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China should TRIPLE nuclear arsenal to deter ‘warmongering’ US, editor of state-run Global Times argues

RT | May 8, 2020

China should drastically increase its stockpile of nuclear warheads to dissuade the United States from pursuing its strategic ambitions abroad, the editor of the Global Times has urged.

In a piece published by his own paper, Hu Xijin said China is a “peace-loving nation” that has pledged to never be the first to use nuclear weapons. He argued, however, that Beijing must aim to expand the number of its nuclear warheads to 1,000 to create a powerful deterrent to “shape the attitudes of US elites toward China.” The Asian power currently has around 300 nuclear weapons.

He said that bolstering China’s nuclear capabilities would keep “an increasingly irrational” United States at arm’s length. “Some people may call me a ‘warmonger’ because I want the country to have more nuclear warheads. They should instead give this label to US politicians who are openly hostile to China.”

The Global Times editor emphasized he would prefer a “peaceful coexistence” between China and the US, but observed that Washington “only believes in strength.” China cannot “beg” to be treated as an equal on the world stage, he argued.

Xijin’s commentary came just a day after US President Donald Trump rallied for an “effective arms control” deal between Washington, Beijing and Moscow, during a telephone call with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Trump has repeatedly called on China to join negotiations for the renewal of the New START treaty – the nuclear arms pact between the US and Russia that is set to expire in February 2021. So far, Beijing has expressed little interest in participating in the accord.

Tensions between the United States and China are on the rise, fueled primarily by allegations that Beijing had a hand in the outbreak of Covid-19 that has now spread across the world. China has dismissed these claims as unfounded, and has repeatedly challenged the White House to produce evidence of an alleged cover-up or sinister role in the health crisis.

May 8, 2020 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

The Justice Department Drops Flynn Case

By Jonathon Turley | May 7, 2020

Over a week ago, I wrote a column calling for the Justice Department to drop its case against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. I have long been a critic of the case but the new evidence undermined not just the legitimacy of the prosecution but of the Justice Department itself. The Justice Department just moved to dismiss the case, a belated but commendable decision. The Flynn case represents one of the most ignoble chapters of the Special Counsel investigation. Notably, the motion itself could lay the foundation for suing on the basis of malicious prosecution.

While Judge Emmet Sullivan could dismiss the charges on the papers (an unopposed motion), I would expect a hearing to be called. There is a great irony here. Sullivan’s last hearing on sentencing led to controversial statements from the bench and a delay in sentencing that resulted in an easier path to dismissal.

James Comey tweeted that “DOJ has lost its way.” Given what this motion and the new evidence says about Comey’s own conduct, I would hope so if Comey is referring to his way of running the DOJ. Comey is implicated in this ignoble effort to bag a Trump official at any cost.

In the motion below, the Justice Department stresses that “the citizen’s safety lies in the prosecutor who … seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes, and who approaches [the] task with humility.” It also establishes that there was never a satisfaction of the materiality element to the criminal allegation:

“In the case of Mr. Flynn, the evidence shows his statements were not “material” to any viable counterintelligence investigation—or any investigation for that matter—initiated by the FBI. Indeed, the FBI itself had recognized that it lacked sufficient basis to sustain its initial counterintelligence investigation by seeking to close that very investigation without even an interview of Mr. Flynn. See Ex. 1 at 4. Having repeatedly found “no derogatory information” on Mr. Flynn, id. at 2, the FBI’s draft “Closing Communication” made clear that the FBI had found no basis to “predicate further investigative efforts” into whether Mr. Flynn was being directed and controlled by a foreign power (Russia) in a manner that threatened U.S. national security or violated FARA or its related statutes, id. at 3.”

It further notes that key figures like Andrew McCabe “cut off” objections to the overly aggressive pursuit of Flynn. It describes an effort of former Director James Comey, McCabe, and others to skip common protocols to bag Flynn at any cost on any grounds.

While malicious prosecution cases are notoriously difficult to prove (particularly in a case with a voluntary plea), the motion reinforces the view of many of us that the Justice Department was engaged in a campaign to incriminate Flynn — a campaign that now appears entirely detached from both the evidence and legal standards supporting a criminal charge. Such a lawsuit could allow Flynn to pursue discovery into the motivations and actions of figures like McCabe.

The motion relieves President Donald Trump of the necessity of a pardon for Flynn.  However, it hardly ends the matter. Congress has expressed an interest in investigating new and troubling evidence. It has every reason to do so. The new evidence obviously does not comport with the standard narrative of the media from the outset of the Russian investigation. Many will defend this case and its underlying abuses as “standard” practices. I have certainly seen abuses in my career as a criminal defense attorney, but I have never seen a record as troubling as this one in prosecutors seeking the creation rather than the investigation of criminal conduct. Even if such abuse is deemed standard by apologists for Mueller, it is neither an excuse nor a license for such misconduct.

May 8, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , , , | Leave a comment

End of Russiagate? DOJ drops case against Trump adviser Flynn that started ‘witch hunt’

RT | May 7, 2020

Charges against US President Donald Trump’s first national security adviser, General Michael Flynn, have been dropped due to new evidence showing they were baseless. Flynn was the first to be targeted in the ‘Russiagate’ probe.

The FBI’s interview of Flynn in January 2017 was “untethered to, and unjustified by, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation” into the former head of military intelligence, and conducted “without any legitimate investigative basis,” the US Department of Justice said in a court filing on Thursday.

Attorney Jeffrey Jensen, who was charged by Attorney General William Barr to review the case, recommended this course of action in a document last week, the AP reported – presumably after Flynn’s attorneys made public FBI documents that unequivocally showed that the general had been targeted for entrapment by a group of Bureau officials who had privately discussed an “insurance policy” in case of a Trump victory.

Asked about the news on Thursday afternoon, Trump called Flynn “an innocent man.”

He also called the Obama administration holdovers in the FBI and the Justice Department who orchestrated Flynn’s prosecution, “human scum” and their conduct “treason.”

“What they’ve done is a disgrace, and I hope a big price is going to be paid,” the president added.

It was disgraced agent Peter Strzok who intervened to keep Flynn’s case open, and who later interviewed Flynn and apparently heavily edited the notes from that interview, with the help of Bureau lawyer – and his extramarital partner – Lisa Page. The interview was ordered by then-FBI Director Jim Comey, by his own admission.

The news of the charges being dropped comes just hours after the DOJ notified US District Judge Emmet Sullivan that prosecutor Brandon Van Grack was withdrawing from the Flynn case – as well as others linked to the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into allegations that Trump’s campaign had “colluded” with Russia in the 2016 election.

More documents showed that Van Grack, Mueller’s handpicked prosecutor, apparently coerced Flynn into pleading guilty by threatening to indict his son, then allegedly conspired with Flynn’s attorneys to keep that secret. Flynn ultimately pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about the content of his conversations with Russian ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak, during the transition period between the election and Trump’s inauguration.

The former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency was the first feather in the cap of the ‘resistance’ to the Trump administration. Flynn was forced to resign less than a month into the job, after the Washington Post accused him of lying about his conversations with Kislyak, apparently based on FBI leaks. His prosecution has long been held up as proof there was something rotten within the Trump campaign, and the fact he pleaded guilty has been repeatedly used in political and media attacks on the administration, and even the impeachment hearings.

May 7, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

New Bombshell Documents Raise the Question Why Obama Feared Michael Flynn So Much

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 07.05.2020

As a result of AG William Barr’s decision to review Michael Flynn’s case new bombshell documents were unearthed and unsealed on 29 April shedding light on a potential FBI plot against the general. The exposure has triggered new questions about the anti-Trump “spygate” effort by FBI and DOJ officials, says Wall Street analyst Charles Ortel.

The newly unveiled written notes openly ask whether the bureau’s goal was “to get” General Michael Flynn “to lie”, so that the FBI could “prosecute him or get him fired”. The files also indicate that the FBI’s operation Crossfire Razor targeting Flynn had found nothing implicating the general in the “collusion” with Russia and would have been closed if then-FBI Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok not intervened to keep the case open.

​On 24 January 2017, Strzok and FBI Special Agent Joe Pietka conducted an interview with Flynn, who at that time was Trump’s national security adviser, about his December phone talks with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The interview played out ugly as in February 2017 Flynn resigned while several months later he pleaded guilty to making “false statements” to FBI agents over his conversation with the ambassador.

Seeking Truth & Connecting the Dots

Having taken the job of Flynn’s defence lawyer in 2019, Sidney Powell, a former federal prosecutor, pushed for the revision of the case despite DOJ prosecutors considering the general’s sentencing a done deal. The lawyer argued more dots needed to be connected and requested all the material that could potentially vindicate her client.

Powell argued that the prosecutors intentionally hid the exculpatory information stressing that the purported egregious misconduct by the government would justify the dismissal of Flynn’s case by the court. For their part, Justice Department attorneys have repeatedly rebutted Powell’s requests as “irrelevant” and even dubbed the defence’s supposition that Flynn was targeted by the FBI as part of a broader plot against Trump a “conspiracy theory”.

Nevertheless, Flynn’s legal team managed to expose a set of inconsistencies in the bureau’s handling of the case including edits in the general’s FD-302s – forms used by FBI personnel to report or summarise the interviews that they conduct. The newly discovered documents apparently indicate that the bureau intentionally set a perjury trap for Flynn.

​Following the disclosure the general’s defence ramped up calls to throw the case out.

​”More concerning than the perjury trap is that the FBI launched an investigation into a person – Michael Flynn – rather than a crime, under President Obama’s watch, and that this evidently unlawful investigation continues to this day”, opines Wall Street analyst and investigative journalist Charles Ortel.

He recollects that former President Barack Obama warned Trump against hiring Mike Flynn as his national security adviser.

“Why does Barack Obama fear Michael Flynn so much? Why do so many people still in the Trump administration obstruct the process of terminating the Flynn prosecution? Let us hope US Attorney John Durham asks and answers these questions”, the analyst notes referring to the special investigator appointed by AG William Barr to look into the origins of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane targeting Donald Trump’s aides over their alleged ties with Russian officials.

A year ago Barr clearly articulated his concern that the US intelligence community spied on the Trump campaign during the previous election cycle adding that “spying on a political campaign is a big deal”. The newly released documents appear to back Barr’s concerns, according to the analyst.

“I suspect Barr’s focus has much to do with these and looming revelations”, Ortel presumes. “But I question why Barr and the president have not yet replaced FBI Director Christopher Wray and all who had anything to do with the Flynn prosecution and Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe. The FBI has a stunning array of resources that should be trained on investigating crimes, rather than instigating potential crimes to exact political retribution”.

Trump ‘Should Consider Full Pardon’ of All Deep State Victims

One might hope that FBI agents involved in the alleged framing of General Flynn as well as their backers will be held responsible, according to Ortel.

“Across the political spectrum, most thoughtful people must demand full disclosure of the extent to which FBI and other ‘public servants’ crossed a key line to become political hit men and women”, he highlights. “The FBI is supposed to investigate objectively and apolitically, while the Department of Justice is supposed to uphold the law, neutrally”.

According to him, “under Robert Mueller, James Comey, and Christopher Wray at the FBI, and under Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch and Jeff Sessions at the Justice Department, corrupt political motives seem to have overwhelmed obligations to support and defend the US Constitution”.

In the aftermath of the recent disclosure Donald Trump suggested that the newly unveiled documents “essentially exonerated” Michael Flynn.

“They tormented him – dirty cops tormented Gen. Flynn”, Trump told reporters on 30 April. “If you look at those notes from yesterday, that was total exoneration”.

The president earlier signalled that he was “strongly considering pardoning” former national security adviser Michael Flynn. One might wonder whether it’s time for the president to pick up this option. According to Ortel, Trump “should consider full pardons for all targets of any Mueller instigated prosecutions as these seem to have started in the absence of solid predicates of criminal activity”.

As for Flynn, the analyst hopes that Barr “would direct prosecuting attorneys to cease their efforts, while referring any evidence of criminal behaviour by prosecutors in the Flynn case to new teams of prosecutors who then should seek indictments”. He believes that such a path might be deemed a form of exoneration.

“General Flynn and many others have suffered too much for too long”, Ortel says. “President Trump and Attorney General Barr must unequivocally prove that government employees will suffer grievous punishment when they subvert the rule of law to serve corrupt political masters”.

May 7, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

Anti-Iranian Boomerang Policies: How America Celebrated the Pandemic and Incited the Oil Crisis, and Got Stuck by Both

By Ivan KESIĆ | Strategic Culture Foundation | May 7, 2020

Two months after the coronavirus pandemic broke out in Iran, we are seeing signs of a significant improvement for the total situation. The number of daily deaths has dropped below one hundred for a week in a row, the number of new COVID-19 cases has been on a continuous decline for more than three weeks, the restrictions are gradually being lifted and the streets are again vibrant. Iran’s success in combating the pandemic is the result of mobilizing all available governmental organizations and relying on its own know-how and industrial production. Alone and under the harshest sanctions seen in history, Iran has proven to be extremely effective, compared to the leading Western countries. In the face of global disasters and the vulnerability of civilians, it is traditionally common for nations to help one another, but recently we see something quite different from the U.S. regime.

The largest mass-produced face masks factory in Southwest Asia was put into operation in Eshtehard Industrial Town of Alborz province, west of Tehran. The head of the Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order, Mohammad Mokhber said the factory will produce every day four million masks equipped with a nano filter, which guarantees a high level of protection.

Accusations, lies, more sanctions, and warmongering

The outbreak of the pandemic in Iran and China, two largest rival countries in Asia, had come as a refreshing for American politicians. In the Chinese case, they hoped for their economic slowdown and the deterioration of their international reputation, thus opening space for expanding and strengthening America’s international policies and position. In the case of Iran, expectations were much higher. Before coronavirus fully took hold in the U.S., the Trump administration appeared to be viewing the outbreak as an opportunity to gain advantage by amplifying its maximum pressure strategy, the view that by squeezing Iran’s economy crippling sanctions will force Tehran to choose between its own economic viability and geopolitical independence.

When Iran asked for international medical assistance, lifting sanctions and a loan from the IMF, the Trump administration saw it as a confirmation of the success of their policies. Instead of showing signs of goodwill for Iranian demands, the proudly compassionate United States responded by announcing a new round of economic sanctions aimed at closing loopholes that might allow Iran to export its products and leave it in scarcity of money then desperately needed for respirators, face masks, and other medical equipment. Formerly called blockade or embargo, now rebranded as “economic sanctions,” embody the beloved fantasy that coercive pressure alone can make countries submit to America’s will.

The U.S. Treasury says its sanctions do not prohibit humanitarian contributions that ease coronavirus pressure on Iran, a claim the Iran’s Foreign Ministry has called deception. Even though the U.S. claims that its sanctions don’t prevent the sale of medicine and medical devices, the secondary sanctions on financial institutions and businesses have prevented Iran from buying necessary items like ventilators that could save the lives of coronavirus patients. The problems do not stop there, for example the Iranian government released an official coronavirus app for Iranians, but Google pulled it from its app store due to U.S. sanctions. Basically, the U.S. government has taken the same approach as during the last year’s floods in Iran, when they prevented international aid.

In addition to preventing international aid to Iran, we have also seen crocodile tears and false mercy from Trump and his administration, allegedly offering their own coronavirus aid “if Iranians ask for it.” Only someone extremely naive can believe in the sincerity of this offer, considering that they have prevented the aid of other countries, and even stolen medical equipment from Italy, France, Germany and Canada. There is no trace of U.S. aid collection for Iran, which, after all, could have been sent quietly. For example, even though they were in a more difficult situation at the end of March, the Iranians collected medical aid for the American people and sent it through the Swiss Embassy, without media noise. The truth is that Trump had no intention of sending any aid, in fact he just wanted to hear Iranian begging and then use it for propaganda purposes. Of course, Iranians did not bite it and rejected the offer. Still, the fake aid offer and Iran’s refusal were later reported in many Western media as key evidence of U.S. benevolence and Iranian cruelty.

After putting Iran in an unpleasant situation, U.S. politicians began pouring bizarre accusations against the Iranian authorities. Mike Pompeo, Brian Hook and Morgan Ortagus accused Iran of “lying” about the coronavirus outbreak and “stealing” funds intended for the fight against pandemic. “It’s not the sanctions, it’s the regime,” Ortagus claimed. Aggressive elements within the U.S. government have even begun calling for war on Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, thinking that Iran is in too difficult a crisis to respond adequately.

The alleged Iranian incompetence required some kind of evidence, so the new U.S. disinformation campaign was launched. Anti-Iranian propaganda has mostly focused on exaggerating the numbers of infected and dead, despite the fact that the World Health Organization confirms Iranian reports as credible. The Washington Post has turned to publishing fake news, claiming that Iran has dug mass “burial pits” in Qom for victims of the disease. Netanyahu went even further, sharing a video clip from a 2007 TV mini-series, as the evidence of Iranian trying to hide the true number of fatalities.

Numerous Western media have kept up with similar nonsense and hateful claims. One of the finest examples is the op-ed piece by Graeme Wood for The Atlantic. “Iran cannot handle the coronavirus,” he claims in the title, further representing Iran as the Orientalist dystopia. The city of Qom, with over 1.2 million inhabitants, for Wood is “a small city” with “cramped hotels, communal toilets, junk food and unhygienic scenes,” a sort of “Shiite Disneyland,” assuring his audience “that comparison might be the best way for Americans to understand the gravity of this outbreak.” Then he jumps to the ideological patriotism, claiming China’s authoritarianism has the advantages in dealing with a disaster like this, while Iran’s authoritarianism has none. He claims that Iran has no intention of closing the holy shrines, despite the fact that they were closed shortly after.

Wood also shows video of Iraj Harirchi, a top Iranian health official who has contracted the coronavirus, describing it as “incredible” and “comic,” calls Iranian officials “notoriously cruel,” and the country as the place where “incompetence and evil become indistinguishable.” This op-ed perfectly summarizes the distorted vision given by everyone from the American leadership to the authors of racist cartoons on social networks: Iran is bad, dirty, everything opposite to the U.S., and it will fall. After all, deadly disasters occur only in far off Oriental despotates, never in famed liberal democracies. Except Italy. And except for the post-March 2020 period.

Coronavirus knocks at the U.S. door

In mid-March, the coronavirus knocked heavily on the U.S. door and from the wealthiest country in the world, whose president boasts with the best institutions and whose government enjoys giving lessons to other countries, it was expected that pandemic would be a piece of cake. But what do we see, and what’s the difference between the U.S. and Iran? Inside Iran, we don’t see massive dissatisfaction or protests over the Khamenei’s and Rouhani’s crisis management, but according to a Gallup Poll conducted on 14 April, Trump’s approval rating is down significantly, now standing at 43%. We also see thousands of protesters in many U.S. states, with truly inspiring slogans demanding freedom and liberation. We don’t see chaos in Iranian hospitals either, but we do see large-scale theft of equipment in U.S. hospitals, as well as U.S. nurses refusing to work due to lack of protective equipment. While the story of Qom’s mass burial pits is refuted to the last detail, it remains for Americans to explain burials of unclaimed bodies on Hart Island and in New York city parks.

The New York City itself today looks like Chernobyl or a “never-in-liberal-democracy” thing, a sort of Orientalist dystopia from Hollywood movies or unhygienic Disneyland from The Atlantic’s agitprop-eds. With junk food, or no food on the shelves at all. We don’t see hungry Iranians begging the Trump administration for help, but we see such moans on the multi-billion-dollar U.S. aircraft carriers. We don’t see any regime change in Tehran, but we do see dismissal of the U.S. aircraft carrier’s captain, only because he dared to seek help for his infected sailors. There’s no trace of the alleged Iranian government’s “lying” or “theft,” but there is overwhelming evidence of U.S. piracy of protective masks around the world. This evidence comes from the governments of Italy, Germany, France and Canada. If U.S. authorities cooperated with Iranian experts at the outbreak of the pandemic, they would surely have had fewer casualties at home. But they did not want to cooperate, as with Chinese experts, they just looked like scavengers. Now, Trump is blaming the WHO, which has replaced Iran as a bogeyman.

We also don’t see the collapse of the Iranian economy, although by 18 April around 600,000 people had registered as unemployed. By comparison, over 22 million Americans had lost their jobs by the same date, proportionally ten times more. Moreover, we don’t see the collapse of the Iranian oil industry, nor their tankers floating hopelessly alone on the sea. During the pandemic, Iran has launched 25 new electricity projects in five provinces worth nearly half a billion dollars, successfully installed a giant oil drilling platform at Salman oilfield, as well as a gas drilling rig in the Persian Gulf. All domestically produced, and all for the domestic market. In contrast, we are witnessing a historic oil crisis in the West, the collapse of the North American shale industry, and a crowd of full oil tankers parked off the U.S. coast with nowhere to unload. In other words, in their backyard they are looking at a scenario they intended for Iran two years ago, or one that they had hoped for when a pandemic broke out in that country. Yet Iran has proven to be much more resilient and effective.

Everything seen before

Despite all the obstacles and wet dreams of its enemies, Iran has not fallen, and it will not fall. Its initial perceived weakness subsequently proved to be false. Iran did not ask for aid and the IMF loan because it could not cope alone with the crisis, but to accelerate the fight against the pandemic. Negative responses to Iran’s demands and attempts to block other countries from sending aid are a wake-up call for the last naives who think the U.S. government has compassion for anyone’s civilian population. Or even their own. The mask thefts from their own allies also prove that the U.S. government will treat everyone the same way as Iran. As a nation with a strong sense of identity and group responsibility, Iran has proven to be extremely enduring in similar historical situations. In the 1980s, Iran withstood the aggression of the fourth largest army, backed by America and all the world powers, and a decade later it rebuilt the country despite being more isolated and weaker than today.

Even deadly disasters, accompanied by aid refusals and military aggression, are not unseen in Iranian history. Going back a century, Iran has been hit by an epidemic and mass famine that has claimed two million lives, or 20% of the total population. In 1918 the Iranian government asked the U.S. for a multi-million-dollar loan to be used solely for famine relief, but Washington refused. Furthermore, the British recognized the perfect circumstance to temporarily occupy the western parts of Iran and impose a humiliating agreement that was terminated by the Iranian parliament in June 1921. This is also a lesson for those who think that Anglo-American vulturous policy towards Iran began in 1979 or 1953. Going back a century or two more, in 1820 and 1721 northwestern Iran was hit by catastrophic earthquakes, and the city of Tabriz recorded tens of thousands dead. Just a few months after both events, the Ottomans invaded Iran, but were repulsed soon after both times. Today we are witnessing the centennial repetition of history, with new fools repeating old mistakes and expecting different results.

May 7, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Russia Probe Testimonies Reveal There Was No Collusion Between Moscow & Trump Campaign, Report Says

By Lilia Dergacheva – Sputnik – May 7, 2020

As part of an earlier declared bipartisan effort to approve the public release of files pertaining to the Russia probe, Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell announced that 53 of them had been cleared to this end.

The due-to-be-released transcripts of House Intelligence Committee interviews feature top law enforcement and intelligence officials asserting they had no evidence of collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia , senior administration and intelligence community officials told Fox News.

The findings are reportedly entirely in line with the results of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, which found no evidence of illegal or criminal coordination between President Trump, his presidential campaign, and Russia in 2016. However, the interviews, which are eligible for release, cast a heavy doubt on committee Chairman Adam Schiff’s previous statements about “direct evidence” of close coordination.

“Schiff is in panic mode”, a senior administration official recounted to Fox News.

The 53 transcripts reportedly include interviews with Donald Trump Jr., Trump’s ex-campaign manager Steve Bannon, adviser Jared Kushner, Trump aide Hope Hicks, former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, and others.

“The transcripts show a total lack of evidence, despite Schiff personally going out saying he had more than circumstantial evidence that there was collusion”, one source involved in House Russia investigations told Fox News.

Only one of the 53 is said to have implied there is some evidence of alleged coordination.

Earlier this week, House Republicans combed through over 6,000 pages of transcripts pertaining to interviews conducted by the committee in 2017 and 2018, after the the partisan vote in September 2018 approved their public release.

Newly sworn-in Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell notified Schiff that the redaction and declassification process was complete, and that the records were ready for release, thereby implying that Schiff is welcome to act next. Grenell directed a letter to Schiff on 4 May reporting that the review of 43 of the 53 transcripts “was completed in June 2019″, and that the “interagency review of the remaining ten transcripts has been completed”. “Pursuant to your guidance, these transcripts have not been shared with the White House”, Grenell further pointed out.

Grenell went on to inform Schiff that he was “willing” to release the transcripts directly from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence [ODNI] “as to ensure we comply with the unanimous and bipartisan vote to release the transcripts”. However, he didn’t specify when he would release the transcripts.

Intelligence officials told Fox News that Schiff had had his subcommittee staff director reaching out to intelligence community agencies asking how Grenell was involved and what role Grenell, who is known to be a Trump ally, could have played in the declassification and review he had reported on.

Fox News was told, however, that the review was completed before Grenell took the helm as acting director a little over two months ago, in February.

The process, according to an intelligence source, took place under both former directors Dan Coates and Joseph Maguire, and was conducted by career intelligence officials. The official also told Fox News that the relevant heads of appropriate agencies were consulted on the declassifications and redactions of all 53 transcripts.

Adam Schiff made headlines when he dramatically read into the congressional record some of the most explosive claims from Christopher Steele’s controversial dossier. His claims, in common with ones by the “former British intelligence officer who is reportedly held in high regard by US intelligence”, as Schiff put it, have since been directly contradicted by intelligence evidence in recently declassified and released FBI and Justice Department memos and reports.

Mueller, similarly, rounding off of his nearly two-year-long investigation, found insufficient evidence and produced no charges of criminal conspiracy or coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia. At the same time, the Special Counsel’s team did not reach a conclusion on obstruction of justice, which current Attorney General Bill Barr ultimately decided not to pursue.

May 7, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Syrian ‘regime change’ architect: William Roebuck, US Ambassador of Destruction

By Steven Sahiounie | Mideast Discourse | May 4, 2020

Since 2006, William Roebuck, a US Diplomat, has been working toward ‘regime change’ in Syria at any cost. The destruction of Syria, hundreds of thousands of deaths and injuries, and the migration of one-third of the population have been the price of the US policy under Roebuck’s tenure. The ultimate goal of ‘regime change’ has never been about greater freedoms, democracy, or human rights for Syrians, but has been with the single target spelled out by Roebuck in 2006: to break the relationship between Iran and Syria.

William Roebuck, US Ambassador ‘to the Kurds in Syria’

William Roebuck is a 27 year veteran of the US State Department, having served under Presidents Bush, Obama, and currently Trump. His current title is Deputy Special Envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS. He is a former US Ambassador to Syria and Bahrain. He has served in the US embassies in Iraq and chargé d’affaires in Libya under Obama. Seymour M. Hersh wrote about the US Embassy in Libya and its role in arming the terrorists used by the US in Syria. For the past several years, he has been based in Northeast Syria and managing the Kurds.

Roebuck designed the 2011 “Arab Spring” in Syria

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange revealed a plan concocted by William Roebuck, the former US Ambassador to Syria. Wikileaks published US diplomatic cables, and chapter 10 of “The Wikileaks Files” concerns Roebuck’s cable sent on December 13, 2006. Ambassador Roebuck wrote that the US should take action to try to destabilize the Syrian government by provoking it to overreact, both internally and externally. That plan was put into action in March 2011 at Deraa, where armed terrorists were interspersed among unarmed civilians in street protests. The terrorists were provoking the police and security forces by shooting at them, as well as shooting unarmed civilians which were blamed on the security forces.

The cables prove that ‘regime change’ had been the goal of US policy in Syria since 2006 and that the US promoted sectarianism in support of its policy, which built the foundation for the sectarian conflict which resulted in massive bloodshed. Roebuck advocated for exploiting Syria’s relationship with Iran, which makes Syria vulnerable to Israeli airstrikes. Roebuck advised that the US should destabilize the Syrian government by promoting sectarian divisions between Sunni and Shia, which at the time was not an issue in Syria, which is a secular government and a tolerant society. By promoting sectarian conflict, which he had observed in the oil-rich Arab Gulf monarchies, Roebuck was crafting the destruction of Syrian society. The ultimate US goal in Syria was to destabilize the Syrian government by violent means, resulting in a change of government, and the new government would be pro-Israeli, and anti-Iranian.

Roebuck’s memo leaked

In November 2019 an internal memo written on October 31 by Roebuck was leaked to the press. He criticized Trump for failing to stop Turkey from invading the Northeast of Syria. “Turkey’s military operation in northern Syria, spearheaded by armed Islamist groups on its payroll, represents an intentioned-laced effort at ethnic cleansing,” Mr. Roebuck wrote, calling the abuses “what can only be described as war crimes and ethnic cleansing.”

Roebuck praised the SDF as a reliable partner acting as guards to keep US troops safe while they occupied Syria illegally, to steal the Syrian oil, which is to be used to support the SDF, instead of the Pentagon payroll.

Two is the company, but three is a crowd

The US state department has a Syrian trio: William Roebuck, and the special representative for Syria engagement, James Jeffrey. Joel Rayburn is a deputy assistant secretary for Levant Affairs and special envoy for Syria.

Iraqi and Syrian Kurdish officials are often confused as to which US officials are in charge on any given issue, and whether their policies were personally driven, or reflected US foreign policy directives. Many analysts agree that the US foreign policy on Syria is a confusing mess.

Roebuck pushes the Syrian Kurds to unite

The Kurdish National Council (KNC) and the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) have begun direct talks which US diplomat William Roebuck has promoted. For the last two years, he has been working with the Syrian Kurds. The goal is to unite all Kurdish parties in Syria in one body, which could be part of the UN peace talks in Geneva to end the Syrian conflict. The KNC and PYD have had serious disagreements over the years.

The KNC is part of the Istanbul-based ‘Syrian opposition’ and aligned with the Kurdish nationalist Massoud Barzani and his Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in Iraq. The KNC received criticism as being pro-Turkish after the Turkish Army invaded the Northeastern region of Syria.

The PYD is part of the political arm of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) who had been the US partner fighting ISIS.  PYD bases its political and organizational projects on the PKK’s ideology. The PKK is considered as an international terrorist group accused of thousands of deaths in Turkey over the decades.

The first direct negotiations between the KNC and PYD were held in early April at an illegal US military base near Hasakah, with William Roebuck, an SDF commander Mazlum Abdi in attendance. Roebuck has met numerous times over the past three months with the KNC, trying to push the idea of unification among the Kurdish factions.

At an April 25 press conference in Qamishli, it was announced that Roebuck had presented a draft that called for a unified political vision for Syria. After about four meetings, the two sides were in agreement on the following points: Syria is to be a federal, democratic, and pluralistic state; the current Syrian government in Damascus was not acceptable; the Kurdish northeast region was to be a political unit.  It was stressed that both parties were committed to resolving the Syrian crisis through the implementation of UN Resolution 2254, and the new Syrian constitution must recognize Kurdish national, cultural, and political rights.

The SDF and PYD do not have political representation in the Geneva talks because of Turkish opposition to their participation, given the fact that Turkey views the groups as terrorists. Turkey rejects any project that would lead to Kurdish autonomous rule in Syria, which is the goal of the US. When Trump ordered the sudden withdrawal of US troops from the Northeast of Syria in October, the Kurdish leaders immediately turned to the Syrian government in Damascus to save them from extermination at the hands of the invading Turkish Army.  However, the US did not want the Kurds to be protected by Damascus. The US goal is ‘regime change’ using UN Resolution 2254 as their tool. To achieve that end, William Roebuck has continued to work with the Kurds of the Northeast and is now trying to get them united to be at the negotiating table in Geneva. The Kurds might unite, but they will always remain a small minority numbering only 7% of the population, but who are attempting to control 20% of the territory in Syria.  Will there be justice for the Syrian homeowners and landowners within the territory the Kurds call “Rojava”, who have been made homeless and destitute at the hands of the Kurds? Will the Syrians one day rise in a “Kurdish Spring” cleaning to regain their properties?

Ahed al-Hindi, a political analyst based in Washington, DC, told  Al-Monitor that the US goal to unify the Kurdish ranks in northeastern Syria is a part of a project designed to unify the entire Syrian north, including Idlib and the Kurdish Northeast. The US goal is to prevent the Syrian government from access to the resources which could be used to rebuild Syria.

The next UN peace talks in Geneva

UN Special Envoy Geir O. Pedersen gave a UN Security Council briefing on the situation in Syria on April 29. He announced the agenda for the next session of the Constitutional Committee had been agreed between the co-chairs, and meetings in Geneva would resume as soon as the COVID-19 restrictions would allow. He continued to stress the importance of the current nationwide ceasefire, which was needed to combat and treat COVID-19. He declared there is no military solution to the Syrian conflict, and the UN Security Council resolution 2254 must be used as the path to a political settlement that would be acceptable for the Syrian people while restoring the sovereignty, borders, and independence of Syria.

Steven Sahiounie is an award-winning journalist and political commentator.

May 6, 2020 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Syrian Air Defenses Repel Israeli Missiles that Targeted a Military Site in the North of the Country

By Khaled Iskef | American Herald Tribune | May 5, 2020

On Monday night, air defenses in the Syrian army responded to an Israeli offensive that targeted military warehouses in Al-Safirah area in Aleppo eastern countryside.

Private Syrian sources reported that the attack targeted the Scientific Research Center in Aleppo eastern countryside. Syrian air defenses repelled several hostile missiles, resulting in explosions in the sky.

In turn, Syrian Ministry of Defense stated that “At 22:32 on May 4, 2020, enemy warplanes appeared on the screens of our air defenses. The warplanes came from the northeast of Athria and targeted some military warehouses in Al-Safirah area with missiles”.

Sources said that the Israeli aircraft entered the Syrian territories through Iraqi airspace and pointed out that the offensive took place through Al-Tanf base near the Syrian-Iraqi borders.

Through the war years, Israeli warplanes intentionally attacked Syria within its policy based on an attempt to weaken the capabilities of the Syrian army for the benefit of the armed groups. The last Israeli attack was on March 27, 2020 on the south of Damascus, killing three civilians and injuring three others due to shrapnel of the missiles in Adliya and Al-Hujaira. However, Syrian air defenses repelled and downed most of the missiles.

May 6, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Ex-Google CEO claims he can link tech & defense, but he’s just a civilian dilettante, doesn’t get reality of war

By Scott Ritter | RT | May 5, 2020

The former CEO of Google claims he can improve the US military’s integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into its operations. But is AI the panacea Schmidt claims? And if so, is he the person best suited to lead the way?

In a culture known for complex problems and inherent inefficiencies, the US military would seem ideally suited for the kind of cutting-edge solutions offered by the emergence of computer-driven artificial intelligence (AI).

The US military – like its counterparts in China, Russia, India and elsewhere – has, over the course of the past decade, invested heavily in research and development projects designed to bring AI to the battlefield in support of intelligence collection and analysis, logistical support, autonomous warfighting capabilities, healthcare, and cybersecurity. Indeed, in this computer-driven age, there isn’t an aspect of military operations where AI hasn’t been investigated as a potential enhancement.

While the US military hasn’t ignored AI and its utility, Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, believes it has done so in a highly inefficient manner. And he is convinced he is the man who can best help the US military solve its AI challenges.

The arrogance and hubris exhibited by Schmidt – who has never served in the military and as such is unfamiliar with the ethos, culture and operational realities associated with organizing, training and leading millions of men and women for war – has rubbed some senior US military officers the wrong way. However, his wonkish approach to problem solving, combined with the inherent attractiveness of technology-driven solutions, has found an audience within the ranks of the civilian component of the US defense establishment, who have invited Schmidt to sit on several advisory boards involved in the pursuit of AI-driven solutions to military problem sets.

Past attempts to incorporate Schmidt’s digital-centric philosophies into realms driven by the human condition have proven inchoate. In 2013, Schmidt co-authored a book, ‘The New Digital Age’, with Jared Cohen. Cohen had helped spearhead an effort built around a soft-power philosophy known as ‘digital democracy’, where the US sought to exploit perceived digital commonalities (ie. the integration of social media platforms, use of electronic and computer-driven communications and, most telling, the notion that these digital interfaces exposed the youth of foreign societies to American culture, and as such ingrained a predilection for American values that supplanted those of their own cultures and societies) for the purpose of altering the political makeup of areas such as the Middle East.

‘Digital democracy’ drove the US’ support of the Iranian opposition in 2009, the Arab Spring movement of 2010, and the so-called Syrian revolution of 2011. The failure of ‘digital democracy’ to bring about the desired change highlights the risks associated with seeking to digitally manipulate human emotions and values.

The biggest lesson learned from the abject failure of ‘digital democracy’ is that there is no algorithm that can replicate the incoherent complexities of human emotions. Schmidt’s Google experience is one where algorithms are written and applied to better comprehend complex data-driven problems. As data is accumulated and incorporated, AI can be used to automatically update and upgrade these algorithms, allowing for increased efficiencies.

This approach works in a relatively static environment, where assumptions of shared goals and objectives can be built into the algorithms used. This was the fundamental flaw with ‘digital democracy’: politics is not static, but rather dynamic, driven more by the unpredictable vagaries of human emotions than quantifiable data.

In his timeless tract on military matters, the Prussian military philosopher Carl von Clausewitz observed that war was but a “continuation of politics by other means.” Given the inherent relationship between politics and war, it can be extrapolated that the human complexities which proved fatal to ‘digital democracy’ would similarly undermine any effort to use AI to guide and direct decision-making in times of human conflict.

Eric Schmidt’s success in using algorithms to discern intent and desire on the part of consumers to better guide product placement has revolutionized advertising and sales, both online and in traditional brick-and-mortar establishments. This success has prompted Schmidt and other innovators to embrace the promise of AI-driven solutions for military applications.

There is a fundamental flaw in this approach – when Google was seeking to make sense of the ‘big data’ that was produced as a result of the online consumer experience, there was no opposing force seeking to disrupt, mislead or otherwise defeat its effort. War is an inherently adversarial process, and like the French embrace of the Maginot Line to keep German armies from invading France, any AI-driven algorithm can be defeated by simply re-defining the terms of the conflict.

From a technological standpoint alone, AI-driven applications have already been shown to be easily spoofed, whether by altering painted lines of a road to force Tesla’s AI-driven car into oncoming traffic, or convincing AI-controlled software that an image of a turtle was, in fact, a rifle.

Beyond the fact that an enemy in a time of war would constantly be seeking ways to defeat any AI-driven operation, the inherent incompatibility between the logic of data-driven AI and the illogic of human emotion make an overreliance on AI during times of war a self-defeating proposition. One need only examine the US experience in Afghanistan, where a technologically sophisticated American military, having incorporated aspects of AI into nearly every aspect of its warfighting capabilities, has not been able to defeat the relatively unsophisticated forces of the Taliban. No amount of big data manipulation can overcome the fact that US cultural norms will never mesh with Pashtun tribal reality. The US’ failure in Afghanistan is “digital democracy” writ large, the difference between computer-driven artificialities and boots-on-the ground reality.

US Air Force Colonel John Boyd, considered one of the great military thinkers of modern times, compressed the complexities of military decision-making into a brutally simplistic formula he called the ‘OODA loop’. The four components of the OODA loop – Orient, Observe, Decide and Action – at first seem to be perfectly suited for AI-induced enhancements. But a closer look at what Boyd was capturing in his model only underscores the reality that, at the end of the day, the human factor is the dominating force when it comes to the taking of human life in conflict.

Boyd spoke of “the senses” and “mental perspectives” that guided “physical playing out of decisions.” No algorithm can ever be written which captures the visceral gut-driven realities of decision-making during times of war. The key to military victory, according to the tenets of Boyd’s OODA loop, is to get inside the opponent’s decision-making cycle, catching them responding to situations that have already changed because of actions already taken. Against an AI-driven opponent, one will always be able to make the car drive into oncoming traffic, or the computer to see a turtle as a rifle. By the time the algorithm adapts, it will be too late; the sensors collecting the data the AI needs will have been destroyed or spoofed, the power sources to the computers cut, and a bayonet driven into the heart of the operator by an opponent driven more by human sense, mental perspective, and physical action.

This is the reality of war that Eric Schmidt and civilian dilettantes like himself will never understand, caught up as they are in a data-driven world that is as far removed from the modern battlefield as the Earth is from Mars.

May 6, 2020 Posted by | Militarism | | Leave a comment

A China-bashing coronavirus jester? Beijing tears into Pompeo’s ‘clown show’

RT | May 6, 2020

China has fired back at Mike Pompeo’s allegations that Beijing is somehow behind the origin and spread of Covid-19, describing his “comedy routine” as deeply cynical and damaging to the United States.

State-operated China Daily took aim at the US secretary of state, slamming the top American diplomat for “bad-mouthing” China and the World Health Organization (WHO) instead of seeking global cooperation and solidarity to overcome the Covid-19 pandemic.

Pompeo continues to insist that the illness came from a laboratory in Wuhan, even though he has yet to present evidence for this incendiary claim, and has ignored scientists who say the virus is from the wild, the opinion piece argued.

China Daily noted that the secretary of state has also been curiously silent about the fact that Beijing has been the “main provider” of surgical masks, ventilators, and other essential medical equipment to the US. The editorial argued that Pompeo is playing a dangerous political game that will end up hurting the United States.

In a difficult situation such as the one we all face now, Pompeo’s clown show is simply self-harming for the US. It is solidarity that is desperately needed to fight this common enemy, not a stand-up comedy routine.

The paper also ran a cartoon showing Pompeo, outfitted as a jester, juggling “lies” as he tries to distract media attention from rising coronavirus cases in the US.

The biting commentary piece comes after the Global Times newspaper – an outlet owned by the Chinese Communist Party – published an editorial dismissing Pompeo’s attacks on Beijing as “groundless accusations.”

Pompeo’s theories have also been met with suspicion within the intelligence community. The Guardian reported that sources connected to the Five Eyes intelligence network – consisting of spy agencies from the UK, US, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada – believe there is no evidence linking China to the creation and spread of Covid-19.

May 6, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

China Rejects Illegal, Violent Actions Against Venezuela, Cuba

teleSUR | May 6, 2020

China Wednesday condemned the recent rifle attack at the Cuban embassy in the United States, a mercenary forces’ invasion plan of Venezuela, and all the interventionist maneuvers against the sovereignty of any country.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said that her government firmly opposes any violent action perpetrated against official representations.

She urged Washington to take the necessary measures to protect the Cuban embassy from any damage, as provided for in the 1961 Vienna Convention.

In this way, China joined other nations in the world that repudiated the shooting launched last Thursday against the Cuban embassy in the U.S. capital. The Cuban mission officials suffered no damage, but there were material deteriorations in the building as a result of the attack.

Hua also deplored the attempted maritime invasion of Venezuela by mercenary forces seeking to carry out a coup against President Nicolas Maduro.

She stressed the Chinese government’s rejection of the violation of the sovereignty of the South American country by any means or excuse.

The diplomat called for prioritizing the well-being of the Bolivarian people and promoting the peaceful resolution of the political impasse in Venezuela.

China has been in favor of respecting the United Nations Charter and the basic norms governing international relations in the face of the U.S. policy of hostility towards the Maduro administration.

The Asian nation recently criticized Washington for applying more extraterritorial sanctions to Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran to the detriment of the public health of the people just as the COVID-19 pandemic spreads.

May 6, 2020 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

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