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Here we go again: Trump dismisses new US intel claims of Russian interference in 2020 re-election bid

Trump
© APUS President Donald Trump
U.S. President Donald Trump has rejected reported assertions by U.S. intelligence officials that Russia was interfering in the 2020 presidential election in a bid to help his reelection campaign.

In a post on Twitter on February 21, Trump described the reports as "another misinformation campaign...launched by Democrats in Congress."


The same day, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also rejected the reports as "more paranoid announcements. They have nothing to do with the truth," Peskov said.

The New York Times, The Washington Post, and AP separately reported on February 20 that the warning was given during a closed-door briefing by U.S. intelligence officials on February 13. They cited two officials familiar with the briefing who asked for anonymity.

The Times said the briefing angered Trump, who said Democrats would use the information against him.

The Kremlin on February 21 denied that Russia was interfering in the 2020 election campaign. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow on February 21 that the warnings made by U.S. intelligence officials were false. "This is another in a series of paranoid reports, and we regret to say that they will become more frequent as the election approaches," Peskov said. "They certainly have nothing to do with the truth."

Comment: Trump's still tweeting:



Team Bloomberg made fools of themselves by tweeting "Feel the Burn" in Russian:


And it's no shock that Hillary Clinton is jumping on the bandwagon:


Some of the Twitter responses to Clinton here are priceless. But as RT points out, there's more to the story. Or, to be more precise, less to the story:
Efforts to get to the bottom of precisely what it was claimed the Russians were actually doing to help Trump in 2020 have come up empty. CBS reporter Catherine Herridge said the ODNI officials who briefed the House on the alleged meddling had no "signals intelligence" or any tangible material to offer as proof. The response was more than a little redolent of the "17 intelligence agencies" - which morphed into three, then became hand-picked agents from three - who had insisted, citing classified information the public simply wasn't permitted to see, that they had proof of a Kremlin-directed influence campaign intervening on behalf of Trump in the 2016 election. The unclassified section of their report - which included a lengthy discussion of RT programs long off the air - did not inspire confidence, however.

Perhaps having learned their lesson, intelligence officials speaking to the New York Times claimed that Russians weren't doing all the influencing themselves this time - instead, they were conning gullible Americans into repeating their talking points. "Undermining confidence in American election systems" (not exactly rocket science after the Iowa caucuses and 2016 in general) and "sowing doubt over close elections and recounts" would be two dead giveaways that one was dealing with a victim of Russian influence operations, the officials said.
In other words, normal people are saying things the U.S. intelligence agency doesn't like, ergo they are Russian puppets.

Finally, arch-slimeball Eric Swalwell took to CNN to make an even bigger fool of himself and show just what an idiot he actually is (as if it wasn't obvious already):








Megaphone

Tulsi Gabbard: How Democrats' impeachment campaign helped Trump

trump and nadler
© Chelsea Stahl / NBC News
Donald Trump must be defeated: Another four years of him as president would be a disaster. Unfortunately, as I warned, the Democrats' hyper-partisan impeachment process has increased the likelihood that he will be re-elected. After Trump's acquittal in the Senate, his approval rating reached the highest levels since he took office. And the risk that he will win in November is much greater than before.

This was entirely foreseeable.

For years I have stressed the need for our leaders to make decisions based on thoughtfulness and foresight — not just emotion, or what may "feel good" in a given moment. This is especially important in the area of foreign policy, as politicians' desire to "do something" too often overrides careful consideration of the unintended consequences of the actions they take. Time and time again, their poor judgment has led to worse outcomes in the countries where we recklessly intervene, and for our own country's national security.

Airplane

Was MH17 properly investigated? Leaked documents cast doubt

MH17 wreckage
© AP/Peter DejongMH17 wreckage
In this article the contents of four leaked MH17 Joint Investigation Team documents are analysed by me on behalf of Bonanza Media:

DOC 1. Is a 'Record Of Interview' (ROI) between an officer of the Australian Federal Police and journalist Billy Six.

DOC 2. As part of 'OPERATION AVENELLA' imagery specialist Shaun Ellis and geospatial specialist Tim Johns from Australia examined four images.

DOC 3. WITNESS TESTIMONY is a Record Of Interview with a witness refuting the claim Ukrainian Air Force did not fly.

DOC 4. LETTER about BUK Positions from the Dutch Military Information and Investigation Service legal affairs department addressed to the public prosecutor at the National Prosecutor's Office on Counter Terrorism.

Comment: See also:


Attention

Nano-technology: one world, one brain

From lexico.com: nanotechnology: "The branch of technology that deals with dimensions and tolerances of less than 100 nanometers, especially the manipulation of individual atoms and molecules."
Nanotechnology
© Medium
The recent arrest of Harvard pioneer in the field of nanotechnology, Charles Lieber — on charges of lying to federal authorities about his business connections to China — has exposed wide-ranging relationships among American and Chinese researchers.

These relationships include, above all, the open sharing of sensitive technologies that, once upon a time, would have been considered closely guarded state secrets. (See my recent piece, "Behind the explosive Charles Lieber scandal.")

Here are quotes from the journal Nano Today, from a 2019 paper titled: "Nanowire probes could drive high-resolution brain-machine interfaces". Its authors are Chinese and American:
  • ...advances can enable investigations of dynamics in the brain [through tiny sensor-implants] and drive the development of new brain-machine interfaces with unprecedented resolution and precision.
  • ...output electrical signals of brain activity or input electrical stimuli to modulate brain activity in concert with external machines, including computer processors and prosthetics, for human enhancement...
Aside from research into prosthetics and, perhaps, the reversal of certain paralyses, this avenue of investigation also suggests "modulation" of the brain, hooked to machines, for the purpose of control. Control of thoughts, sensations, emotions.

And along with the Internet of Things, why couldn't that control eventually be extended, in order to "harmonize" many, many brains with one another?

Airplane

MH17 truth - before the Dutch, Australians, Ukrainians screen their lie show

mh17 lies
New evidence leaked last week from the files of the Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team (JIT) proves that Dutch state prosecutors have concealed and suppressed evidence of a direct witness of the Malaysia Airlines MH17 crash in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014.

That witness, a Ukrainian villager under MH17's flight path, reported to a Dutch police investigator in July 2015 that he had seen two Ukrainian Air Force fighter jets in the air at the time of the shootdown; a plume moving horizontally across the sky, indicating an air-to-air missile launch, not a missile fired from the ground; and the subsequent fall of the MH17 itself.

Another of the documents leaked shows that Dutch prosecutors have concealed an official report by Major-General Onno Eichelsheim, director of the Dutch military intelligence service (MIVD). Addressed to the National Prosecutor's Office for Counter-Terrorism, and dated September 21, 2016, Eichelsheim said that "flight MH17 was flying beyond the range of all identified and operational Ukrainian and Russian locations where 9K37M1 Buk M1 systems were deployed."

A third piece of evidence, hidden until now, is a report by the Australian Federal Police to the JIT dated July 2015. This concludes that images published internationally of a Russian BUK missile carrier alleged to have been the weapon used against MH17 had been "manipulated" and almost certainly had not been recorded at the time of the MH17 incident. The newly discovered evidence is inconclusive on what or who caused the downing of MH17. But the leaked documents show that the Dutch court trial, scheduled to start in The Hague on March 9 is a sham, its evidence inadmissible in a criminal proceeding in the UK or the US.

The new evidence has been presented by Bonanza Media, a partnership of Max van der Werff and Yana Yerlashova, and released with analysis by van der Werff. Read this in full here.

Comment: For more on the recent leaks, see:


War Whore

Russia isn't just mapping Ireland's internet cables - it's planning to INVADE, foams Cold-War-revivalist DC think tank

undersea internet cables in Ireland
© TeleGeographyA 'top secret' interactive map showing all undersea internet cables landing in Ireland
Russia is poised to invade Ireland and seize control of global communications, according to a crew of Cold War relics and professional Russophobes who've taken an already absurd James Bond-esque story and doubled down on it.

Ireland's status as "a vital telecommunications and logistics hub linking North America and Europe" has made it an irresistible prize to "the Putin regime," according to a bizarre paper published on Wednesday by the Center for Security Policy, a right-wing think tank. Russia isn't just lusting after Ireland's burgeoning crop of tech firms, or its forest of undersea communications cables, the group argues - it's actively plotting to invade the Emerald Isle.

Light Sabers

Another 'highly likely'-style accusation: Moscow brushes aside 'evidence-free' Georgia cyberattack

Shaakashvili
The image of Mikhail Shaakashvili used to deface Georgian websites in October 2019.
The US and its allies have claimed Russia's military intelligence defaced Georgian websites with an image of the country's former president. Moscow says the accusation is not backed by any evidence and is clearly just a PR stunt.

In late October last year, Georgia suffered what was described as the largest cyberattack in its history. Over 15,000 web pages - including those of government agencies, newspapers and banks - were defaced and later became inaccessible. The original content was replaced with a photo of former Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili, currently a fugitive from justice, with the words "I'll be back" above his head.

Many in Georgia immediately blamed the attack on Russia, and lo and behold, more than three months later the accusation is official. The Georgian foreign ministry claimed the GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency, was behind it, citing its own investigation and information from "foreign partners." The partners soon piled on Russia, with the charges repeated by the US, the UK, Canada and some others.

Stormtrooper

Hafter's conditions for Libyan peace: Complete withdrawal of mercenaries and Turkish troops

LNA haftar libya
© AFP / LNA War Information DivisionLibyan National Army (LNA) fighters advancing towards Tripoli, Libya. May 2019.
Ankara and Libya's Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) have used the truce to deploy fresh troops and mercenaries from Syria, Libyan National Army Commander Khalifa Haftar said in an interview.

Haftar told Russia's RIA Novosti news agency that his forces will halt their advance towards Tripoli if Turkish troops and mercenaries leave Libya. The Libyan National Army has been closing in on the city, which is controlled by UN-backed GNA chief Fayez al-Sarraj.

Ankara and allied GNA have been deploying reinforcements to Tripoli during the ceasefire brokered by Russia and Turkey, Haftar said.

Comment: Haftar has the backing of the majority of Libyan citizens, who just want to be left alone to rebuild their country after being ravaged by NATO's illegal bombing campaign almost a decade ago. His demand is neither unreasonable nor impossible, but it would require Erdogan to give up his dream of a restored Ottoman Empire. Erdogan is being forced out of Syria, so has cast his eyes further west for a cheap, secure oil supply.


Alarm Clock

Germany says security threat from far-right extremism, anti-Semitism 'very high' after Hanau attack

Seehofer
© Michael Sohn / POOL / AFPGerman Interior Minister Horst Seehofer in Berlin on February 14, 2020.
German interior minister Horst Seehofer said Friday that police presence would be increased across the country to counter the "very high" security threat from the far-right, after a gunman killed nine people in a racist attack late Wednesday.

"The security threat from right-wing extremism, anti-Semitism and racism is very high," Seehofer said at a press conference in Berlin.

He also announced an "increased police presence" and "increased surveillance" at mosques, train stations, airports and borders.

Right-wing extremism, Seehofer said, was the "biggest security threat facing Germany," and one which had left "a trail of blood" behind it in recent months.

Germany has already taken several measures to combat right-wing extremism after a string of violent incidents over the last year.

Last June, pro-migrant politician Walter Luebcke was murdered, while October brought an attack on a synagogue in the eastern city of Halle.

Suspects in both cases have ties to the far-right scene.

Seehofer said he was not calling for more police officers or further laws, but rather "a greater use of the options already available to us."

Comment: See also:


War Whore

Iraq regime needs to be changed again, argues ex-aide for Cheney and Bolton... referring to something he helped to install

An anti-government protest in Baghdad
© REUTERS / Thaier al-SudaniAn anti-government protest in Baghdad
Baghdad's ruling class is beyond saving, so it's time to scrap it in its entirety, believes a neocon pundit who served in the Bush administration. What was the saying about doing the same thing and hoping for different results?

Things are really bad in Iraq these days. There are mass protests, where young people demand democracy, an end to corruption and that Iranians go back to their country. But Iranians have been "imperially usurping the authority of Iraq's elected leaders," and now "the rot of Iranian penetration" has rendered the entire Iraqi ruling class beyond saving. They need to go, and the US has things to do.

That's the premise of an op-ed published by Foreign Policy magazine under the title 'Iraq Needs Regime Change Again'. The author is John Hannah, a neoconservative pundit with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. During the George W Bush era, Hannah worked as an aide to mustached arch-hawk John Bolton before moving to the team of Vice President Dick Cheney. A few years ago, he was part of Donald Trump's transition team.