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Two Israeli officers involved in Lebanon car bomb attack against Hamas official: Report

Press TV – January 29, 2018

A recent report has exposed that two Israeli agents were involved in the car bomb explosion in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon, which slightly wounded a member of the Palestinian Islamic resistance movement, Hamas, earlier this month.

According to a report published by Lebanon’s Arabic-language al-Akhbar newspaper on Monday, the pair was aided by two locals in the assassination operation against Mohammed Hamdan on January 14. They left Lebanon using Georgian, Swedish and Iraqi passports.

The report added that Lebanese security officials have now managed to identify the two Israeli officers, obtain their photographs and copies of their identity documents, the date of their entry into and exit from Lebanon, their respective roles in the operation and the nationality they used to operate under disguise.

Lebanese intelligence officials, requesting anonymity, told al-Akhbar that one of the Israeli agents was a man holding a duel Swedish-Iraqi citizenship, while another was a Georgian woman working for the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad.

The officials went on to say that, Mossad kept Hamdan under surveillance for more than seven months.

About six months ago, Hamdan lived in the Sirub district of Sidon, located 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of the capital, Beirut, and a Lebanese national, identified as Muhammad H, lived in a nearby neighborhood.

Mossad then assigned its agent to closely monitor the high-ranking Hamas figure.

After that, Hamdan moved to al-Boustan al-Kabir area of Sidon, and the second Lebanese national, identified as 38-year-old Ahmad Baytiyah and strongly believed to be main suspect in the assassination bid, tracked him.

Baytiyah rented a warehouse near the house of the Hamas leader under the pretext of storing clothes.

The four assailants flew out of Lebanon to different destinations after the failed assassination operation. The two Lebanese nationals fled to Turkey.

Baytiyah was arrested by Turkish authorities and extradited to Lebanon at the request of Prime Minister Saad Hariri earlier this week, while the other managed to flee Turkey to Romania.

Hamdan suffered a leg injury in the car bomb explosion. He was taken to a local hospital for treatment.

The explosion destroyed the vehicle and caused damage to a nearby building, sending black smoke rising above the city.

Firefighters rushed to the scene to put out the flames, while security forces cordoned off the area.

January 29, 2018 Posted by | Deception, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Who is using chlorine as a chemical weapon in Syria?

By Charles Shoebridge | RT | January 27, 2018

Former Scotland Yard detective Charles Shoebridge explains why claims of chlorine attacks in Syria should be treated with caution.

The alleged use of chlorine as a weapon in Syria is back in the news in the US and UK, with fresh incidents reported and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson taking the opportunity within the last few days to condemn Syrian President Bashar Assad over the issue. Unusually, he also later appeared to concede there may be some doubt – but asserted anyway that “whoever conducted the attacks Russia bears responsibility.”

So how does the alleged evidence that the Syrian government is carrying out chlorine attacks stack up?

Some years ago I pointed out the still rarely commented upon apparent correlation between the timing of chlorine incidents and the holding of important international gatherings on Syria, such as UN Security Council meetings. If the chlorine claims were true, it seemed that Assad for some reason was deliberately timing his attacks to best hand his opponents a propaganda advantage and to mobilize the world against him. Another explanation, perhaps more likely yet never mentioned in the Western media, was that to achieve this aim these incidents were actually false flags his opponents were fabricating.

The recent allegations seem similar in this respect, coinciding exactly with many world leaders including Tillerson meeting in Paris to discuss chemical weapons, and just as a Syrian government operation to clear eastern Ghouta of US- and UK-backed rebel forces allied with groups associated with al Qaeda is underway.

Regardless of factual basis, claims of chlorine use, along with those of barrel bombs and attacks on hospitals, have been one of the most enduring propaganda memes of the Syria war.

Yet while headlines of chemical weapons are undoubtedly dramatic, the relatively low lethality of chlorine makes it an ineffective – and therefore arguably also unlikely – choice of weapon. Tillerson’s own comments bear this out. He spoke of twenty people being injured in an incident the day before, yet if ‘ordinary’ explosive bombs of the sort used not only by Russia and Syria but also by the US for example in Raqqa and Mosul had been used instead of chlorine, the effect on civilians in terms of both fear and fatalities would certainly have been very much worse.

Indeed, given the low toxicity of the allegedly small amounts used and the unpleasant bleach smell that always betrays chlorine’s presence, in most instances people could avoid being killed by simply walking away – another indication of its near uselessness as a weapon. Perhaps the only way it could be tactically effective is if used to drive people from trenches or bunkers to allow them to then be killed with bombs and bullets – but again, the amounts of chlorine needed would be far more than is alleged, and the accuracy needed to target in this way is unlikely to be achieved using unguided rockets as alleged this week in east Ghouta, or by dropping a ‘barrel bomb’ from a helicopter. Also, there has been little if any evidence offered or claims made of this tactic being used.

Given the above, it’s hardly surprising that First World War commanders who tried using chlorine as a weapon even in very high concentrations soon learned there were much more effective ways to kill. Indeed, this was one of the reasons why, when being pressured by US and UK politicians, media and NGOs to take action against Assad, even President Obama expressed skepticism, acknowledging that “chlorine isn’t historically a chemical weapon.”

Nonetheless, Western governments and media regularly cite a joint report by the UN and the world’s chemical weapons watchdog, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), that suggested Syria government forces were responsible for three chlorine attacks that took place in 2014 and 2015.

Perhaps as a PR tactic, the OPCW report prior to its public release was leaked to the media and other organizations sympathetic to the US and UK’s Syria narrative. The media then published selected excerpts alongside headlines suggesting that the OPCW investigation had proved Assad was using chlorine as a chemical weapon – and hence was in breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention, to which Syria since 2013 has been a signatory.

When the report was publicly released, a story of far less certainty emerged – a story that didn’t appear in US or UK media not only because it wasn’t helpful to US or UK policy, but also because with the selective leaks having dominated previous headlines, the release of the actual report was no longer considered newsworthy.

As one might expect from professional investigators, the OPCW report contains numerous caveats and reservations that cast doubts on its conclusions. For example, the report acknowledges that while evidence was “sufficient” in three of nine cases to allow a conclusion to be drawn that Syrian government forces had used chlorine, it also confirms that in none of these cases was this evidence “overwhelming” or even “strong.”

Such evidence included testimony from doctors who had witnessed chlorine symptoms but couldn’t know for sure how the chlorine had been delivered, even less by whom. Residents described hearing a helicopter at the time of the incidents, consistent with a helicopter dropping chlorine. Yet unmentioned by the report, this would also be consistent with chlorine being deliberately released by another party upon hearing a helicopter overhead, thereby encouraging a link to Syria government forces to be presumed.

In respect of this linkage, given that over many years a large number of “chlorine barrel bombs” have allegedly been dropped, it’s perhaps surprising in the course of a war in which almost everything is captured on video that no direct video proof of a helicopter dropping chlorine seems to have been recorded. Indeed, when on Twitter I asked for such helicopter linkage evidence, the only ‘proof’ I received was this animated video.

Crucially, and again wholly ignored by most US and UK media, the OPCW report itself highlights its own weaknesses, stating for example that the investigations were affected by the lack of a chain of custody for evidential material, the use of second or even third hand sources, the supplying by some parties of misleading information, and the difficulty of finding independent witnesses (page 8 of the report)

The report also found that some alleged impact locations had been altered, in some cases it appearing that munition remnants had been taken from elsewhere and placed at the alleged impact location (page 12)

Such a weak evidential basis and the possibility of fabrication have been apparent for years, yet overlooked by Western media and NGOs in their enthusiasm to promote an anti-Assad narrative. In what may be an example of this, what appears here to be bright green flare or signal smoke is claimed by rebels to be chlorine – a claim then repeated by western journalists and human rights groups despite the fact that some rudimentary research would have told them that heavier-than-air chlorine is unlikely to rise as the video shows.

Fabrication even involving real chlorine would be relatively straightforward because chlorine is in such wide use, for example for water purification, that as the OPCW report notes it is readily available to all parties in Syria. Furthermore, as the OPCW also note, al Nusra rebels seized and for a long period occupied a major Syrian chemical plant, from which much of the stored chlorine has disappeared and never been accounted for.

Along with the testimony of doctors and residents, the OPCW report also relies heavily on the witness statements of what are called “first responders,” but who are better known as the White Helmets – funded by, among others, the UK government’s secret security fund, and responsible not only for a continuous stream of anti-Assad propaganda, but also in many cases being the main ‘witnesses’ to atrocities ranging from chemical attacks to air strikes on aid convoys alleged by them to have been carried out by Assad. For any professional investigator who has followed the development of the White Helmets since their founding by a former UK army officer in 2013, such ‘witnesses’ could never be considered impartial, objective or credible.

Not only did the White Helmets provide much of the direct witness evidence of the alleged chlorine attacks but also, because the OPCW investigators weren’t able to visit any of the attack sites, it seems these ‘first responders’ also played a major part in producing the testimony of other witnesses, as well as producing and securing purported physical evidence. From the perspective of the integrity of an investigation, it’s hard to imagine anything more damaging than its effective outsourcing to an organization that, with their close working relationship with rebels including some linked with al Qaeda, has every interest in not only blaming incidents on Assad, but also a clear incentive to perhaps fabricate those incidents. Indeed, on many occasions the White Helmets have been accused of such fabrication, including in relation to chlorine.

It’s of course possible that the Syrian military is using chlorine as a chemical weapon. But if so, and notwithstanding years of allegations, no strong proof of this has yet emerged – even less a military or political motive as to why they would do so, or in any case of a direct link to Assad.

For the rebels and their powerful Western and Gulf Arab government supporters however, there exists a clear incentive to fabricate chemical weapons incidents for propaganda purposes – not only to push for western military intervention or a no fly zone that would seriously hinder the advance of government troops, but also to reinforce demands that Assad shouldn’t be a future leader of Syria, irrespective of the decisions of the Syrian people in any potential future elections.

Alleged chlorine attacks are also, as Tillerson showed, a useful tool to disparage and condemn Russia as being responsible for war crimes, regardless of the fact that Russia has proposed a new, comprehensive chemical weapons investigation – which the US has rejected, perhaps fearing what a far reaching, truly objective investigation might find.

In any event, claims of Syria government use of chlorine and other war crimes are likely to continue – not least perhaps because, despite the lack of a motive or any solid proof, a generally compliant, unsceptical and uncritical Western media will likely continue to report such claims as if they are unquestionably true.

Charles Shoebridge is an international politics graduate, lawyer, broadcaster and writer. He has formerly served as an army officer, Scotland Yard detective and counter terrorism intelligence officer.

Read more:

US mounts its moral high horse to spin yet another ‘convenient’ chemical attack

Moscow slams US ‘propaganda attack’ over Syria chemical weapons ahead of Sochi peace talks

January 28, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

The condensed case against the White Helmet imposters in Syria

Vanessa Beeley | January 26, 2018

A reading of the evidence presented by Vanessa Beeley regarding the UK FCO & USAID multi-million-financed White Helmet organisation embedded with terrorist factions inside Syria, also funded by the same hostile governments.

White Helmet archives: http://21stcenturywire.com/tag/White-…

January 27, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Drinking the Self-driving Car Kool-aid

By Othello | Dissident Voice | January 27, 2018

Recently, a Tesla on autopilot slammed into a parked fire engine at 65 mph. It turns out that there was no malfunction. According to Tesla’s manual:

Traffic-Aware Cruise Control cannot detect all objects and may not brake/decelerate for stationary vehicles, especially in situations when you are driving over 50 mph (80 km/h) and a vehicle you are following moves out of your driving path and a stationary vehicle or object is in front of you instead.

So whereas any half way decent human driver would have braked and/or swerved to avoid the collision, Tesla’s “smart” car proceeded full-speed ahead.

Even if you choose not to buy a self-driving car, you or your loved ones could have been in that parked vehicle struck by a stupid “smart” car. This is not just about technophiles who want to be able to play World of Warcraft while speeding down the highway… this technology is potentially dangerous to all road users and any deaths, injuries or property damage caused by this flawed technology should see the drivers, manufacturers and approving authorities prosecuted or sued… no high-tech exemption!

It is not only Tesla; according to the Wired article referred at the start of this article:

Volvo’s semi-autonomous system, Pilot Assist, has the same shortcoming. Say the car in front of the Volvo changes lanes or turns off the road, leaving nothing between the Volvo and a stopped car. Pilot Assist will ignore the stationary vehicle and instead accelerate to the stored speed.

The article explains why these self-driving systems are engineered that way but blithely promises that in the future LIDAR (Light Identification Detection and ranging, which uses lasers) will replace and/or augment radar and cameras to solve this problem. However, one can discern the real agenda when it informs us that:

Lidar’s price and reliability problems are less of an issue when it comes to a taxi-like service, where a provider can amortize the cost over time and perform regular maintenance. But in today’s cars, meant for average or modestly wealthy consumers, it’s a no-go.

Self-driving cars are a promising new profit center for auto and technology companies. They want to own personal and commercial road transportation which they will provide as a service (at a tidy profit, of course). They repeatedly argue that the technology is safer that using human drivers using flawed statistics while self driving cars cause fatal accidents because the car’s cameras failed to distinguish the white side of a turning tractor-trailer from a brightly lit sky or knock over motorcyclists.

There is a general love-fest for things regarded as cool technology. However, unlike the great innovations that have made driving safer like ABS, ESP, collision avoidance systems, air bags etc. the real intent of self-driving cars seems to be creating a new industry that will be dominated by auto and tech giants who would ultimately control all road traffic…a truly huge potential market.

You probably didn’t hear about the conclusions of Germany’s Highway Research Institute (BASt) that:

After many thousands of kilometers of testing, BASt reportedly concluded that Autopilot represents a significant traffic hazard. Judging that is was not designed for complex urban traffic situations, the report declared that the car’s sensors are too short-sighted to cope with the reality of German motorways.

Or that:

American research conducted by John F. Lenkeit of Dynamic Research, which concludes that forward collision warning systems for automobiles fail dramatically to detect motorcycles.

Before concluding that self-driving cars are an inevitable part of a rosy future one should read an article like The “Self-Driving” Car is only an Oxymoron. In it you might learn that:

… in the first week of March, Uber’s 43 test cars in three states logged some 20,000 miles on public roads. Their drivers had to intervene and take control away from the software, an average of once every mile. Critical interventions, required to save lives and property, were counted separately; they occurred every 200 miles.

In a world where millions would love to have the job of driver and where training and technology geared towards supporting safe driving provide accessible solutions to improving road safety, self-driving cars seem to be of dubious value and downright dangerous as well.

January 27, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

‘US hacks and meddling quite unlike China & Russia’s hacks and meddling’ – ex-Pentagon chief

RT | January 27, 2018

One could almost see the proverbial pots and kettles on Friday, when ex-Pentagon chief Ashton Carter informed us that America’s cyber operations and election meddling are entirely dissimilar to the activities of China and Russia.

The panel, held as part of the World Economic Forum in Davos, was dedicated to state cyberwarfare, the risks of cyber operations spiralling out of control, and ways to rein in the emerging threat – from making better software and incentivizing people to update it, to establishing international rules for states to voluntarily observe.

The ghost of Russia’s alleged interference with 2016 election in the US haunted the event, with supporting roles as cyber menaces given to China, alleged thief of US top secret military technologies, and North Korea, alleged perpetrator of the 2014 Sony hack and last year’s WannaCry ransomware epidemic. The panel were debating how the US and the West in general can respond to such attacks, but barely mentioned the role played by the US in bringing the cyberwarfare situation to its current state.

One noticeable exception came from Carter, Defense Secretary during the last two years of Barack Obama’s presidency, who tried to explain how American actions differed from those of China and Russia.

“We conduct espionage on the Internet. And when we are spied on, I don’t complain. I am unhappy with it because I wish we had not had our secrets stolen. But I put it into a different category. Covert action… is not espionage. It has the effect of harming,” he said.

So… when China steals F-35 blueprints, it harms America; when the US spies on German or Brazilian companies and gets competitive advantage in the market, that’s – no biggie? Sounds plausible. But there is more, because US meddling in foreign elections is not the same thing as somebody meddling in US elections, according to Carter.

He said China and Russia tell the US: “You stick up for democracy. You oppose leaders who are oppressing their people… That’s true, but that’s overt.”

First, being a democratically elected official does not mean the US will not have you overthrown, or worse. Just ask Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, or Chilean President Salvador Allende or, if you want someone who is still alive – Ukraine’s Viktor Yanukovich.

Second, by implication if hypothetically President Vladimir Putin were to come out tomorrow and say: “OK, we hacked the DNC to help our buddy Donald,” that would somehow make all fine? Carter repeated the phrase “attack is an attack” explaining his attitude to clandestine state-sponsored cyber operations some half a dozen times during the hour-long discussion, and it didn’t sound like a nation claiming credit for one would make it less of an attack in his opinion.

The former Pentagon chief argued during the panel that the US has to “get doctrinally settled” in its response to harmful actions of other states that cannot be clearly attributed to those states. His examples were Russia’s deployment of troops with no insignia from its naval base in Crimea during the 2014 crisis in Ukraine and what he termed “stirring up minorities” in the Baltic states by Russia. “We need a war plan… We need to make it painful to do that kind of thing to us,” he said.

Frankly, the secret supply of US arms to Syrian anti-government groups, attempts to create a Cuban version of Twitter to foster dissent in the island nation or the reported hacking of the Iranian uranium enrichment facility to blow up centrifuges – arguably the best-known case of a state conducting an act of cyberwarfare on another state, by the way – all fall into the same category. But somehow no war plan for those nations was suggested during the panel.

There were some other things that the panel missed. Like the US intelligence practice of hoarding exploits. The WannaCry attack was based on leaked tools developed by the NSA, not some super-secret North Korean cyber warfare unit. Or the fact that the US public often has to trust its government when it points the finger at another nation and says ‘they did it’. Which is disconcerting, if you take into account the historic record of false claims and the fact that the US cyber warfare experts know how to fake “digital fingerprints” to make an attack look like it came from Russia or China. Or that report that the Obama administration ordered “digital bombs” planted, ready to take out critical Russian infrastructure should Washington chose to do so.

Read more:

US unleashed Stuxnet cyber war on Iran to appease Israel – report

#Vault7: How CIA steals hacking fingerprints from Russia & others to cover its tracks

January 27, 2018 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , | Leave a comment

Ex-FBI Agent: NSA Unlikely to Be Punished for Illegal Data Destruction

Sputnik – January 27, 2018

WASHINGTON – National Security Agency officials are unlikely to face any punishment or censure for defying a court order and destroying data they had broken the law to collect in the first place, former FBI special agent and whistleblower Colleen Rowley told Sputnik.

The NSA was under court order to hold on to information that was linked to warrantless wiretapping during the George W. Bush administration, but instead the agency got rid of data it had been specifically asked to retain, according to US media reports.

“What should be shocking about this news is that it’s about the illegal deletion of the previously illegally collected data on US citizens in the Presidential Surveillance Program,” Rowley said.

There was no accountability for the government’s prior destruction of evidence, including the CIA’s destruction of the “torture tapes,” Rowley noted.

Consequently, “I don’t think there is much chance of any accountability of NSA officials for any of their official negligence or malfeasance that led to these intercepted communications being destroyed and not preserved for purposes of this court proceeding,” she said.

The data was gathered during the administration of President George W. Bush under an illegal program called the “Presidential Surveillance Program,” Rowley recalled.

However, “When the Pulitzer-prize winning news of the illegal program was finally released by New York Times writers, [President] George Bush misled the US public by downplaying it and calling it his ‘Terrorist Surveillance Program,’” she said.

The illegal surveillance of Americans had been secretly “legalized” just as the CIA’s practice of torture as so-called “enhanced interrogation” techniques had been by Bush’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) attorney John Yoo and his senior OLC partner Robert Delahunty, Rowley noted.

Yoo and Rowley justified the secret surveillance program “shortly after 9-11 in dozens of secret memos claiming the President had inherent “Commander in Chief” powers to violate the Bill of Rights, a form of martial law,” she said.

The NSA’s interception of communications was illegal in the first place and was in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) statute and the entire program was also possibly unconstitutional, Rowley pointed out.

Rowley also said much of the deleted material might have contained details of secret sexual activities that could have proven highly embarrassing to US military and diplomatic personnel who were involved.

“From some of my prior readings, I also suspect that these previously illegally intercepted communications after 9-11 contained a lot of ‘pillow talk’ between American spouses/girlfriends/boyfriends of military members and State Department personnel stationed abroad,” she said.

Had the secret data not been destroyed, it might have exposed the falsehood of many statements and assurances by President George W. Bush that claimed the surveillance program was responsible and limited in scope, Rowley remarked.

“So this content that apparently no longer exists would have proved very embarrassing if it had ever been made public… contradicting George Bush’s descriptions that his program only targeted ‘terrorists,’” she said.

The destroyed NSA data would have angered the important constituency of US military and Foreign Service members as well as other American travelers whose privacy and rights were violated, Rowley noted.

Rowley sent a May 2002 memo to then-FBI Director Robert Mueller that exposed some of the FBI’s pre- September 11, 2001 failures. She was named one of TIME magazine’s “Persons of the Year” in 2002. Mueller is now the Special Counsel investigating President Donald Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia. Both Trump and Russia have denied colluding during the 2016 US presidential campaign.

January 27, 2018 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception | , , , | Leave a comment

US Democrats’ Accusations Against Russia Distract Public From Real Problem

Sputnik – 26.01.2018

US Democrats have asked Facebook and Twitter for evidence of Russia’s involvement in an online campaign to release a politically charged memo.

The move comes as Congressional Republicans have been calling for the public release of a four-page classified memo they claim reveals reported abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by the Obama administration, which approved surveillance against Trump’s team on behalf of the Clinton campaign.

Dr. Jeanne Zaino, American political analyst and professor of Political Science at Iona College told Radio Sputnik in an interview that by asking for an investigation into allegations that Russian bots are behind #releasethememo, US Democrats are drawing the public’s attention away from the real question. That question is whether the memo actually exposes severe surveillance abuses, Zaino said, noting that Republicans claim the explosive content of the memo could upend special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation into allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 US election and collusion with the Trump campaign.

“They are saying that this push to release the memo is being conducted by Russian bots. Whether that is the case or whether it is not the case… it is almost beside the point, because the real question — particularly in a democracy where we value transparency — should be what does the memo contain,” Zaino told Radio Sputnik.

She pointed out that while the FBI and the Justice Department have been blocking the memo’s release saying it would violate national security, whether that is actually the case should be decided in a court of law.

“They simply cannot keep information and materials top secret just because they think it might embarrass them or embarrass the administration, embarrass Congress or whoever this memo might embarrass,” the analyst said. “I really think that the Democrats are trying to have us look left when in fact we should be looking right and saying what in fact does the memo contain and is it really something that we need to protect for national security reasons.”

​Zaino stressed that she doesn’t know whether the memo “shows abuse of the government surveillance program by the Obama administration”, as is being claimed, but if the question is raised, the memo should be released if it is not protecting national security.

“You cannot just classify [the memo] that way. We have an overclassification problem in this country where almost everything is classified as top secret,” Zaino said. “The Democrats are asking us to focus on the bots, that’s fascinating and interesting, but it doesn’t get to the heart of the question which is what does this memo show and did we see an abuse of the government surveillance programs under the Obama administration.”

​

January 26, 2018 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

In a Trump Hunt, Beware the Perjury Trap

By Pat Buchanan • Unz Review • January 26, 2018

Asked if he would agree to be interviewed by Robert Mueller’s team, President Donald Trump told the White House press corps, “I would love to do it … as soon as possible. … under oath, absolutely.”

On hearing this, the special counsel’s office must have looked like the Eagles’ locker room after the 38-7 rout of the Vikings put them in the Super Bowl.

If the president’s legal team lets Trump sit for hours answering Mueller’s agents, they should be disbarred for malpractice.

For what Mueller is running here is not, as Trump suggests, a “witch hunt.” It is a Trump hunt.

After 18 months investigating Trumpian “collusion” with Putin’s Russia in hacking the DNC’s and John Podesta’s emails, the FBI has hit a stone wall. Failing to get Trump for collusion, the fallback position is to charge him with obstruction of justice. As a good prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, the tactic is understandable.

Mueller’s problem: He has no perjury charge to go with it. And the heart of his obstruction case, Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey, is starting to look like something Trump should have done sooner.

Consider what is now known of how Comey and the FBI set about ensuring Hillary Clinton would not be indicted for using a private email server to transmit national security secrets.

The first draft of Comey’s statement calling for no indictment was prepared before 17 witnesses, and Hillary, were even interviewed.

Comey’s initial draft charged Clinton with “gross negligence,” the requirement for indictment. But his team softened that charge in subsequent drafts to read, “extreme carelessness.”

Attorney General Loretta Lynch, among others, appears to have known in advance an exoneration of Clinton was baked in the cake. Yet Comey testified otherwise.

Also edited out of Comey’s statement was that Hillary, while abroad, communicated with then-President Obama, who had to see that her message came through a private server. Yet Obama told the nation he only learned Hillary had been using a private server at the same time the public did.

A trial of Hillary would have meant Obama in the witness chair being asked, “What did you know, sir, and when did you know it?”

More information has also been unearthed about FBI collusion with British spy Christopher Steele, who worked up — for Fusion GPS, the dirt-divers of the Clinton campaign — the Steele dossier detailing Trump’s ties to Russia and alleged frolics with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel.

While the Steele dossier was shopped around town to the media, which, unable to substantiate its lurid and sensational charges, declined to publish them, Comey’s FBI went all in.

Not only did the Steele dossier apparently trigger a wider FBI investigation of the Trump campaign, it served as the basis of FBI requests for FISA court warrants to put on Trump the kind of full-court press J. Edgar Hoover put on Dr. King for the Kennedys and LBJ.

Amazing. Oppo-research dirt, unsourced and unsubstantiated, dredged up by a foreign spy with Kremlin contacts, is utilized by our FBI to potentially propel an investigation to destroy a major U.S. presidential candidate. And the Beltway media regard it as a distraction.

An aggressive Republican Party on the Hill, however, has forced the FBI to cough up documents that are casting the work of Comey’s cohorts in an ever more partisan and sinister light.

This cabal appears to have set goals of protecting Obama, clearing Hillary, defeating Trump, and bringing down the new president the people had elected, before he had even taken his oath.

Not exactly normal business for our legendary FBI.

What have these people done to the reputation of their agency when congressmen not given to intemperate speech are using words like “criminal,” “conspiracy,” “corruption” and “coup” to describe what they are discovering went on in the FBI executive chambers?

Bob Mueller, who inherited this investigation, is sitting on an IED because of what went on before he got there. Mueller needs to file his charges before his own investigation becomes the subject of a Justice Department investigation by a special counsel.

As for Trump, he should not sit for any extended interview by FBI agents whose questions will be crafted by prosecutors to steer our disputatious president into challenging or contradicting the sworn testimony of other witnesses.

This a perjury trap.

Let the special counsel submit his questions in writing, and let Trump submit his answers in writing.

At bottom, this is a political issue, an issue of power, an issue of whether the Trump revolution will be dethroned by the deep state it was sent to this capital to corral and contain.

If Trump is guilty of attempted obstruction, it appears to be not of justice, but obstruction of an injustice being perpetrated against him.

Trump should be in no hurry to respond to Mueller, for time no longer appears to be on Mueller’s side.

Copyright 2018 Creators.com.

January 26, 2018 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Twitter dismisses Russian interference in Brexit referendum

RT | January 26, 2018

A university study that ‘proved’ Russia’s influence over the 2016 EU referendum has been thrown out by Twitter. The social media giant said one percent of the bots used during the lead up to the Brexit vote were actually Russian.

The data compiled in a City University study, published in October last year, claimed that some 13,000 bots were tweeting about Brexit before and after the referendum, has now been put into question.

In a letter to UK legislators trying to ascertain the extent of Russian interference – if any – in the Brexit referendum, Twitter largely dismissed the study.

Head of policy for Twitter in the UK Nick Pickles said the bots weren’t evidence of direct Russian meddling in the referendum.

In his letter to the Commons digital culture, media, and sport committee, Pickles said: “In reviewing the accounts identified by City University, we found that 1 percent of the accounts in the dataset were registered in Russia.”

“While many of the accounts identified by City University were in violation of the Twitter rules regarding spam, at this time, we do not have sufficiently strong evidence to enable us to conclusively link them with Russia or indeed the Internet Research Agency.”

In aid of an Electoral Commission investigation, last month Facebook announced that a grand total of 70p ($0.97) had been spent by a Russian-based company called ‘Internet Research Agency’.

The paid adverts were found to have reached just 200 Facebook news feeds, pouring cold water on claims that the Kremlin helped swing last year’s EU referendum.

This is the second time that Twitter has had to respond to UK MPs calling on social media companies to investigate the influence of Russian bots on the outcome of the 2016 referendum.

Even though both Facebook and now Twitter have insisted that Moscow-based social media accounts had little if anything to do with the Brexit vote, Chair of the Commons Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee Damian Collins is determined to find proof of Russian meddling.

Responding to Twitter’s chief executive Jack Dorsey, Collins said: “I’m afraid there are outstanding questions from the DCMS committee that Twitter have not yet answered,” demanding to know “how many other accounts were being controlled from [sic] agencies in Russia, even if they were not registered there.”

Continuing, “I’m afraid that the failure to obtain straight answers to these questions, whatever they might be, is simply increasing concerns about these issues, rather than reassuring people.”

Russia has repeatedly denied any involvement in the Brexit vote.

January 26, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

As walls close in on FBI, the bureau lashes out at its antagonists

By Sharyl Attkisson | The Hill | January 25, 2018

What happens when federal agencies accused of possible wrongdoing — also control the alleged evidence against them? What happens when they’re the ones in charge of who inside their agencies — or connected to them — ultimately gets investigated and possibly charged?

Those questions are moving to the forefront as the facts play out in the investigations into our intelligence agencies’ surveillance activities.

There are two overarching issues.

First, there’s the alleged improper use of politically-funded opposition research to justify secret warrants to spy on U.S. citizens for political purposes.

Second, if corruption is ultimately identified at high levels in our intel agencies, it would necessitate a re-examination of every case and issue the officials touched over the past decade — or two — under administrations of both parties.

This is why I think the concerns transcend typical party politics.

It touches everybody. It’s potentially monumental.

This week, the FBI said it was unfair for the House Intelligence Committee not to provide its memo outlining alleged FBI abuses. The committee wrote the summary memo after reviewing classified government documents in the Trump-Russia probe.

The FBI’s complaint carries a note of irony considering that the agency has notoriously stonewalled Congress. Even when finally agreeing to provide requested documents, the Department of Justice uses the documents’ classified nature to severely restrict who can see them — even among members of Congress who possess the appropriate security clearance. Members who wish to view the documents must report to special locations during prescribed hours in the presence of Department of Justice minders who supervise them as they’re permitted to take handwritten notes only (you know, like the 1960s).

What most people don’t know is that the FBI and Department of Justice already know exactly what Congressional investigators have flagged in the documents they’ve reviewed, because three weeks ago the Senate Judiciary Committee sent its own summary memo to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Department of Justice Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. The committee also referred to the Department of Justice a recommendation for possible charges against the author of the political opposition research file, the so-called “Trump dossier”: Christopher Steele.

The head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Republican Charles Grassley co-authored the memo with fellow Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham. Grassley says it’s important for the public to see the unclassified portions of the memo. But unlike the House, which can release the memo on its own (and is taking steps to do so), Senate rules require permission from the Department of Justice — the possibly offending agency — approve or declassify the memo. And that’s reached a snag.

According to Grassley, the FBI is blocking the release of the unclassified sections of the Senate memo by falsely claiming that they contain classified information.

“It sure looks like a bureaucratic game of hide the ball, rather than a genuine concern about national security,” said Grassley in a speech on the Senate floor yesterday.

Grassley also pointed out that agencies accused of possible improprieties are the ones controlling the information. It’s the FBI who may have misused the unverified “dossier” opposition research, allegedly presenting it to a secret court as if it were verified intelligence.

“[FBI] Director [James] Comey testified in 2017 that it was ‘salacious and unverified’,” said Grassley. “So, it was a collection of unverified opposition research funded by a political opponent in an election year. Would it be proper for the Obama administration — or any administration — to use something like that to authorize further investigation that intrudes on the privacy of people associated with its political opponents? That should bother civil libertarians of any political stripe.”

Democrats and many in the media are taking the side of the intelligence community, calling the Republican efforts partisan. House Democrats are said to be writing a counter-memo.

“We need to produce our own memo that lays out the actual facts and shows how the majority memo distorts the work of the FBI and the Department of Justice,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, the lead Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

Meantime, the Department of Justice has officially warned the House Intelligence Committee not to release its memo. It’s like the possible defendant in a criminal trial threatening prosecutors for having the audacity to reveal alleged evidence to the judge and jury.

This is the first time I can recall open government groups and many reporters joining in the argument to keep the information secret. They are strangely uncurious about alleged improprieties with implications of the worst kind: Stasi-like tactics used against Americans. “Don’t be irresponsible and reveal sources and methods,” they plead.

As for me? I don’t care what political stripes the alleged offenders wear or whose side they’re on. If their sources and methods are inappropriate, they should be fully exposed and stopped.

Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) is an Emmy-award winning investigative journalist, author of The New York Times bestsellers “The Smear” and “Stonewalled,” and host of Sinclair’s Sunday TV program “Full Measure.”

January 26, 2018 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

“Too Big To Believe” – Massive Scandal Is Brewing At The FBI

By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | January 24, 2018

As the Potemkin Village walls of The Left’s ‘Trump Collusion’ narrative crash and burn along with special counsel Mueller’s credibility, The New York Post’s Michael Goodwin sees far more wide-ranging problems ahead for America’s ‘intelligence’ agencies as the anti-Trump ‘secret society’ and lovers-texts-gate debacles threaten the core of the Deep State.

Goodwin writes that, during the financial crisis, the federal government bailed out banks it declared “too big to fail.” Fearing their bankruptcy might trigger economic Armageddon, the feds propped them up with taxpayer cash.

Something similar is happening now at the FBI, with the Washington wagons circling the agency to protect it from charges of corruption. This time, the appropriate tag line is “too big to believe.”

Yet each day brings credible reports suggesting there is a massive scandal involving the top ranks of America’s premier law enforcement agency. The reports, which feature talk among agents of a “secret society” and suddenly missing text messages, point to the existence both of a cabal dedicated to defeating Donald Trump in 2016 and of a plan to let Hillary Clinton skate free in the classified email probe.

If either one is true — and I believe both probably are — it would mean FBI leaders betrayed the nation by abusing their powers in a bid to pick the president.

More support for this view involves the FBI’s use of the Russian dossier on Trump that was paid for by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. It is almost certain that the FBI used the dossier to get FISA court warrants to spy on Trump associates, meaning it used the opposition research of the party in power to convince a court to let it spy on the candidate of the other party — likely without telling the court of the dossier’s political link.

Even worse, there is growing reason to believe someone in President Barack Obama’s administration turned over classified information about Trump to the Clinton campaign.

As one former federal prosecutor put it, “It doesn’t get worse than that.” That prosecutor, Joseph ­diGenova, believes Trump was correct when he claimed Obama aides wiretapped his phones at Trump Tower.

These and other elements combine to make a toxic brew that smells to high heaven, but most Americans don’t know much about it. Mainstream media coverage has been sparse and dismissive and there’s a blackout from the same Democrats obsessed with Russia, Russia, Russia.

Partisan motives aside, it’s as if a scandal of this magnitude is more than America can bear — so let’s pretend there’s nothing to see and move along.

But, thankfully the disgraceful episode won’t be washed away, thanks to a handful of congressional Republicans, led by California Rep. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House’s Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. After he accused the FBI of stonewalling in turning over records, the bureau relented, at least partially.

The result was clear evidence of bias against Trump by officials charged with investigating him and Clinton. Those same agents appear to have acted on that bias to tilt the election to Clinton.

In one text message, an agent suggests that Attorney General Loretta Lynch knew while the investigation was still going on that the FBI would not recommend charges against Clinton.

How could she know unless the fix was in?

All roads in the explosive developments lead to James Comey, whose Boy Scout image belied a sinister belief that he, like his infamous predecessor J. Edgar Hoover, was above the law.

It is why I named him J. Edgar Comey last year and wrote that he was “adept at using innuendo and leaks” to let everybody in Washington know they could be the next to be investigated.

It was in the office of Comey’s top deputy, Andrew McCabe, where agents discussed an “insurance policy” in the event that Trump won. Reports indicated that the Russia-collusion probe was that insurance policy.

The text was from Peter Strzok, the top investigator on the Trump case, and was sent to Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer and also his mistress.

“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office — that there’s no way he gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40 . . . ” Strzok wrote.

It is frightening that Strzok, who called Trump “an idiot,” was the lead investigator on both the Clinton and Trump cases.

After these messages surfaced, special counsel Robert Mueller removed Strzok and Page from his probe, though both still work at the FBI.

Strzok, despite his talk of an “insurance policy” in 2016, wrote in May of 2017 that he was skeptical Mueller’s probe would find anything on Trump because “there’s no big there there.”

Talk about irony. While Dems and the left-wing media already found Trump guilty of collusion before Mueller was appointed, the real scandal might be the conduct of the probers themselves.

Suspicions are hardly allayed by the fact that the FBI says it can’t find five months of messages between Strzok and Page, who exchanged an estimated 50,000 messages overall. The missing period — Dec. 14, 2016 through May 17, 2017 — was a crucial time in Washington.

There were numerous leaks of classified material just before and after Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20.

And the president fired Comey last May 9, provoking an intense lobbying effort for a special counsel, which led to Mueller’s appointment on May 19.

Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, has emerged from his hidey hole to notice that the FBI has run amok, and said Monday he would “leave no stone unturned” to find the five months of missing texts.

Fine, but the House is racing ahead of him. Nunes has prepared a four-page memo, based on classified material that purportedly lays out what the FBI and others did to corrupt the election.

A movement to release the memo is gaining steam, but Congress says it might take weeks. Why wait? Americans can handle the truth, no matter how big it is.

January 25, 2018 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

US creates task force to promote ‘internet freedom’ in Cuba

RT | January 24, 2018

The US has created a special task force to promote the free flow of information on the internet in Cuba, the State Department announced. The move was decried by Cuban media as an attempt to destabilize the island.

“The Department of State is convening a Cuba Internet Task Force composed of US government and non-governmental representatives to promote the free and unregulated flow of information in Cuba,” the agency said in a statement on Tuesday. “The task force will examine the technological challenges and opportunities for expanding internet access and independent media in Cuba.”

The unit is being put together in line with President Donald Trump’s memorandum on “Strengthening the Policy of the United States Toward Cuba” from June 16, 2017, the State Department said. The task force is scheduled to hold its first public meeting on February 7.

The Cuban Communist Party’s official newspaper, Granma, said the task force is really “aimed at subverting Cuba’s internal order. According to the paper, previously “phrases like promoting ‘freedom of speech’ and ‘expanding access to the internet in Cuba’ have been used by Washington as a pretext for schemes to destabilize the country using new technologies.”

Granma reminded its readers of the ill-fated ZunZuneo messenger, which was dubbed “the Cuban Twitter” when it was introduced in 2010. The US-made app, however, went offline two years later, after media revelations that it spied on its users and was actually aimed at provoking an uprising among the Cuban youth.

The Cuban paper cited a local expert who said “2017 will be remembered as the boom year for the expansion of internet access in our country.” Around 40 percent of Cuba’s 11-million population connected to the internet last year, which is 37 percent more than in 2010, the expert said.

The 500 public wi-fi hotspots across country created by the government registered 250,000 connections every day last year, according to Granma. Cuban authorities say that faster expansion of the internet on the island is hampered by US sanctions.

The US made an effort to mend ties with Cuba under President Barack Obama, as the neighbors reestablish embassies in Havana and Washington in 2014 after a 50-year break. Telecommunications equipment became one of the first exemptions from the US trade embargo, as the Obama administration saw improved internet access in Cuba as a key factor in rapprochement.

However, Trump announced a rollback of his predecessor’s policies towards the Communist island nation. In November, Washington introduced new travel restriction on Cuba for Americans, and barred them from doing business with dozens of stores, hotels, tourist agencies and even rum makers that were allegedly linked to the Cuban military.

January 25, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

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