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Putin: Russia Reserves Right to Help Damascus Contain Terror Threat in Idlib

© Sputnik / Mikhail Klimentyev

Sputnik – 27.10.2018

ISTANBUL – Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday his country will take active steps if terrorists use the Idlib demilitarized zone as a cover to launch attacks on the rest of Syria.

“Should radicals … launch armed provocations from the Idlib zone, Russia reserves the right to give active assistance to the Syrian government in liquidating this source of terrorist threat,” the Russian President vowed during a summit on Syria in Istanbul.

He also proposed an initiative to hold an international conference to solve the problem of Syrian refugees.

“We offered partners to support the Russian initiative of convening an international conference on Syrian refugees. We understand what is linked to this issue, we understand the problems, but if we don’t work together, we won’t achieve any results,” Putin said following the quadrilateral talks on the Syrian settlement.

According to the Russian president, the parties agreed to broaden the concept of “humanitarian aid” and to understand it as “supply of medical equipment, medicines, restoration of infrastructure and water supply.”

Addressing the upcoming setup of the Syrian constitutional committee, Putin said that constitutional reform would strengthen statehood and unite the Syrian society.

“First of all, it is necessary to ensure the launch of the activities of the constitutional committee in Geneva, which is intended to consider the fundamental issues of the future state system of Syria. At the same time, decisions taken at the Syrian National Dialogue Congress in Sochi should be taken into account,” he said after talks with the leaders of Turkey, France, and Germany in Istanbul.

He stressed that such a committee should be recognized as legitimate by all parties in Syria and be respected.

“Only in this case, this structure will be efficient and effective, it will be able to prepare and implement a mature constitutional reform that will strengthen Syrian statehood and unite Syrian society. So, the work on forming a committee must be serious, painstaking, and it needs to be done fundamentally. Russia, as a guarantor of the Astana process, will actively participate in it,” the Russian leader continued.

Russia hopes that by the end of the year, the Constitutional Committee of Syria will be approved and will work, Putin said, stressing that the work on the creation of the committee should be conducted with respect to the legitimate government of the Syrian Arab Republic, otherwise it would be counterproductive.

There is progress in the creation of a constitutional committee of Syria, but patience is needed, the Russian president added.

“You said that 9 months after the decision in Sochi we didn’t achieve a specific result. I want to remind you that before the start of the Astana process, the parties didn’t meet at all for a year. This process simply stalled,” Putin recalled.

According to the president, “nothing happened at all” over that period. Then, as he noted, the Astana process was initiated, and “the wheel began to spin on and on.”

“Yes, the agreements reached are not being implemented as quickly as we would like, but there is still some progress. We managed to persuade the Syrian government to submit its part of the list for the formation of a constitutional committee. This is not an easy process, yes, there must be people who are trusted by all parties involved in the conflict. But we need patience and respect for all participants in the process. Only on this path will we succeed,” he said.

The Russian leader also underlined that only the Syrian people can decide for themselves.

“Our principled position is that the fate of our own country, including the choice of personalities on the political scene, should be determined by the Syrian people themselves,” he said after talks with the leaders of Turkey, France and Germany in Istanbul.

He noted that certain conditions must be created for this, one of which is the launch of the political process to form a constitutional committee and the beginning of its work. Participants of the summit in Istanbul did not discuss any personalities regarding the Syrian leader, since this is counterproductive, the president added.

On Saturday, Putin, as well as French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made a joint statement in Istanbul following a meeting dedicated to the Syrian crisis and other international problems.

In January this year, the Syrian National Dialogue Congress was held in Sochi. Its main result was the decision to establish a constitutional commission that will work in Geneva.

October 27, 2018 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | 2 Comments

Harmless Mail Bomb Scare Suspect Arrested

By Stephen Lendman | October 27, 2018

Is the targeted individual a legitimate suspect or a convenient patsy? Most likely the latter, but it remains an open question. How could an ordinary person access mailing addresses of prominent Trump critics sent harmless mail bombs?

On Friday, Justice Department office of public affairs director Sarah Flores tweeted: “We can confirm one person is in custody” – identified as Cesar Sayoc Jr., arrested in Plantation, Florida.

A white van belonging to him was also seized as potential evidence. On Friday, two more non-exploding mail bombs were discovered, 14 so far in total.

The latest ones were sent to former Obama DNI James Clapper, Dem Senator Cory Booker, and major Dem donor Tom Steyer. Sayoc reportedly has a prior arrest record, making him an ideal patsy.

Beginning on October 22, harmless mail bombs began to be delivered to prominent undemocratic Dem Trump critics.

None exploded. No one was hurt, the mailings intended to sow fear, create alarm, and make headlines.

They likely intended to influence the outcome of the November midterm elections, undemocratic Dem dark forces likely behind them, hoping to regain control of the House and/or Senate.

A separate article called the staged mailings reminiscent of post-9/11 anthrax attacks.

They killed five people, injured 17 others, and temporarily shut down Congress, the Supreme Court, and other federal operations.

Army scientist Dr. Steven Hatfill was wrongfully implicated as a “person of interest” but was never charged.

His home was repeatedly raided by FBI agents, his phone tapped, and he was subject to intensive surveillance for more than two years

He sued the Justice Department and was awarded $4.6 million for violating his privacy, leaking false and inflammatory information, costing him his job and reputation for blasting his name all over the media for days.

At an August 2002 news conference, he strongly denied involvement in the anthrax attacks he had nothing to do with.

Six years after being wrongfully named a “person of interest,” the Justice Department exonerated him, US Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeffrey Taylor, saying by letter to his lawyer Thomas Connolly:

“(W)e have concluded, based on laboratory access records, witness accounts and other information, that Dr. Hatfill did not have access to the particular anthrax used in the attacks, and that he was not involved in the anthrax mailings.”

In 2008, the FBI named biodefense researcher Bruce Ivins as the “anthrax killer,” no formal charges ever filed against him. No evidence suggested his culpability.

He and Hatfill were targeted as convenient patsies, wrongfully shifting state-sponsored blame onto them.

In his important book on the anthrax attacks, titled “The 2001 Anthrax Deception: The Case for a Domestic Conspiracy,” Graeme MacQueen connected the incidents to 9/11.

Evidence in his book sheds important light on dark forces behind the anthrax attacks, explaining:

They were carried out by multiple perpetrators, not a “lone wolf,” as falsely claimed, a state-sponsored conspiracy.

Responsible parties were Washington insiders, involved in planning the 9/11 attacks, staging a coup d’etat to seize executive power through intimidation of Congress and US civil society.

The 9/11 and related anthrax attacks were the beginning of Washington’s global war OF terror, not on it, raping and destroying one country after another – what false flags are all about, diabolical aims in mind for launching them.

Is Sayoc a convenient patsy like Steven Hatfill and Bruce Ivins, falsely charged with harmless mail bombs he had nothing to do with? The fulness of time will tell.

Contact at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” – http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

October 27, 2018 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism | | 6 Comments

Shadow Banning Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg: We’re All Digital Ghosts Now

By Charles Hugh Smith | Of Two Minds | October 27, 2018

Just about the only bulwark against being silenced by the modern-day tech-corporate-NKVD-Stasi is Patreon.

If you do a search of shadow banning, you’ll find sites that claim to help you identify whether Twitter or Instagram has shadow banned your account. The basic idea of shadow banning is to spoof the shadow-banned user into believing their public posts are visible to all while in reality the posts are visible only to the user or in some cases to the users’ followers.

Wikipedia’s definition of shadow banning is:

“Shadow banning (also called stealth banning, ghost banning or comment ghosting) is the act of blocking or partially blocking a user or their content from an online community such that it will not be readily apparent to the user that they have been banned.”

Here is whatis.com’s description: “Shadow banning is controversial because it allows an administrator or moderator to effectively become a censor and prevent specific users from interacting with other members of an online community on an equal basis.”

Shadow banning and outright banning are only the tip of the iceberg: everyone who posts content on the web or social media is subject to much more subtle and completely opaque controls on how much of your digital presence has been ghosted–not just in social media communities but in searches and how links to your site/content and re-posts of your content are handled by the tech cartel that controls what’s visible and “found” on the web and social media.

This cartel is dominated by Google and Facebook. Google controls over 90% of all search: what search results are displayed, the weight given to links (the page-rank assigned to websites) and a variety of other factors that can be depreciated, removed, omitted or blocked by algorithms and/or human censors (a.k.a. administrators) without recourse and without the site or user being informed.

While this chart displays the dominance of Facebook and Google in digital ad revenues, it is a rough proxy for their dominance in mindshare, user data collected and control over what is displayed and not displayed in search results and social media.

We are all digital ghosts now, and how much of your digital shadow is visible to the world is secret / opaque. If you violate company policies or applicable censorship laws (as interpreted by the company attorneys), the corporation will notify you that your account has been frozen or banned.

In these instances, users and content creators are informed of their purported violation.

But this visible part of web / social media censorship is only the tip of the iceberg. Most of the censorship is invisible and undetectable. Here’s an example of how this might work.

Facebook has reportedly based one of its censorship programs on the demonstrably bogus (and anonymously produced) PropOrNot list that was hyped by the Washington Post in 2016. The list of sites accused of being Russian propaganda outlets was a grab-bag of left, right and center websites whose only “crime” was publishing some bit of skepticism about the coronation of Hillary Clinton.

So a bogus anonymous list becomes the foundation of Facebook’s censorship efforts. This is precisely how the former Soviet Union’s secret police operated: a falsely reported association became the foundation of surveillance and the setting of various traps and snares to catch anti-social elements in the act of undermining the regime.

That the association was false no longer matters. What matters is your name is on the list. It turns out oftwominds.com made it on the modern-day NKVD-Stasi list of PropOrNot, which despite being debunked has taken on a life of its own in the New Police State of Facebook, Google, et al.

You might have heard about a targeted website’s traffic suddenly plummeting 30% or 40% literally overnight. Well, it’s true. Many sites left and right report their traffic mysteriously and suddenly plummets without any explanation by the organs of censorship (Facebook, Google, et al.)

It happened to oftwominds.com this month. I have traffic data going back to 2005, and my traffic (visits and page views) has been remarkably steady for years. The number of my posts per week remains the same, my engagement on social media remains the same (as far as I can tell, heh) and my page rank remains the same (5) (again, as far as I can tell).

So when my traffic drops like a light switch was flipped, I notice.

I hope you’ll enjoy the irony that many if not most of the charts published on my site are from the Federal Reserve Economic Data site (FRED). But this is akin to the innocent citizen snagged by the NKVD or Stasi for unspecified crimes against the people protesting his innocence and good citizenship: none of that matters. What matters is your name is on the list, and our administrators are obligated to track your digital presence and digitally ghost you by adjusting search results to depreciate your presence, underweight links from other sites, jam attempts to re-post your content and so on.

None of this is visible or reported. It all happens behind the closed doors of Facebook, Google et al. Just as loyal employees of the NKVD and the Stasi were constantly told they were the bulwark of the people against enemies of the state, employees of Facebook, Google et al. are told they’re weeding out “fake news” and “propaganda” (like those charts from the Federal Reserve Economic Database) that is disruptive and divisive.

In other words, they’re good Germans doing their masters’ bidding, for very handsome salaries, bonuses and stock options.

Meanwhile, the incomes of those secretly ghosted without trial or recourse plummets along with their traffic. The net result of the perverse magic of tech cartel censorship is only the wealthy few can afford to keep posting original content after they’ve been ghosted.

Should Facebook, Google et al. reassure us we haven’t been ghosted, why should we believe them? Since the entire apparatus of censorship is operated by private, for-profit corporations in complete secrecy, on what basis would their assurances be credible or verifiable?

Just about the only bulwark against being silenced by the modern-day tech-corporate-NKVD-Stasi is Patreon–individuals who provide financial support of independent voices and analysis because they value those independent analysts and content creators.

It doesn’t matter whether you consider yourself left, right or center. If you want to resist secret censorship of both the left and the right, then please consider supporting the independent commentators and analysts who have enhanced your life with value, insight or entertainment. Thank you, patrons and financial supporters of oftwominds.com and other independent content creators. Thanks to you, the tech cartel can ghost us and our content but they can’t erase it entirely.

At least not yet.

If you’re not sure where to start, search Patreon.com for the names of those independent content creators you value.

[Aletho News notes that WordPress analytics recently zeroed out the tally of clicks to Al-Manar News from Aletho News in the middle of a reporting period, erasing prior clicks. Unless an administrator happened to be closely tracking traffic, one would presume that there was very little reader interest in certain content. Also, Gilad Atzmon’s site has had its RSS feed down for days now, a new record]

October 27, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

US Ramstein Airbase in Germany Receives Biggest Ammo Shipment in Almost 20 Years

Sputnik – 27.10.2018

Ramstein is the largest overseas US air base in the world and is used as a hub for many of its operations, including drone strikes. The base has repeatedly drawn protests in Germany, with the latest taking place in July, 2018.

The US 86th Munitions Squadron at Ramstein Air Base, Germany received some 100 containers with a variety of munitions during the course of October, which is the largest US ammo shipment to Europe since the operation in Yugoslavia in 1999.

Master Sgt. Arthur Myrick, 86th MUNS munitions flight chief, said that the shipment will be used to “support NATO’s European Deterrence Initiative (EDI) and augment the Air Force’s War Reserve Materiel in Europe.”

According to Ramstein officials, the shipment is also expected to increase the responsiveness and readiness of US forces at the Ramstein base by pre-positioning ammunition, fuel and equipment to enable a “rapid response against threats made by aggressive actors.”

“We’re a major airlift hub for U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa, so our main job is to get munitions where they need to be on time. These are real-world munitions to fulfill real-world objectives. That’s the reason we are downloading these things: to make sure we have the capability to move the fight forward if need be,” Myrick said.

The last time such a major shipment was delivered to Ramstein was prior to Operation Allied Force in 1999, during which the US Air Force conducted some 900 air raids against then Yugoslavia. The 78 day long aerial campaign, which was not authorized by the UN Security Council, claimed the lives of around 500 civilians, according to Human Rights Watch, and resulted in widespread destruction of the country’s infrastructure.

Ramstein Air Base in Germany is the largest foreign US military base and is a major center for Washington’s overseas military operations. The base was home to American nuclear weapons, but they were reportedly pulled out in 2005. The air base regularly faces criticism from the German public, which demands that it be closed. One of the most recent protests against the US base took place on July 2, 2018, soon after US President Donald Trump said that he was considering a possible withdrawal of American forces from the country.

October 27, 2018 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | , , , | 2 Comments

Facebook bans 80+ ‘Iranian-linked’ accounts it says masqueraded as US citizens

RT | October 27, 2018

Facebook deleted 82 accounts, pages and groups, which it claims operated from Iran to wage an online propaganda campaign while posing as US citizens and posting memes on “politically charged topics.”

The suspended accounts engaged in “coordinated inauthentic behavior” on Facebook and Instagram, posting about things like “race relations, opposition to the president, and immigration,” Head of Cybersecurity Policy Nathaniel Gleicher wrote on company’s website on Friday. At least one of the removed pages had about 1.02 million followers.

Facebook admitted that it failed to find any ties between the deleted accounts and the Iranian government, though. “We can’t say for sure who is responsible,” Gleicher stated.

The social network revealed samples of content, created by the accounts it flagged as Iranian bots. They appear to be propagating strong pro-liberal and left-wing views, and are directed against President Donald Trump. One of them calls Trump “the worst, most hated president in American history.” Another displays a message in support of Trump critic, NFL athlete Colin Kaepernick, known for his controversial anti-police-brutality protests.

According to the tech giant, the accounts masqueraded as US citizens, and in some cases as UK citizens. Some of their efforts appear to be rather small-scale, as less than $100 was reportedly spent on running two ads on Facebook – one before the 2016 presidential election, and another one last January. The now-banned accounts also hosted a total of seven events between 2016 and 2018. Facebook can’t confirm if any of them “actually occurred,” and says that some of the events “appear to have been planned to occur only online.” One of them said events garnered the attention of 110 people, and two events received no interest at all.

Facebook and other big tech companies, like Twitter and Google, have been pressured by the government to step up their efforts to combat the ‘propaganda campaigns’ and ‘election meddling’ allegedly unleashed by Iran and Russia. In August, Facebook banned 652 “inauthentic” accounts and groups it linked to Tehran and Moscow. Twitter did the same by banning 284 accounts allegedly “originated” from Iran.

Both Iran and Russia have repeatedly denied the allegations of any attempts to interfere in US domestic affairs. Last week, Iran dismissed the accusation of trying to influence voters ahead of the US midterm election as “false” and caused by an “unknown illusion.”

Furthermore, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif claimed that Twitter had targeted legitimate Iranian accounts in the course of its anti-bot campaign. “Twitter has shuttered accounts of real Iranians, [including] TV presenters and students, for supposedly being part of an ‘influence op,’” he wrote last month.

Facebook also received criticism earlier this month when it wiped out more than 800 political and alt-media accounts with millions of followers in the course of a purge. The company said that all the affected accounts were linked with “unauthentic” activities. However, their authors insist that Facebook is simply using the ‘unauthentic behavior’ excuse for censorship.

October 27, 2018 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | 2 Comments

Oman rejects mediating between Israelis, Palestinians

Press TV – October 27, 2018

Oman says it will not act as a “mediator” between Israelis and Palestinians, playing down an earlier visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The sultanate was only offering ideas to help Israel and Palestinians to come together, Omani Foreign Minister Yousuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah told a security summit in Bahrain’s capital Manama on Saturday.

The remarks came a day after Netanyahu visited Oman in a rare visit, while accompanied by other senior Israeli officials, including the head of the Israeli spy agency Mossad.

“We are not saying road is now easy and paved with flowers, but our priority is to put an end to the conflict and move to a new world,” Reuters cited Abdullah as saying.

Despite apparently trying to sound impartial, Abdullah said Oman relied on the United States and efforts by US President Donald Trump in working towards the “deal of the century.”

The Trump administration has targeted the plan at the situation in the Palestinian territories.

Details are yet to emerge, but reports say it envisages a Palestinian state with limited sovereignty across about half of Israel-occupied West Bank and all the Gaza Strip. The deal also reportedly foresees potential disarming of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, and does not find Palestinians entitled to the eastern part of Jerusalem al-Quds as their capital.

This is while Abbas, who visited Oman before Netanyahu for three days, has renounced the plan, saying it has been devised without consulting the Palestinians. He also spurned any intermediary role by the US late last year after Washington recognized Jerusalem al-Quds as Israel’s “capital.”

In June, however, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Jordan assured the US of their support for the plan during visits to those countries by Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Jason Greenblatt, the US envoy to the region.

Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told the Manama gathering on Saturday that the kingdom believed the key to “normalizing” relations with Israel was the “peace process.”

The Omani minister also claimed Israel was “present in the region, and we all understand this, the world is also aware of this fact and maybe it is time for Israel to be treated the same and also bear the same obligations.”

Observers say Muscat has come to accommodate the US plan under pressure from Washington and Riyadh, the strongest US ally in the Persian Gulf region, which has been inching towards Tel Aviv over the past years.

Palestinian groups, however, condemned the Israeli prime minister’s visit to Oman, urging Arab countries to support the oppressed people of Palestine, instead.

Hamas warned about the dangerous consequences of Netanyahu’s visit for the people of Palestine. The Islamic Jihad movement also censured the visit, saying Oman acquitted Netanyahu of the crimes committed against innocent Palestinians by welcoming him to the country.

Commenting on Netanyahu’s visit, Paul Larudee, with the Free Palestine Movement, told PressTV, “What in the world would Netanyahu know about peace and stability, when his objectives and objectives of Israel have always been war and instability?”

“The importance is what their objectives are not. They are not about Arab unity, not about solidarity with Arabs who are suffering namely the Palestinians,” he said.

“These other countries realize that sooner or later they are potential targets of Israel… that they can be in the same place that the Palestinians are now,” Larudee said.

October 27, 2018 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments