, and justifies them as arguably necessary to combat “false conspiracy theories” in Iraq — the same goal Sunstein has for the U.S.Sunstein’s response to these criticisms is easy to find in what he writes, and is as telling as the proposal itself. He acknowledges that some “conspiracy theories” previously dismissed as insane and fringe have turned out to be entirely true (his examples: the CIA really did secretly administer LSD in “mind control” experiments; the DOD really did plot the commission of terrorist acts inside the U.S. with the intent to blame Castro; the Nixon White House really did bug the DNC headquarters). Given that history, how could it possibly be justified for the U.S. Government to institute covert programs designed to undermine anti-government “conspiracy theories,” discredit government critics, and increase faith and trust in government pronouncements? Because, says Sunstein, such powers are warranted only when wielded by truly well-intentioned government officials who want to spread The Truth and Do Good — i.e., when used by people like Cass Sunstein and Barack Obama
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Throughout, we assume a well-motivated government that aims to eliminate conspiracy theories, or draw their poison, if and only if social welfare is improved by doing so. But it’s precisely because the Government is so often not “well-motivated” that such powers are so dangerous. Advocating them on the ground that “we will use them well” is every authoritarian’s claim. More than anything else, this is the toxic mentality that consumes our political culture: when our side does X, X is Good, because we’re Good and are working for Good outcomes. That was what led hordes of Bush followers to endorse the same large-government surveillance programs they long claimed to oppose, and what leads so many Obama supporters now to justify actions that they spent the last eight years opposing.
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Consider the recent revelation that the Obama administration has been making very large, undisclosed payments to MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber to provide consultation on the President’s health care plan. With this lucrative arrangement in place, Gruber spent the entire year offering public justifications for Obama’s health care plan, typically without disclosing these payments, and far worse, was repeatedly held out by the White House — falsely — as an “independent” or “objective” authority. Obama allies in the media constantly cited Gruber’s analysis to support their defenses of the President’s plan, and the White House, in turn, then cited those media reports as proof that their plan would succeed. This created an infinite “feedback loop” in favor of Obama’s health care plan which — unbeknownst to the public — was all being generated by someone who was receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in secret from the administration (read this to see exactly how it worked).In other words, this arrangement was quite similar to the Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher scandals which Democrats, in virtual lockstep, condemned. Paul Krugman, for instance, in 2005 angrily lambasted right-wing pundits and policy analysts who received secret, undisclosed payments, and said they lack “intellectual integrity”; he specifically cited the Armstrong Williams case. Yet the very same Paul Krugman last week attacked Marcy Wheeler for helping to uncover the Gruber payments by accusing her of being “just like the right-wingers with their endless supply of fake scandals.” What is one key difference? Unlike Williams and Gallagher, Jonathan Gruber is a Good, Well-Intentioned Person with Good Views — he favors health care — and so massive, undisclosed payments from the same administration he’s defending are dismissed as a “fake scandal.”
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Sunstein himself — as part of his 2008 paper — explicitly advocates that the Government should pay what he calls “credible independent experts” to advocate on the Government’s behalf, a policy he says would be more effective because people don’t trust the Government itself and would only listen to people they believe are “independent.” In so arguing, Sunstein cites the Armstrong Williams scandal not as something that is wrong in itself, but as a potential risk of this tactic (i.e., that it might leak out), and thus suggests that “government can supply these independent experts with information and perhaps prod them into action from behind the scenes,” but warns that “too close a connection will be self-defeating if it is exposed.” In other words, Sunstein wants the Government to replicate the Armstrong Williams arrangement as a means of more credibly disseminating propaganda — i.e., pretending that someone is an “independent” expert when they’re actually being “prodded” and even paid “behind the scenes” by the Government — but he wants to be more careful about how the arrangement is described (don’t make the control explicit) so that embarrassment can be avoided if it ends up being exposed.
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In this 2008 paper, then, Sunstein advocated, in essence, exactly what the Obama administration has been doing all year with Gruber: covertly paying people who can be falsely held up as “independent” analysts in order to more credibly promote the Government line. Most Democrats agreed this was a deceitful and dangerous act when Bush did it, but with Obama and some of his supporters, undisclosed arrangements of this sort seem to be different. Why? Because, as Sunstein puts it: we have “a well-motivated government” doing this so that “social welfare is improved.” Thus, just like state secrets, indefinite detention, military commissions and covert, unauthorized wars, what was once deemed so pernicious during the Bush years — coordinated government/media propaganda — is instantaneously transformed into something Good.* * * * *What is most odious and revealing about Sunstein’s worldview is his condescending, self-loving belief that “false conspiracy theories” are largely the province of fringe, ignorant Internet masses and the Muslim world. That, he claims, is where these conspiracy theories thrive most vibrantly, and he focuses on various 9/11 theories — both domestically and in Muslim countries — as his prime example.
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It’s certainly true that one can easily find irrational conspiracy theories in those venues, but some of the most destructive “false conspiracy theories” have emanated from the very entity Sunstein wants to endow with covert propaganda power: namely, the U.S. Government itself, along with its elite media defenders. Moreover, “crazy conspiracy theorist” has long been the favorite epithet of those same parties to discredit people trying to expose elite wrongdoing and corruption. Who is it who relentlessly spread “false conspiracy theories” of Saddam-engineered anthrax attacks and Iraq-created mushroom clouds and a Ba’athist/Al-Qaeda alliance — the most destructive conspiracy theories of the last generation? And who is it who demonized as “conspiracy-mongers” people who warned that the U.S. Government was illegally spying on its citizens, systematically torturing people, attempting to establish permanent bases in the Middle East, or engineering massive bailout plans to transfer extreme wealth to the industries which own the Government? The most chronic and dangerous purveyors of “conspiracy theory” games are the very people Sunstein thinks should be empowered to control our political debates through deceit and government resources: namely, the Government itself and the Enlightened Elite like him.
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It is this history of government deceit and wrongdoing that renders Sunstein’s desire to use covert propaganda to “undermine” anti-government speech so repugnant. The reason conspiracy theories resonate so much is precisely that people have learned — rationally — to distrust government actions and statements. Sunstein’s proposed covert propaganda scheme is a perfect illustration of why that is. In other words, people don’t trust the Government and “conspiracy theories” are so pervasive precisely because government is typically filled with people like Cass Sunstein, who think that systematic deceit and government-sponsored manipulation are justified by their own Goodness and Superior Wisdom.
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The point is that there are severe dangers to the Government covertly using its resources to “infiltrate” discussions and to shape political debates using undisclosed and manipulative means. It’s called “covert propaganda” and it should be opposed regardless of who is in control of it or what its policy aims are. UPDATE II: Ironically, this is the same administration that recently announced a new regulation dictating that “bloggers who review products must disclose any connection with advertisers, including, in most cases, the receipt of free products and whether or not they were paid in any way by advertisers, as occurs frequently.” Without such disclosure, the administration reasoned, the public may not be aware of important hidden incentives (h/t pasquin). Yet the same administration pays an MIT analyst hundreds of thousands of dollars to advocate their most controversial proposed program while they hold him out as “objective,” and selects as their Chief Regulator someone who wants government agents to covertly mold political discussions “anonymously or even with false identities.”
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UPDATE III: Just to get a sense for what an extremist Cass Sunstein is (which itself is ironic, given that his paper calls for ”cognitive infiltration of extremist groups,” as the Abstract puts it), marvel at this paragraph:
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So Sunstein isn’t calling right now for proposals (1) and (2) — having Government ”ban conspiracy theorizing” or “impose some kind of tax on those who” do it — but he says “each will have a place under imaginable conditions.” I’d love to know the “conditions” under which the government-enforced banning of conspiracy theories or the imposition of taxes on those who advocate them will “have a place.” That would require, at a bare minumum, a repeal of the First Amendment. Anyone who believes this should, for that reason alone, be barred from any meaningful government position.
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This is a January 2010 article by Glenn Greenwald. The Sunstein paper referred to was published in 2008 and is at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1084585 Sunstein left the Obama Administration in 2012 and now teaches law at Harvard. He is the husband of U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice,a notorious neocon. His paper is scholarly only in format. His major premises have no citations and in at least two cases are straw man logical fallacies that misportray the position of the groups he criticizes. This is "academic" work that a first-year-law student heading for a 1.0 grade point average could make mincemeat of. This paper alone would seem to disqualify him from a Supreme Court nomination and from teaching law. Has he never heard of the First Amendment and why didn't he bother to check whether it is legal to inflict propaganda on the American public? But strange things happen when you're a buddy of an American president. Most noteworthy, however, is that the paper unquestionably puts an advocate of waging psychological warfare against the foreign populations *and* the American public as the head of the White House White House OMB Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs from 2008 through 2012 and on Obama's short list for the Supreme Court. Given the long history of U.S. destabilization of foreign nations via propaganda, of foreign wars waged under false pretenses, of the ongoing barrage of false information disseminated by our federal government, can there be any reasonable doubt that the American public is not being manipulated by false propaganda disseminated by their own government? An inquiring mind wants to know ...
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shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Jun 14
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Blowback! U.S. trained ISIS at secret Jordan base - 0 views
www.wnd.com/...-isis-at-secret-base-in-jordan
war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Iraq Jordan ISIL training
shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Jun 14
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Members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIS, were trained in 2012 by U.S. instructors working at a secret base in Jordan, according to informed Jordanian officials.
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The officials said dozens of ISIS members were trained at the time as part of covert aid to the insurgents targeting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. The officials said the training was not meant to be used for any future campaign in Iraq.
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Last March, the German weekly Der Spiegel reported Americans were training Syrian rebels in Jordan. Quoting what it said were training participants and organizers, Der Spiegel reported it was not clear whether the Americans worked for private firms or were with the U.S. Army, but the magazine said some organizers wore uniforms. The training in Jordan reportedly focused on use of anti-tank weaponry. The German magazine reported some 200 men received the training over the previous three months amid U.S. plans to train a total of 1,200 members of the Free Syrian Army in two camps in the south and the east of Jordan. Britain’s Guardian newspaper also reported last March that U.S. trainers were aiding Syrian rebels in Jordan along with British and French instructors.
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Reuters reported a spokesman for the U.S. Defense Department declined immediate comment on the German magazine’s report. The French foreign ministry and Britain’s foreign and defense ministries also would not comment to Reuters. The Jordanian officials spoke to WND amid concern the sectarian violence in Iraq will spill over into their own country as well as into Syria. ISIS previously posted a video on YouTube threatening to move on Jordan and “slaughter” King Abdullah, whom they view as an enemy of Islam. WND reported last week that, according to Jordanian and Syrian regime sources, Saudi Arabia has been arming the ISIS and that the Saudis are a driving force in supporting the al-Qaida-linked group.
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WND further reported that, according to a Shiite source in contact with a high official in the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the Obama administration has been aware for two months that the al-Qaida-inspired group that has taken over two Iraqi cities and now is threatening Baghdad also was training fighters in Turkey. The source told WND that at least one of the training camps of the group Iraq of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Syria, the ISIS, is in the vicinity of Incirlik Air Base near Adana, Turkey, where American personnel and equipment are located. He called Obama “an accomplice” in the attacks that are threatening the Maliki government the U.S. helped establish through the Iraq war. The source said that after training in Turkey, thousands of ISIS fighters went to Iraq by way of Syria to join the effort to establish an Islamic caliphate subject to strict Islamic law, or Shariah.
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Mideast war in March? - 1 views
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NATO war in Syria in March? Meanwhile, according to the Middle Eastern diplomatic and security officials speaking to WND, the international community is considering launching NATO airstrikes on Assad’s forces as soon as March if the opposition does not make major strides toward ending Assad’s regime. The NATO members, however, have been satisfied with the momentum of the opposition in the last few days, which saw a number of defectors from the Syrian military join the rebels, a move that also precipitated the downfall of Muammar Gadhafi’s regime before the NATO campaign in Libya. Similar to Gadhafi, Assad’s regime has been accused of major human rights violations, including crimes against humanity, in clamping down on a violent insurgency targeting his rule.
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Mass demonstrations were held in recent weeks in Syrian insurgent strongholds calling for the international NATO coalition in Libya to deploy in Syria. Just yesterday, 50 foreign ministers from Western and Arab nations got together in Tunis to demand that Syria allow aid to be delivered to civilians in the absence of any international force to resolve the conflict. Damascus officials claimed to WND that NATO troops are currently training in Turkey for a Turkish-led NATO invasion of Syria.
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Any deployment would most likely come under the banner of the same “Responsibility to Protect” global doctrine used to justify the U.S.-NATO airstrikes in Libya.
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Responsibility to Protect, or Responsibility to Act, as cited by President Obama, is a set of principles, now backed by the United Nations, based on the idea that sovereignty is not a privilege but a responsibility that can be revoked if a country is accused of “war crimes,” “genocide,” “crimes against humanity” or “ethnic cleansing.”
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George Soros-funded doctrine
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In his address to the nation in April explaining the NATO campaign in Libya, Obama cited Responsibility to Protect doctrine as the main justification for U.S. and international airstrikes against Libya. The Global Center for Responsibility to Protect is the world’s leading champion of the military doctrine. As WND reported, billionaire activist George Soros is a primary funder and key proponent of the Global Center for Responsibility to Protect. Several of the doctrine’s main founders also sit on boards with Soros.
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Marbux is right - this report is filled with stunning information! "TEL AVIV - NATO countries are strongly considering the possibility of an international deployment to Syria if the Syrian opposition does not make major advances in the next few weeks, according to informed Middle Eastern diplomatic and security officials. Egyptian security officials, meanwhile, outlined what they said was large scale international backing for the rebels attacking the embattled regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad - including arms and training from the U.S., Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia."
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One key point is that this article was published on February 24, 2012, long before the false flag sarin gas attack in late August of 2013 that was falsely attributed to the Assad government of Syria. Planning for a Libya-like NATO invasion of Syria was underway long before that attack. And the report gives us the information that the shipment of arms to and training of the Syrian opposition was already underway at that early date, if the report is accurate. All such activities were later confirmed by mainstream media, although I have not found any such reports that provide a beginning date. Hence the value of this report. The report also goes into some detail on the emerging international law norm of Responsibility to Protect ("RTP"), but misses some key aspects. RTP doctrine was an innovation in international law in response to massive genocidal events such as the Rwandan and Srebrenica Massacres. As international law stood before RTP, what happened entirely within the borders of a nation was an aspect of national sovereignty that international law could not interfere with. RTP cracked that barrier, holding that some human rights were so important that they deserved protection by international law, therefore the United Nations Security Council would be empowered to authorize intervention in cases involving wholly domestic genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. But omitted from the article is the fact that it is a doctrine to be exercised only by the U.N. Security Council; individual nations gain no license under the doctrine to launch their own wars to protect the citizens of another nation, whether directly or through proxies such as jihadi mercenaries. Russia has, quite properly in my opinion, vetoed U.S. sponsored draft resolutions based on RTP for Security Council authorization to intervene in Syria, because the U.S. is already an unlawful belligerent in Syria and because the U.S. so severely abused the Security Council's RTP r
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shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Nov 13
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Obama halted NSA spying on IMF and World Bank headquarters | Reuters - 0 views
www.reuters.com/...rity-imf-idUSL1N0IL19I20131031
surveillance state NSA NSA-targets economic-intelligence Obama banksters
shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Nov 13
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(Reuters) - President Barack Obama has ordered the National Security Agency to stop eavesdropping on the headquarters of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank as part of a review of intelligence gathering activities, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter.
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The first official said Obama had ordered a halt to such practices within the last few weeks, about the same time he instructed the NSA to curtail eavesdropping on the United Nations headquarters in New York.
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It is no secret that U.S. spy agencies historically have collected and analyzed information related to economic affairs - in public briefings to Congress, top intelligence officials have discussed assessments of economic issues.But a former senior U.S. intelligence official said that the Obama Administration had put greater emphasis and resources than predecessors into collecting and assessing economic information.In February 2009, shortly after Obama entered the White House, the Central Intelligence Agency began producing a new "Economic Intelligence Brief" for him to review along with the regular President's Daily Brief on international security and threats.Leon Panetta, Obama's first CIA director, said at the time the change was aimed at understanding the implications of the global economic crisis, and that the agency was considering hiring more economic analysts.The former U.S. intelligence official noted that insider detail on economic policy developments - for example, financial crises affecting the economies of European countries such as Greece, Italy and Spain, and the stability of the Euro - is the type of critical information U.S. policymakers welcome.
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The desire by U.S. policymakers for such information could help explain why NSA collected information on foreign leaders such as Merkel. Her cellphone number was listed in a NSA targeting document, which German media outlets apparently obtained from Snowden's cache. U.S. officials have now indicated that much NSA eavesdropping on Merkel and other allied leaders is likely to be curtailed if not halted.
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Heaven forbid that anyone should even suspect that the NSA's economic intelligence is also being used by banksters to make investment decisions. No every NSA and NSA contractor staffer can be trusted to never disclose NSA secrets to others... er ... except Edward Snowden and he gave those secrets to journalists, not to banksters. The rest can all be trusted, no matter how much money they are offered.