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Former CIA Chief Brennan Unblinkingly Rewrites Entire Basis Of US Judicial System In One Short Sentence

By Tyler Durden – Zero Hedge – 10/06/2019

The presumption of innocence, as a foundation of the US judicial system, has seemingly been under attack since November 8th 2016. An allegation is made, media runs with the narrative, the seed of possibility of guilt is implanted in the minds of zombie Americans, and the accused is maligned forever – no court required. Simple.

And now, none other than former CIA Director John Brennan clarifies exactly how the deep state sees “due process”…

In an interview on MSNBC, Brennan, unblinkingly states that “people are innocent, you know, until alleged to be involved in some kind of criminal activity.”

And not even a skip of a beat from the MSNBC anchors.

Some have suggested, in Brennan’s defense, that he was being sarcastic, or even joking, but nothing in his delivery suggests that and furthermore, it’s not the smartest thing to say given the goings on at the margin of the legal system and the death–by-allegation media narratives that are swarming around the enemies of his deep-state attack.

Of course, we should by now know full well how to treat anything that comes out of Brennan’s mouth…

Utterly without value.

October 6, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , | 2 Comments

‘The Falcon Lands: CIA Interference in Australian Politics (2014)

21st Century Wire

Did the CIA interfere in 1970s Australian politics? Former US intelligence operative and convicted spy, Christopher Boyce, tells his story to Australia’s Dateline program. Boyce’s intervention was made famous by Hollywood’s theatrical release of The Falcon and the Snowman. Boyce reveals covert US ‘regime change’ operations in Australia which would eventually remove the Labour Prime Minister from power, as Washington sought to protect its key intelligence gathering facilities located Down Under. Watch:

Presented by Mark Davis
Producers: SBS Dateline (2014)

October 6, 2019 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Video | , | 1 Comment

North Korea sets deadline for US to end hostilities or forgo talks

Press TV – October 6, 2019

North Korea says it has “no desire” to continue negotiations with the United States until Washington takes “practical” steps to end hostilities, a day after working-level talks between the two countries broke down in Sweden.

In a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency, a spokesman for the North’s Foreign Ministry said on Sunday that Pyongyang had “no desire to hold such nauseating negotiations such as this one unless the US takes practical measures to end hostile policies.”

“The fate of the US-North Korea dialog is in Washington’s hands and the deadline is until the end of this year,” the spokesman said.

The spokesman also noted that there was no way the US would bring alternative plans for their stalled nuclear talks to a meeting proposed by Stockholm in two weeks after this weekend’s talks in Sweden broke down.

“The U.S. is spreading a completely unfounded story that both sides are open to meet after two weeks…. It is not likely at all that it can produce a proposal commensurate to the expectations of the DPRK and to the concerns of the world in just fortnight,” the North Korean official said.

The U.S. State Department has announced that it has accepted Sweden’s invitation to return for more discussions with Pyongyang in two weeks.

The talks in Sweden followed months of a stalemate in dialog. In February, US President Donald Trump had walked away from a summit with the North’s leader Kim Jong-un, causing the impasse.

The negotiations in Sweden collapsed when the US once again refused to reciprocate unilateral goodwill gestures by North Korea.

In Stockholm, the North’s leading negotiator, Kim Myong-gil, who spent much of Saturday in the talks, blamed the US for not giving up its “old attitude.” He said the US officials had “disappointed us greatly and dampened our enthusiasm for negotiation by bringing nothing to the negotiation table.”

The US likewise blamed Pyongyang.

There was no immediate reaction by the US to the Sunday statement by the North Korean spokesman.

The Stockholm meeting was the first formal working-level talks since the US president and the North Korean leader met at the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) on the Korean Peninsula in June and agreed to restart negotiations after their failed summit in Vietnam in February.

Trump’s firing of his national security adviser John Bolton — who espoused a standoffish view toward Pyongyang — last month also seemed to soften the atmosphere between the US and North Korea and raised hopes for a breakthrough in the talks, until they broke down on Saturday.

North Korea, currently under multiple rounds of harsh sanctions by the UN and the US over its nuclear and missile programs, put a unilateral halt to its missile and nuclear tests shortly before a diplomatic thaw began between Pyongyang and Seoul in early 2018 and later between the North and the US.

October 6, 2019 Posted by | Militarism | , | 1 Comment

Corruption in Journalism

By Peter Van Buren | We Meant Well | September 30, 2019

Columnist Max Boot in the Washington Post put into writing what we have all known for some time: real journalism, Jefferson’s informed citizenry and all that, is dead. The job has shifted to aspirational writing, using manipulated droplets of facts and just plain made-up stuff to drive events.

Boot (pictured) writes to drive Trump from office and overturn the 2016 election.

Max Boot: “Much of my journalism for the past four years has been devoted to critiquing President Trump and opposing the spread of Trumpism. But no matter how many columns or sound bites I produce, he remains in office… I am left to ask if all my work has made any difference.”

Boot has spent the last years creating and circle-supporting others who create false narratives. They manufacture reasons for Trump to resign, to press Democrats to impeach, or at last resort, to influence voters they otherwise hold in contempt for not knowing what’s good enough for them. We kind of figured this out after senior staff at the New York Times had to remind reporters they were “not part of the f*cking resistance,” but it is helpful to see it in daylight. After all, democracy dies in the darkness.

The uber-false narrative Max and others Frankensteined into existence was Russiagate. Trump wasn’t the Manchurian Candidate and there was no quid pro quo for Russian election help. Yet the media literally accused the president of treason by melding together otherwise unrelated truthlets — Trump wanted a hotel in Moscow, some ads were run on Facebook — that could be spun into a narrative to bring Trump down. Correlation was made into causation in a purposeful freshman Logic 101 fail. What was true was of little consequence; what mattered was whether the media could collectively create a story the rubes would believe, and then pile on.

The critical flaw in Russiagate (other than it didn’t happen) was the media creating an end-point they could not control. Robert Mueller was magic-wanded into the Last Honest Man, the Savior of Democracy, as the narrative first unfolded and then fell apart like a cardboard box in the rain. After his dismal testimony there was nowhere for the story to go.

This autumn’s empty box of a narrative is upgraded to play out without end: Trump is manipulating domestic and foreign policy for personal gain via… hotel fees.

At first glance it seems like a non-starter. Trump’s hotels are as much a part of him as the extra pounds he carries. He campaigned as a CEO and announced early on he was not going to divest. But with the first cold slap of Trump’s election victory a narrative was being shaped: Trump could not become president because of his business conflicts of interest; it was danged unconstitutional.

Early proponents of this dreck dug around in the Constitution’s closet and found the Emoluments Clause, a handful of lines intended to bar office holders from accepting gifts from foreign sovereigns, kings, and princes to prevent influence buying. Pre-Trump, the last time the issue was in actual contention was with President Martin Van Buren (no relation) over gifts from the Imam of Muscat.

The media ran with it. They imagined out of whole cloth any foreign government official getting a room at any Trump hotel was a “gift.” Then they imagined whatever tiny percentage of that room profit which actually went to Trump himself represented a bribe. Then they imagined despite the vast complexity of U.S. relations, Trump would alter course because some guy rented a room. It was Joker-like in its diabolicalness, the presidency itself merely a prank to hide an international crime spree. Pow!

It was also ridiculous on its face, but they made it happen. The now-defunct leftist site Think Progress ran what might be Story Zero before Trump even took office. An anonymous source claimed the Kuwaiti Ambassador canceled a major event at one hotel to switch to Trump’s own DC hotel under pressure. It all turned out to be untrue. “Do you think a reception of two hours in the Trump hotel is going to curry favors with the administration when we host thousands of U.S. troops in Kuwait? When we have in the past and still do support American operations in Afghanistan and Iraq?” the Kuwait ambassador asked when someone got around to his side of the story. But no matter, the narrative was set.

Then it grew. Though the Emoluments Clause is quite specific, the media decided every time anyone stayed at a Trump property it was corruption. Even when Trump visited one of his own homes it was corruption because the Secret Service paid Trump for the privilege. Of course the Secret Service has always paid for the facilities used in their work because the government cannot commandeer private property or accept free rooms (which, ironically, could be seen as a bribe), not from Marriott and not from the Trump Organization. Even Joe Biden still has to charge the Secret Service rent on a cottage he owns, so they can protect him when he’s home in Delaware.

More? T-Mobile booked nine rooms at a Trump hotel, in media hive minds ostensibly to influence federal approval of a $26 billion merger. Those rooms were worth about $2700. Of course the president, who can influence the Dow with a tweet, prefers to make his illegal money off jacked up hotel bills. Think small has always been a Trump trademark.

Reuters headlined how foreigners were buying condos from third party owners (i.e., not Trump or his company), but they were in a Trump-managed building and maybe the monthly maintenance fees would qualify as mini-emoluments? Trump was accused of “hiding” foreign government income at his hotels when servers at the bar failed to ask cash customers if they were potentates or princes (the headline: “Trump Organization Says It’s ‘Not Practical’ to Comply With the Emoluments Clause.”)

And of course that Air Force crew staying at a Trump place in Scotland. No matter that the hotel forged its relationship with a nearby airport long before Trump became president, or that the Air Force had used the airport and hotel hundreds of times before Trump became president (going back to WWII), and or that a decision by the Pentagon to have flights stop more frequently there was made under the Obama administration, nope, none of that stopped the media from proclaiming corruption. One piece speculated the $166 a night the Air Force pays for rooms was always part of Trump’s cornerstone financial plan for the floundering multi-million golf course.

But to see how much the corruption narrative really is a media creation, you have only to compare it to how the MSM covered what might have been a similar question in the past. Imagine if journalists had treated every appearance by Obama as a book promotion. What if each speech was slandered across the channels as corruption, Obama just out there pimping his books? Should he have been impeached for commercializing the office of president?

Follow the money, as Maddow likes to say. The Trump Organization pays to the Treasury all profits from foreign governments. In the 2018, $191,000. The year before the amount was $151,470. So Trump’s in-pocket profit is zero.

Meanwhile Obama’s profit as an author during his time in office was $15.6 million (he’s made multiples more since, including a $65 million book advance.) In the two weeks before he was inaugurated, Obama reworked his book deals to take advantage of his new status. He agreed not to publish another non-fiction book during his time in office to keep anticipation high, while signing a $500,000 advance for a young adult version of Dreams From My Father.

Obama’s books were huge sellers in China, where publishing is largely government controlled, meaning Obama likely received Chicom money in the Oval Office. Obama’s own State Department bought $79,000 worth of his books to distribute as gifts.

As with Trump, nothing Obama did was illegal. There are no laws per se against a president making money. Yet no one bothered to raise ethical questions about Obama. No one claimed he sought the presidency as a bully ATM machine. No one claimed his frequent messaging about his father was designed to move books. No one held TV hearings on his profits or into how taxpayer funds were used to buy his books. It’s not “everybody does it” or “whataboutism,” it is why does the media treat two very similar situations so very differently?

Max Boot confessed why. The media has created a pitch-and-toss game with Democrats, running false, exaggerated or shallowly-reported stories to generate calls for hearings, which in turn breath life into the corruption stories they live off. Max Boot and his ilk are doing a new job. Journalism to them is for resistance, condemnation, arousal, and regime change. And that’s one way democracy does die.

October 6, 2019 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | , | 3 Comments

An Open Letter to ‘Science and Global Security’

Do Not Succumb to Political Censorship on Syria

By Rick Sterling | Dissident Voice | October 6, 2019

Dear Editors at Science and Global Security

Science and Global Security (SGS) has been publishing technical articles on arms control and related issues since 1989. I urge you not to succumb to political censorship.

Recently it was announced you are withholding publication of an article titled “Computational Forensic Analysis for the Chemical Weapons Attack at Khan Sheikhoun on 4 April 2017.” The article presents evidence that a crater in the road in the town of Khan Sheikhoun (Syria) could have been caused by an “improvised rocket-propelled artillery round with a high explosive warhead” rather than an aerial bomb dropped by a Syrian plane. The paper was authored by seven scientists from prominent universities and laboratories in the USA and China and based on advanced modelling techniques and computer simulations.

According to the article “Scientists clash over paper that questions Syrian government’s role in sarin attack” a campaign to stop you from publishing the analysis was launched by Gregory Koblentz. He is a political scientist not an engineer or physical scientist. His criticism of the article is because of the conclusion.

The political bias of Koblentz is clear from his article titled “Syria’s Chemical Weapons Kill Chain.” It accuses the Syrian government of using chemical weapons and speculates on the chain of command. It distorts the findings of the UN report on the attack of August 21, 2013. Actually, the UN lead investigator, Ake Sellstrom, suggested that it was a “fair guess” that the rockets carrying the sarin travelled 2 kilometers. This would have put the launch firmly in opposition held territory, directly contradicting Koblentz’s assertions that the Syrian government was to blame.

Facts and Investigations

You may not be aware of the following facts:

* The report of the Joint Investigative Mechanism was definitive about the crater. On page 7/33 it says, “the Mechanism assessed that the crater was most probably caused by a heavy object travelling at a high rate of velocity, such as an aerial bomb with a small explosive charge… The Mechanism also examined whether an IED could have caused the crater. While this possibility could not be completed ruled out, the experts assessed that that scenario was less likely….. ” (emphasis added).

* Some of the most proven investigative journalists have concluded that the incident was staged by the opposition. For example, the late Robert Parry wrote an article titled “Did Al Qaeda Dupe Trump on Syrian Attack.” He noted that “Buried deep inside a new U.N. report is evidence that could exonerate the Syrian government in the April 4 sarin atrocity.” As Parry wrote, “More than 100 patients would appear to have been exposed to sarin before the alleged warplane could have dropped the alleged bomb and the victims could be evacuated, a finding that alone would have destroyed the JIM’s case against the Syrian government. But the JIM seemed more interested in burying this evidence of Al Qaeda staging the incident …”

* Seymour Hersh is another proven journalist. His research confirmed that no chemical bomb was used at Khan Sheikhoun. The Russians had even informed the US military ahead of time that they would be bombing an important meeting of groups that even the US defined as “terrorist”. Hersh’s conclusions are outlined in the article “Hersh’s New Syria Revelations Buried from View.”

* Yet another proven journalist, Gareth Porter, did a detailed investigation including confidential interviews with scientists with close ties to the OPCW. His in depth report is titled “Have We Been Deceived Over Syrian Sarin Attack? Scrutinizing the Evidence ….” Among many points he debunks the notion that the crater could have been caused by a chemical weapons bomb which is designed to release chemicals and NOT burn them in a large explosion.

* Finally, yet another proven journalist, Robert Fisk, has written about bias at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in an article titled “The evidence we were never meant to see about the Douma ‘gas’ attack.“

Global security is being threatened by claims and counter-claims about weapons of mass destruction. The 2003 invasion of Iraq was based on such claims. The “intelligence community” was certain but wrong. Now, in Syria there are similar claims and counter-claims. Two nuclear armed countries, the US and Russia, are involved.

The US has already attacked Syria on the basis of media reports to the approval of people like Gregory Koblentz. The pattern of aggression on the basis of dubious or false evidence is very dangerous and could lead to much greater conflict.

Political censorship does not serve science or global security. Publish the article.

Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist who grew up in Canada but currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. He can be reached at rsterling1@gmail.com.

October 6, 2019 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | Leave a comment

Russian Foreign Ministry Voices Strong Protest Over FBI Questioning Of Russian Lawmaker

Sputnik -October 6, 2019

MOSCOW – Earlier today, the Russian Embassy sent a note of protest to the US State Department over FBI questioning of Russian parliament member Inga Yumasheva upon her arrival to the United States, where she planned to participate in the Fort Ross Dialogue forum.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has strongly condemned the FBI interrogation of Russian parliament member Inga Yumasheva.

In a statement, the government agency said the incident represents another hostile action by the United States against Russia, aimed at further souring the relations between Moscow and Washington.

“The decision-makers in Washington need to think where this systematic fomenting of tensions in US-Russian relations could lead. These policies are shortsighted and dangerous. At the same time, the genuine interest of the US public in the Fort Ross Dialogue forum strongly indicates that American citizens support bilateral interaction, rather than confrontation between our two nations,” the statement said.

Earlier, Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the Russian parliament’s lower house, called on Saturday the behaviour of US intelligence services toward Russian parliamentarian Inga Yumasheva a “cynical provocation.”

“The US actions are yet another example of a violation of their international obligations. State Duma member Inga Yumasheva received an invitation to participate in the international forum, the US embassy issued her a visa. Inga Yumasheva coordinates communications with US Congress in the State Duma, interacts with colleagues, takes part in a difficult dialogue. And the behaviour of US intelligence services in this regard can only be assessed as a cynical provocation,” Volodin said.

According to the speaker, there are forces in the United States who want to further aggravate relations between Moscow and Washington.

“Actions that create a negative atmosphere in the relations between our countries are unacceptable and deserve condemnation,” Volodin stressed.

Earlier in the day, Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov said that Yumasheva, who was heading to the Fort Ross Dialogue forum, had been detained upon arrival at the airport in New York, and an FBI officer asked her “obscure and unacceptable questions” for an hour, and then offered to continue communication in a cafe in an informal setting. The Russian Embassy in the US sent a note of protest to the US State Department, demanding to explain the incident.

October 6, 2019 Posted by | Aletho News | , | 2 Comments