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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

Israel Culture Minister arrives in UAE

MEMO | October 26, 2018

In first, Israel’s Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev today arrived in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to attend the Abu Dhabi Grand Slam Judo tournament.

Regev was invited to attend the event earlier this month to accompany Israel’s national judo team as they compete in the Emirati capital. President of the International Judo Federation (IJF), Marius Vizer, wrote to Regev on 2 October to invite her to the tournament and promised to “make all the necessary arrangements for [her] visit”.

The invitation came after the IJF demanded that the UAE allow the Israeli team to play its national anthem and fly its flag during the tournament. The event had previously been threatened with cancellation after the IJF stripped the UAE of the right to host the tournament due to its failure to guarantee “equal treatment” for Israeli athletes. In September, the UAE accepted the IJF’s conditions and allowed the Israeli judoists to sport their national insignia.

Regev’s attendance at the event – which is taking place from 25-27 October – will be seen as controversial in light of the lack of official relations between Israel and the UAE. In addition, Israeli passports are not valid for travel to the UAE.

However, the UAE has recently been pursuing a policy of normalisation with Israel. In September, it hosted secret backchannel talks between Israel and Turkey in an attempt to mend strained Israeli-Turkish relations. Envoys from the two countries flew into Abu Dhabi via Amman, Jordan, though neither government would confirm the purpose of the talks.

In August, an Israeli journalist claimed that an Emirati pilot participated in the bombing of Palestinian targets in the Gaza Strip during his training on Israeli Air Force F-35 fighters. Cohen, the journalist who made the claims, also accused Dubai’s Deputy Chairman of Police and Public Security, General Dhahi Khalfan, of being complicit in assassinating Hamas leader Mahmoud Mabhouh in Dubai in 2010.

In June, an exposé by the New Yorker revealed that Israel and the UAE have been engaged in secret normalisation talks since the 1990s. The report disclosed that “the secret relationship between Israel and the UAE can be traced back to a series of meetings in a nondescript office in Washington D.C. after the signing of the Oslo Accords”. These meetings discussed the possibility of the UAE purchasing F-16 fighter jets from the US which are known to be comprised of Israeli technology. The Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed Bin Zayed, also gave his blessing for delegations of influential American Jews to be brought to Abu Dhabi to meet with Emirati officials and establish an intelligence-sharing relationship.

READ: Israel, UAE envoys share dinner date

October 26, 2018 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Turkey seeks to ‘blackmail’ Saudi over Khashoggi’s case: Analyst

Press TV – October 26, 2018

The United States and Turkey are seeking to manipulate the crisis over the murder of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in an attempt to change the equilibrium in the Middle East, says a political analyst.

“I think the Turkish intelligence have so many information but they want to blackmail the Saudis and they push a little part after little part of the information that they have to press and blackmail the Saudi government,” Hadi Kobaysi told Press TV in an interview on Friday.

“I think that from the beginning why [did] Khashoggi go to Turkey, there is a Saudi consulate in Washington … I think that there is a game from the beginning to put the Saudi government under pressure … So from the beginning there is a game and the manipulation was from Turkey and the United States and the goal was to change the game in the Middle East,” he added.

Khashoggi – a US resident, Washington Post columnist, and a leading critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 to obtain a document certifying he had divorced his ex-wife, but he did not leave the building.

Saudi officials originally insisted that Khashoggi had left the diplomatic mission after his paperwork was finished, but they finally admitted several days later that he had in fact been killed inside the building during “an altercation.”

Several countries, including European ones, Turkey and the US, a major ally of Riyadh, have called for clarifications on the murder.

October 26, 2018 Posted by | Deception | , , , | Leave a comment

Azov Sea Resolution Adopted: European Parliament Takes Another Swipe at Russia

By Alex GORKA | Strategic Culture Foundation | 26.10.2018

The European Parliament (EP) has adopted a resolution calling for tougher sanctions from the European Union (EU) against Russia, should the situation in the Azov Sea continue to deteriorate. The document states that the Kerch bridge was built illegally, therefore the EP welcomes the council’s decision to impose restrictive measures against the companies involved in its construction. It suggests the creation of the position of special envoy on Crimea and the Donbass region in order to monitor the development of events there. And it warns about wider security implications that directly affect the EU. It demands that Russia “immediately end the intensive and discriminatory inspections of vessels and to consider, if necessary, appropriate countermeasures.”

Previously, Adm. Igor Voronchenko, the commander of the Ukrainian navy, threatened to use force against Russia as his service brought more ships to the area. Ukraine’s government announced last month that it would build a naval base there.

The EU has condemned Russia for launching a new inspection regime for cargo vessels coming from or heading toward Ukrainian ports in the Azov Sea. It is also accused of militarizing the sea by increasing the number of its ships deployed there.

On Oct. 3, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg expressed concern over the situation in the Azov Sea at a press conference in Brussels. Last month, US State Department Special Representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker stated that Washington is uneasy about the situation developing in the Sea of Azov, and is thus prepared to continue supplying Ukraine with weapons.

NATO and Ukraine held a major NATO operation Oct.10-19, dubbed Clear Sky, with substantial US Air Force participation. Just a few days ago, it was reported that the US government was considering the transfer of Oliver Hazard Perry-type frigates to Ukraine. This move will really boost that country’s sea power. Ukraine has only one seagoing warship — the frigate Hetman Sahaidachnyi. Since it is almost constantly out for repairs, it goes to sea rarely and only for very short deployments, such as NATO drills, never moving far from its home waters.

The delivery of relatively contemporary frigates with sophisticated weapons systems and equipment is a huge leap forward for the Ukrainian navy. The vessels are too large for the Azov Sea but they could operate around the entrance to it. Of course, the ships will be a factor to reckon with in the Black Sea. Ten ships of that class are available for export. They can be transferred under the Defense Department’s Excess Defense Articles program, which allows the release of surplus weaponry to friendly nations. In September, the US Coast Guard transferred two Island-class cutters, armed with .50-caliber machine guns and 25mm deck guns. The US is taking one step after another to push Kiev toward confrontation. Just as the election campaign in Ukraine is swinging into full gear, Kiev is being urged to challenge Russia militarily.

NATO naval operations are restricted by the 1936 Montreux Convention. Black Sea members don’t have many surface ships, and non-Black Sea allies are to rotate their ships every 21 days. This is a problem that can be solved with a little sleight of hand, such as by reflagging warships so that they fly Ukraine’s ensign. That’s how the American Oliver H. Perry frigates could be based in the Black Sea permanently. Any international agreement has a loophole. Russian military experts are old hands at this. They know perfectly well that the frigates will operate under US control.

That’s not all. Another way to skirt the provisions of the Monteux Convention is to sign a port concession agreement with a Black Sea country. This will trigger legal procedures based in the law of the sea, giving the US the opportunity to have some clauses reviewed regarding its naval operations. Ukraine comes in handy. The US military has its eye on the Ukrainian seaports of Odessa, Ilyichevsk, Chernomorsk, and Yuzhny. It already uses the Ochakov facility in Ukraine. Now that the construction work is over, US ships could drop anchor there. The convention does not allow aircraft carriers to enter the Black Sea, but Ukraine could be transformed into an unsinkable flattop.

The EU resolution sounds really tough. Why such a strong reaction and why now? Because Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov frustrated NATO’s plans to hold a provocative military exercise in the Azov Sea. Because of a bilateral treaty signed by Kiev and Moscow, Ukraine won’t be able to host the planned training event in the Sea of Azov without Russia’s consent.

Ukraine’s government is whipping up tensions because President Petro Poroshenko is running for reelection in March 2019 on a national security platform. This is pushing him to take a tougher line on Azov. In late March, Ukrainian border guards stopped the Russian-flagged, Crimean-registered fishing vessel Nord and illegally detained its crew. Ukraine was violating a number of international agreements. The incident triggered a campaign of provocative actions. In August, the Russian tanker Mekhanik Pogodin was detained in the Ukrainian port of Kherson. At the time, the Russian government compared that move to the activities of the Somali pirates.

The Russian government fully complies with its international commitments. The 2003 “Agreement between the Russian Federation and Ukraine on cooperation in the use of the Sea of Azov and the Strait of Kerch” does not specify a precise border. It states that the parties enjoy free use of this body of water and agree that the Sea of Azov and the Strait of Kerch are the internal waters of both Ukraine and Russia. No line of demarcation has even been drawn. Kiev believes it has the right to detain any ship traveling to or from Crimea without its permission.

Whatever Russia does is done legally. If there is a problem, Russia and Ukraine can solve it through negotiations. But neither the EU nor NATO has the idea of acting as a mediator to promote that process on its agenda. They could easily press Kiev into talks with Moscow but have not. Instead the EU votes for this provocative resolution, NATO expresses its political support, and the US sends warships and weapons. They are doing everything to goad Kiev into taking a confrontational approach and turning the Azov Sea into a flashpoint with a showdown expected at any minute.

October 26, 2018 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Some Extremely Sloppy Detective Work Raises Yet More Questions

By Rob Slane | The Blog Mire | October 25, 2018

The more I look at the statement issued by Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu on 5th September, in relation to the Salisbury and Amesbury Investigation, the more I am astonished at the sloppiness on display. Mr Basu took the trouble of informing the public that the investigation has involved around 250 detectives from across the Counter Terrorism Policing Network, “brilliantly led by Counter Terrorism Policing South East, and supported by officers from Wiltshire,” and that they have been meticulously following the evidence for six months. So the statement he read out and the accompanying images ought to be entirely accurate, right?

Except they are not, and in fact they contain numerous extremely careless, and sometimes downright bizarre errors. For example:

Firstly, the two images of the suspects in Fisherton Street are headed with captions describing them as being in a place called Fisherton Road. There is no location called Fisherton Road in Salisbury.

Secondly, we have the images of the two men at Gatwick airport, famously taken at the exact same second, 16:22:43. Yet the captions above tell us that the images are of the men at 15:00hrs. This is mighty odd, not just because the timestamp on the images shows otherwise, but also because the airplane the men were travelling in had not even landed at 15:00hrs. It eventually landed nearer to 16:00 than it did to 15:00, so they can’t have been going through the gates at 15:00hrs, can they?

Thirdly, one of the four points The Met makes in joining the Salisbury and Amesbury cases together is an incomplete sentence that makes no sense whatsoever:

“Fourthly, the lack of crossover between the known movements of the suspects and Dawn and Charlie’s known movements around Salisbury, and the fact that there is no evidence to suggest they have been targeted mean it is much more likely Dawn and Charlie found.”

Found…? Found what? Who knows?

Fourthly, the picture of the two men at Salisbury station on 3rd March has a timestamp of 16:11:27. Yet in the timeline The Met tells us that they left Salisbury at approximately 16:10. So they left at approximately a minute and a half before they were photographed standing on the other side of the turnstiles from the platform? Is The Met, with all its massive resources and 250 detectives on the case unable to find out what time the train actually departed?

Fifthly, there is the fact that at least one of the pictures they issued has been very heavily cropped (see here). Why was it cropped and what confidence can we have that the other images were not tampered with as well?

Am I nit-picking? Nope. 250 detectives working on what may be the biggest investigation this country has ever seen, with six months to get their facts straight, ought to be pinpoint accurate. And yet all we find is sloppiness and little regard to detail.

And not for the first time. We’ve seen it before in the fact that The Met has still released no footage clearly showing the Skripals or the two suspects on 4th March (still images don’t count). This is beyond bizarre given that on numerous occasions they have appealed to the public for help in piecing together the events of the day. And we have seen it in the incomplete and incorrect timeline of events released on 17th March (which now seems to have disappeared from The Met’s website altogether).

But I want to focus on what I consider to be the biggest issue with the statement released on 5th September, which is the astonishing lack of detail given about the two suspects’ movements in Salisbury on 3rd and 4th March. Here is the description of their movements on Saturday 3rd:

“On Saturday, 3 March, they left the hotel and took the underground to Waterloo station, arriving at approximately 11.45am, where they caught a train to Salisbury, arriving at approximately 2.25pm.

They are believed to have taken a similar route when they returned to London on the afternoon of Saturday, 3 March. Leaving Salisbury at approximately 4.10pm and arriving in Bow at approximately 8.05 pm.

We assess that this trip was for reconnaissance of the Salisbury area and do not believe that there was any risk to the public from their movements on this day.”

So tell me, what did they do and where did they go in Salisbury on Saturday 3rd March? You have no idea whatsoever, do you, because Mr Basu has not mentioned it. We are treated to the absurd word “reconnaissance”, as if the two men were in Afghanistan staking out the Tora Bora caves, rather than in a quiet city in the South of England covered by Google maps, but there are absolutely no details of what this alleged reconnaissance actually entailed. More on that in a moment.

What of their movements the next day? Surely there’s some detail here, given the allegations against them. Judge for yourselves:

“On Sunday, 4 March, they made the same journey from the hotel, again using the underground from Bow to Waterloo station at approximately 8.05am, before continuing their journey by train to Salisbury.

CCTV shows them in the vicinity of Mr Skripal’s house and we believe that they contaminated the front door with Novichok.

They left Salisbury and returned to Waterloo Station, arriving at approximately 4.45pm and boarded the London Underground at approximately 6.30pm to London Heathrow Airport. From Heathrow Airport, they returned to Moscow on Aeroflot flight SU2585, departing at 10.30pm on Sunday, 4 March.”

In both descriptions, there are more details of their movements in London than their movements in Salisbury. The only glimmer of detail around their movements in Salisbury on 4th March is the claim that there is CCTV showing them in the vicinity of Mr Skripal’s house. But which CCTV are they referring to? Is it the image of the two men outside the Shell garage on the Wilton Road? If so, as I discussed here, this is highly misleading, since this location is some 600 yards or so from Mr Skripal’s house, and on a completely different street. Then again, perhaps The Met does have something more incriminating, but in which case why not show that, rather than the image of them walking past a garage on a different road?

But I want to come back to the details about the Saturday, and the reason for this is twofold:

Firstly, it is one of the few places where The Met’s claims are refuted by some very specific, rather than general, testimony in the interview the two men gave to Margarita Simonyan.

Secondly, the claims made by the men in that interview, which refute The Met’s allegations, could themselves easily be refuted by The Met.

Here’s the crucial part of that interview:

“Petrov: No, we arrived in Salisbury on March 3. We wanted to walk around the city but since the whole city was covered with snow, we spent only 30 minutes there. We were all wet.

Boshirov: There are no pictures. The media, television – nobody talks about the fact that the transport system was paralyzed that day. It was impossible to get anywhere because of the snow. We were drenched up to our knees.

Simonyan: All right. You went for a walk for 30 minutes, you got wet. What next?

Petrov: We travelled there to see Stonehenge, Old Sarum, and the Cathedral of the Blessed Virgin Mary. But it didn’t work out because of the slush. The whole city was covered with slush. We got wet, so we went back to the train station and took the first train to go back. We spent about 40 minutes in a coffee shop at the train station.

Boshirov: Drinking coffee. A hot drink because we were drenched.

Petrov: Maybe a little over an hour. That’s because of large intervals between trains. I think this was because of the snowfall. We went back to London and continued with our journey.”

(As an aside, I can confirm that they are correct about the conditions. There was a lot of snow on the ground on the Saturday morning, and my children went off sledging, but by early afternoon they came back as it was rapidly turning to slush).

What we have are two versions of events, which are mutually exclusive.

On the one hand, The Met claims that the men arrived at Salisbury train station at approximately 14:25; that they left at approximately 16:10 (although as I say, they were still there at 16:11:27); and that during this 1 hour 45 minutes they went on a reconnaissance mission of the Salisbury area.

On the other hand, Petrov and Boshirov claim that after leaving the station (and they don’t dispute the 14:25 time) they walked about for about half an hour, before heading back to the station, where they sat in a café for more than 40 minutes and possibly up to an hour or so (this would be Café Ritazza in the ticket hall, shown at the top of this piece). This would therefore put them in the café from about 15:10 until about 16:10.

Now, I take it as obvious that for the reconnaissance claim made by The Met to be correct, this would mean the men visiting the alleged location of the intended poisoning — Mr Skripal’s house, or at the very least Christie Miller Road — since the purpose of reconnaissance is to survey vital locations, and this is the only really vital location in connection with the claims made against them. The only other possible location of interest to them, according to the claims against them, would be the back of The Cloisters on Catherine Street, where they allegedly dumped the poison. But let’s just say I would take an awful lot of persuading as to why anyone should need to do reconnaissance of a bin.

It takes between 20-25 minutes to walk from the station to Christie Miller Road. Double it for there and back, and you get 40-50 minutes. However, the very nature of reconnaissance means that it involves checking out an area, and so as well as walking there and back we could, at a conservative estimate, perhaps add 10 minutes to the walking times. Which means that we are looking at 50-60 minutes at least for a reconnaissance mission.

This entirely conflicts with Petrov’s and Boshorov’s claims. Of course, we have no way of knowing whether their claims are true or not, but the point is this: The Met knows exactly whether their claims are true or false, and they could easily disprove them simply by showing the two men walking through Salisbury when they say they were in the café.

Of course, it could well be that The Met does have CCTV footage of the two men in the city outside the half hour or so timeframe they have claimed. It could be that they have CCTV footage of the café from 15:10 to 16:10, and that there is no sign of the two men there. And it could well be that they have CCTV footage of the men on their way to or from Mr Skripal’s house.

Yet despite the very specific claims made by the men, the only evidence ever presented by The Met of their movements in Salisbury on that day is the image of them standing in the ticket hall at 16:11:27. Nothing else has been released of their movements. Nothing else has been stated. Other than the claim about reconnaissance, which has been backed up by nothing, there is nothing at all.

Some will say that The Met is under no obligation to publicly reveal any more CCTV footage than they want to. Ordinarily, I might agree. But not in this case. It was The Met that made serious allegations in public about the two men, and yet they did so without producing any evidence to back up their claims. But now that the two suspects have themselves publicly refuted The Met’s claims about what they did on 3rd March with some quite specific details, The Met now surely has an obligation either to show the evidence they have to back up their claim of “reconnaissance”, or withdraw it.

So here are the three questions that The Met needs to answer in connection with Saturday 3rd March:

    1. Do you have CCTV footage of the two men that contradicts their claim to have spent only about half an hour in the City that day?
    2. Do you have CCTV footage that contradicts the claims made by Petrov and Boshirov to have been in the station café between approximately 15:10 and 16:10?
    3. If neither of the above exists, on what basis has the claim been made that the two men were in Salisbury on 3rd March on a reconnaissance mission?

October 25, 2018 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

MSNBC’s Chuck Todd Fears Russia May Be Behind Bomb Scare

Sputnik – 26.10.2018

The FBI and other agencies are continuing to hunt for the person or people responsible for shipping a number of explosive devices to prominent Democrats beginning with billionaire financier George Soros on Monday and most recently Hollywood actor Robert De Niro on Thursday.

As should be expected, while the FBI and other authorities conduct their investigation, the mainstream US press is also hunting down clues, pondering motives, talking to experts and analyzing the facts in an effort to make sense of the chaos.

Some in the mainstream media, however, really just seem to be throwing things out there and seeing what sticks to the wall. The host of MSNBC’s “Meet the Press,” Chuck Todd, who is also the political director for NBC News, is one commentator engaging in breathless guesswork to a national audience.

Who is the culprit, according to Todd? Is it a lone wolf, driven crazy by the political rhetoric of the past two years, or the “#MAGAbomber” as Twitter has theorized? Perhaps it’s a Democratic voter disgruntled by the direction of the party.

If you thought those things, you’ve probably learned nothing over the past couple of years, because Todd did not make any of those conjectures. Instead, he pointed the finger at Russia — like any good liberal media newsman would.

“This feels like a spot — I have this fear this could be some Russian operation too — designed to do what’s happening now. More of this — you know. In some ways, we shouldn’t rule out — it is dividing us,” Todd said during a panel on the bombing attempts.

Senior MSNBC Political Editor Beth Fouhy, Daily Beast columnist Jonathan Alter and prominent commentator John Podhoretz joined Todd for the discussion.

The anchor began the segment by playing a clip of US President Donald Trump calling on political leaders on Wednesday night to stop portraying their opponents as “morally defective.” Trump blamed the media for “anger” in American society on Thursday.

Perhaps ironically, Todd’s fearful remarks about the lengths Russia will go to in order to spread discord followed a discussion of the “big lie.”

Alter spoke about a propaganda technique called the “big lie,” popularized by Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels in 1941 when he said, “The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big and stick to it.” The term has since come to mean that effective lies are so “colossal” that nobody could believe that the person who told the lie “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously,” in Hitler’s words.

“You just tell a lie as big as you can, because you know a lot of people are gonna believe it,” Alter said before Todd floated the “Russian operation” theory.

October 25, 2018 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Pro-Israel superstar may have worked as a secret agent on college campuses

By 2014 Mazzig had already spoken to over 40,000 students from high school through college, and helped defeat a boycott resolution at the University of Washington.
By Alison Weir | If Americans Knew | October 25, 2018

The Jewish Forward reports that a hugely popular pro-Israel speaker and writer, Hen Mazzig, has been secretly working directly for the Israeli government. It appears that his actions may have violated U.S. espionage laws.

A pro-Israel organization lists Mazzig among “The Top 100 People Positively Influencing Jewish Life, 2018.”

According to the Forward, Mazzig’s op-eds “have been published in nearly every Israeli and American Jewish publication (including the Forward ), and his speeches to students across North America and Europe, have garnered him legions of fans, including more than 18,000 Twitter followers.”

The publication reports:

“A Forward investigation has revealed that he also worked directly for the Israeli government. He doesn’t seem to have told anyone that, however — neither the sponsors of his speeches, nor the students who listened to them. Because he kept quiet, and because those payments are related to his political work in the United States, he might have violated an American anti-espionage law, according to experts consulted by the Forward.

Hen Mazzig speaking to American students during a 2013 five month speaking tour.

Experts cited by the Forward say that Mazzig seems to have violated the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA), an American anti-espionage law. This law requires individuals and groups working on behalf of a foreign government to divulge that fact.

Attorneys say Mazzig should have registered as a foreign agent. Mazzig admitted to the Forward that he was a paid contractor for the government of Israel, and said that Israel’s official government advertising agency hired him to inform them about issues on American campuses.

FARA has recently been invoked against a Russian graduate student in the U.S., who has been imprisoned for three months, mostly in solitary confinement, despite the fact that she appears to be innocent of the charges.

It is unknown whether U.S. authorities will charge Mazzig with violating the FARA requirement.

An attorney who specializes in FARA cases told the Forward : “The policy behind FARA is, yes, lobbying will happen. The key is for the American people to know when it comes to foreign influences, who’s pulling the strings.”

The Forward reports that The Lawfare Project, a pro-Israel organization that often uses  lawsuits to chill pro-Palestinian activism, demanded that the Forward delay publishing the article until lawyers could speak on Mazzig’s behalf. The Forward accordingly held the story for three and a half days, but did not hear further from Mazzig’s lawyers.

The publications and organizations such as campus Hillel groups that have been featuring Mazzig say they didn’t know he was employed by the Israeli government. According to the Forward, student organizers “say they don’t remember Mazzig disclosing his contracting work, either beforehand or during his speeches.”

3/22/17 Hen Mazzig lecture/ Oriented showing by Kevin Musco

Hen Mazzig speaks at the University of Connecticut, March 3, 2017. Students were not informed that he was a paid agent of the Israeli government.

The Forward points out: “Over the last decade, and particularly in the last few years, the amount of money spent by outside groups to influence the Israeli-Palestinian debate on campus has risen sharply.

“In addition to American Jewish donors heavily increasing their funding for pro-Israel campus advocacy groups, foreign governments and other unaccountable entities are also inserting themselves into the collegiate fray.”

A paper trail provided by the Forward indicates that Mazzig may have been working under Israel’s notorious Ministry of Strategic Affairs, which sponsors diverse secretive operations.

Kela Shlomo – Solomon’s Sling

An Israeli organization named Seventh Eye reported last month that the Ministry of Strategic Affairs has been working with pro-Israel American nonprofits on a project called “Kela Shlomo” (translated as “Solomon’s Sling”). The Forward describes this as an effort “to fund anti-BDS activities outside of Israel that won’t be attributable to the government itself.”

Seventh Eye reports: “‘Kela Shlomo’ is an [Israeli] organization with a special corporate structure. Its legal envelope is civil: its founders have established it as a public benefit company, and its shareholders are former senior civil servants.”

The article points out that “the entire purpose of the organization is to implement government policy through a budget that combines the government budget and income from private donors.”

Ha’aretz has also reported on the initiative: “The Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Public Affairs established an external body – a private company for the benefit of the public called ‘Shlomo Kela’ – to which the government decided to transfer NIS 128 million two weeks ago, in addition to 128 million from private donors from around the world. This is according to the ministry, among other things, in order to carry out ‘mass awareness activities’ within the framework of “the struggle against Israel’s delegitimization campaign” around the world.

Among the project’s members is Sagi Balasha, a former CEO of Sheldon Adelson’s Israeli-American Council.

Central Fund of Israel

Seventh Eye reports that two American organizations have donated millions of shekels to Kela Shlomo. “The central body of the two is the Central Fund of Israel, which is managed by the American Marcus family, one of whose sons was recently interviewed by Israel’s Channel 11.”

The Central Fund of Israel is an American tax-exempt organization (#13-2992985) founded in 1979. Its IRS 990 form gives it mission as “promoting charitable activities in Israel.”

Its principal officers are listed on its 2016 990 tax form as Arthur Marcus, president (now deceased); Jay Marcus (his son), vice president; and Jeff Most, treasurer. Dr. Linda Kalish Marcus, Mitchell Elkin and Michael Fischberger are board members.

While Its address is listed as 980 Avenue of the Americas, Third floor, New York, NY (a Marcus textile company) and its phone number is given as 506-148-2718, it appears that the Marcus family lives much of he time in Efrat in the West Bank, a right wing Jewish-only colony built on land confiscated from three nearby Palestinian villages.

According to an Israeli eulogy for Arthur Marcus, the organization transferred $20 million of tax-deductible U.S. money to Israel.

One Israel Fund

The other American organization donating to Kelo Shlomo /Solomon’s Sling, according to the Forward, is the One Israel Fund.

The tagline for the organization says: One Israel Fund – Building and Securing the Heartland Of Our Nation.” While the organization refers to “our nation” as Israel, it is a registered nonprofit in the U.S. It lists an American address (445 Central Ave, Cedarhurst, New York) and raises money from American taxpayers. This money, sent to Israel, is deducted from the taxes individuals pay to the U.S.

One Israel Fund 2017 fundraising gala

Head of Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (which includes 53 organizations) speaks at One Israel Fund event

Kelo Shlomo (also spelled Kello Shlomi) is expected to provide a speedy, coordinated response “to efforts to stain Israel’s image around the world, for example, in the event of a military operation, terror attacks [sic] or UN votes against government policies.”

“This would be done by launching online campaigns, lobbying, engaging organizations abroad and bringing delegations to Israel.”

Israel outsources work to agents abroad

Seventh Eye reports: “Much of the activity is outsourced, as a result of a declared strategy that in order to succeed in the mission, the government’s involvement in the ‘mass awareness activities’ it initiates should be disguised. This outsourcing is carried out by agents in Israel and abroad who make up… the ‘pro-Israel network.’”

CAMERA

One of Hen Mazzig’s U.S. sponsors has been the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting (CAMERA).” It’s unknown whether any CAMERA officials were aware of Mazzig’s paid employment by the Israeli government. Nor is it known to what degree CAMERA itself may work with the Israeli government.

CAMERA’S website states that the organization was founded in 1982. Among its earliest members were prominent Washington-area residents Saul Stern and Bernard White. Its Advisory Board included U.S. Senators Rudy Boschwitz and Charles Grassley, Congressman Tom Lantos, journalist M. Stanton Evans, Ambassador Charles Lichenstein, Pastor Roy Stewart, and Rabbi David Yellin.

CAMERA created chapters in major cities, including New York, Chicago, Fort Lauderdale, Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and in1988 a Boston chapter and office, founded and led by Andrea Levin, who has served as associate editor of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

The Executive Board has included some top Boston business leaders, including the co-founders of Timberland and Staples.

CAMERA’s current head is Levin, named in 2002 as “America’s fifth most influential Jewish citizen.” Its membership now numbers over 65,000.

In addition to the Boston headquarters the organization also has offices in Washington, DC, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Israel. Among CAMERA’s authors was columnist Charles Krauthammer. It now has assets of close to $8 million, and Levin receives an annual salary of over $260,000.

The organization, which operates both in the U.S. and abroad, is a member of the New England Israel Campus Roundtable, which includes 19 pro-Israel organizations.

New projects initiated by CAMERA:

  • The CAMERA Fellows Program recruits student leaders across the US as well as from Spain, South Africa and Latin America who present educational programs on their campuses to inform fellow students about Middle East realities. The Fellows monitor their student newspapers, write Op-Eds and help counter distorted characterizations of Israel in the campus arena.
  • Launched in early 2011 the CAMERA Campus Activist Project (CCAP) promotes creation of pro-Israel groups on campuses where there is little or no such activity.
  • Revista de Medio Oriente, CAMERA’s Spanish language counter part, challenges misinformation in the Spanish language world, whether in Spain’s media or in Latin American coverage.
  • The British Project addresses major media in Britain, such as the Guardian, the Independent, and the BBC, which have global reach and all too often have problematic Middle East coverage.

  • The Christian Project focuses on distorted Middle East coverage in Christian publications and sponsors programs in the Christian community.

So far it is unknown whether the U.S. justice department will investigate Hen Mazzig and his network of American enablers following the Forward’s revelations. Past history suggests that this will not occur – unless enough American demand it.

So far, no U.S. media seem to have reported the Forward’s findings.

Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew, president of the Council for the National Interest, and author of Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel.  

October 25, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , | 5 Comments

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