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Attention

Italian Connection: Obama's attempts to set up Trump, deep state ties to Italians, server scandal

Renzi/Obama
© italoamericano.orgItalian PM Matteo Renzi โ€ข Former US President Barack Obama
The recent firings of top Italian spies were likely related to Obama and a plot to set up candidate and President Trump in a Hillary email scandal. We first reported this in May and now it appears this story is finally receiving sunlight!

In May Italian Prime Minister Conte asked for the resignations of four top intelligence officials after his call with President Donald Trump. After that it was reported that the recent removal of these top Italian intelligence ministers from their positions as top spies in the government had been uncovered.

Our story started in January 2017 when Computer World wrote about alleged crimes committed by Italian Giulio Occhionero:
The Tuesday arrest of Giulio Occhionero and his sister, Francesca Maria, has brought to light what appears to be the biggest, and highest-profile, hacking of institutional and corporate accounts ever reported in Italy. The siblings have been planting the Pyramid Eye remote access Trojan on computers using a spear-phishing technique over several years, according to the arrest order. They attacked at least 18,000 high-profile targets, including former Prime Ministers Matteo Renzi and Mario Monti, President of European Central Bank Mario Draghi, as well as employees and heads of various ministries including Internal Affairs, Treasury, Finance and Education.
But Giulio Occhionero claimed that he and his sister, Francesca Maria, were set up.

Comment: Check out the video for perspective on the Italian connection and the set up to frame Trump:


See also: Former Italian PM linked to Trump spying and Obama is also a cohort of the Clintons and George Soros


X

MIT Media Lab director resigns in wake of institute's hidden financial ties to Epstein

Joi Ito
© Phillip Faraone/Getty Images/WIRED25Joi Ito onstage at WIRED 25 Festival, San Francisco, CA, 2018
Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Media Lab Director Joi Ito resigned on Sept. 7, a day after a new report detailed how the lab attempted to hide its financial relationship with recently deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who had been facing trial on child sex-trafficking charges.

According to dozens of pages of emails and other documents obtained by The New Yorker, the Media Lab continued to accept gifts from Epstein, even as he was listed as "disqualified" in MIT's official donor database. The lab concealed the full amount of donations received from Epstein by marking his contributions as anonymous.

The documents also revealed that Epstein apparently served as a mediator of sorts between the lab and other wealthy donors, soliciting millions in donations, including from Microsoft founder Bill Gates and investor Leon Black, the report said. According to The New Yorker, the financial connections between the lab and Epstein went "well beyond" what the lab and its director previously described in public statements.

Folder

Trump-Russia; Clinton-Libya: Tale of two probes and the FBI

Hillary
© Current AffairsFormer Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Records recently posted online by the FBI indicate that it did little to investigate allegations from private sources connected to Republicans about a scheme in which associates of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to exploit their connection to her to profit from the turmoil in Libya in 2011.

The FBI received the documents in June 2016, around the same time it launched an exhaustive, three-year investigation of the Trump campaign's ties to Russia based, in part, on information from private sources connected to Democrats that in the main would prove to be false - the Steele dossier.

The bureau's different responses to these documents also came during the same period when FBI Director James B. Comey controversially cleared Clinton, in his first of two exonerations, of criminal wrongdoing in the bureau's probe of her unauthorized and insecure email setup.

The documents, quietly released as part of the FBI's case files for the "Midyear Exam," its code name for the Clinton email investigation, revive a lingering mystery from Clinton's tenure as the nation's chief diplomat: Why did Sidney Blumenthal, the former journalist and Bill Clinton White House aide, send her a series of detailed memos and reports about Libya beginning in 2011?

Comment: See also:


Laptop

Anonymous hacker, WikiLeaks source Jeremy Hammond summoned for testimony by Fed Grand Jury

Jeremy Hammond
© FreeJeremy.net/WikipediaJeremy Hammond
Imprisoned hacktivist Jeremy Alexander Hammond, a former WikiLeaks source once regarded as the FBI's most-wanted cybercriminal, has been called to testify before a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia, Gizmodo has learned.

On Saturday, the Jeremy Hammond Support Committee announced that the 34-year-old Chicago hacker had been transferred from his medium-security prison in Memphis, Tennessee, to a federal transfer center in Oklahoma City. But on Tuesday he arrived in Virginia, where he's expected to be questioned before a grand jury regarding his past ties with WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy organization whose founder, Julian Assange, currently faces a slew of federal charges, including several under the Espionage Act.

"Given the secrecy of grand jury proceedings, we don't know the nature or scope of the grand jury's investigation. However, our assumption is that this is the same grand jury that Chelsea Manning is currently being incarcerated for refusing to testify before," his supporters said in a statement.

Comment: See also:


Bell

Brexit fiasco! Bojo suspends parliament for 5 weeks, what's next?

Boris Johnson
© Getty ImagesBritish PM Boris Johnson
As the dust settles in Westminster after a raucous night that saw competing MPs trade blows over the suspension of the UK parliament, where does it leave the Brexit process? RT attempts to give clarity to the current chaos.

On Monday night, the supposed "mother of all parliaments" closed its doors on sitting British lawmakers after PM Boris Johnson chose to prorogue (suspend) proceedings for 5 weeks, at a time of national crisis over Brexit.

With little over 7 weeks until the UK is officially scheduled to exit the European Union (October 31) and no deal agreed with Brussels, what is next for the rollercoaster Brexit process?



Comment: More from RT, 10/9/2019: Scuffles in House of Commons, MPs try to stop suspension of parliament
The British House of Commons descended into chaos on Tuesday as MPs tried to one-up each other with ostentatious displays of outrage over Boris Johnson's suspension of parliament.

MPs scuffled at the doorway and had to be escorted out by security. One MP even vaulted themselves at the chair of outgoing House Speaker John Bercow.

Meanwhile, the less melodramatic among them merely held up signs reading 'silenced' in protest at the five-week closure announced by UK prime minister. Bercow also railed against the 'proroguing' or suspension of parliament.

Labour's Lloyd Russell-Moyle, 35, threw himself at Bercow's chair. When Bercow later left the chamber and made his way to the House of Lords, he left his own 'silenced' sign in his vacant seat.


Opposition MPs even engaged in a protest singalong, refusing to leave the chamber in opposition to what they perceive as a bastardization of British democracy.

The bizarre scenes unfolded at roughly 1:30am British time, after a marathon day in which MPs successfully blocked Johnson's second bid for a snap general election.


Bercow told the new Black Rod Sarah Clarke, essentially a messenger from the House of Lords, who entered the chamber to summon Bercow and the MPs through the lobby to the upper house:
"I will play my part but this is not a normal prorogation, it is not typical, it is not standard. It is one of the longest for decades. And it represents, not just in the minds of many colleagues but huge numbers of people outside, an act of executive fiat... but I will play my part."



Gold Bar

China: Gold reserves up another 100 tonnes despite escalation of trade war with US

China Gold
© AP/Kin Cheung
Earlier, market watchers reported that Chinese exports to the US had fallen by 16 percent year-on-year in August, while imports from the US sagged by over 22 percent in the same period. The slump came as the US slapped a 15 percent tariff on the remaining $300 billion-worth of goods imported from China, with the tax stepping into effect on September 1.

China's gold reserves climbed by some 99.91 tonnes over the past nine months, with total gold reserves standing at 2,141 tonnes as of August 30, and foreign exchange reserves growing to $3.1 trillion, according to fresh figures from the People's Bank of China released over the weekend.

Between July and August alone, the value of China's gold hoard is said to have climbed by over $7.5 billion, from $87.87 to $95.45 billion, with the country buying 5.91 tonnes of the precious metal in the last month. China's total gold reserves had stood at 2,042 tonnes of the precious metal as of the end of December 2018, with the August figures meaning China's total holdings in tonnes had grown by 4.85 percent.

Last week, Bloomberg reported that gold prices have climbed by a whopping 19 percent since the start of the year, in part due to central banks' purchase of the precious metal, and in part due to economic uncertainties stemming from global trade conflicts, and fears of a US recession. The metal hit $1,555 per ounce in trading in late August, its highest value since 2013, and investment banks including Goldman Sachs expect prices to continue their steady climb.

Snakes in Suits

Best of the Web: How Neocon money is funding the Hong Kong protests

hong kong us
© Kin Cheung | APUnited States flags are reflected on glasses of a protester during a protest in Hong Kong, Sept. 8, 2019.
The West has more to do with the Hong Kong protest movement than it would like us to know. It's the ugly face of Washington's long-standing foreign policy directed at destabilizing one of its long-standing economic foes: China.

It's been a summer of unrest in Hong Kong, and the Western mainstream press has been in uproar providing non-stop coverage of what they've described as a "pro-democracy movement fighting for freedom" against the repressive Chinese government.

Since March, thousands of protesters have taken to the streets each week, clashing with police and security forces, escalating into a fight over who should control Hong Kong's future.

The protests erupted over a proposed amendment to an extradition treaty between Hong Kong, Macau, China and Taiwan.

Comment: See also:


People

"If they need me": Trump ready to join Normandy talks on Ukraine

Trump
U.S. President Donald Trump (file photo)
U.S. President Donald Trump has said he isn't averse to joining talks with Germany, France, Ukraine, and Russia aimed at ending the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Known as the Normandy format, Trump told Voice of America on September 9 in Washington that he'd join the talks if the participants needed him.

"I believe the fact that the exchange of prisoners between Russia and Ukraine took place...is a very big step, and a very positive step. If they need me to join, I would join [the Normandy format]," Trump said.

Comment: See also:


Bullseye

'You're fired!' Trump sacks US National Security Adviser John Bolton

bolton
© Reuters / David MdzinarishviliJohn Bolton
National Security Advisor John Bolton, one of the most prominent war hawks in Donald Trump's administration, has handed in his resignation, the US president has announced.

"I informed John Bolton last night that his services are no longer needed at the White House... I asked John for his resignation, which was given to me this morning," Trump tweeted. The president said that he and others in the administration "strongly" disagreed with many of Bolton's decisions.

Comment: Twitter weighs in:





So has Trump finally started to clean house? Many have speculated that he was blocked from his first choice appointments for the most influential cabinet posts, and pressured into giving the jobs to those approved by the Deep State.


Bulb

No return to 2015 agreement - Iran will probably completely scale down nuclear commitments by 2020

rouhani
French President Emmanuel Macron failed to promote successfully his Iranian initiative with the US administration despite the initial blessing of his US counterpart. This failure led Iran to make a third gradual withdrawal from its JCPOA nuclear deal commitment, raising two main issues. Iran has become a regional power to be reckoned with, so we can now scrap from reactions to its policies the words "submit," or "bow to the international community". Moreover, since Europe is apparently no longer in a position to fulfil its commitments, Iran will now be headed towards a total pull-out following further gradual withdrawal steps. Just before the US elections due in November 2020, Iran is expected to become a nuclear country with the full capability of producing uranium enriched to more than 20% uranium-235, weapons-usable and therefore in a position to manufacture dozens of nuclear bombs (for which uranium must be enriched to about 90%). However, this does not necessarily mean that this is Iran's ultimate objective.

Industry data shows that half of the effort goes into enriching from 0.7% to 4%. If Iran reaches the level of 20%, the journey towards 90% is almost done. A few thousand centrifuges are needed to reach 20% enrichment while a few hundred are enough to cross from 20% to the 90% needed for a nuclear bomb. When Iran announces it is reaching a level which is considered critical by the west, there is the possibility that Israel might act militarily against Iran's capability as it did in Iraq in 1981, in Syria in 2009, and in assassinating nuclear scientists. If this happens, the Middle East will be exposed to a mega earthquake whose outcome is unpredictable. But if Israel and the US are not in a position to react against Iran's total withdrawal from the JCPOA (nuclear deal), Iran will no longer accept a return to the 2015 deal. Its position will become much stronger and any deal would be difficult to reach.