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Pirates

Best of the Web: ACTUAL foreign meddling: Secret comms between FBI and MI5 chiefs cast light on British role at outset of 'Russiagate'

prince charles jeremy fleming
'I do say, Jeremy, what say we do away with that ghastly man in the White House?'
Two of the most senior intelligence officials in the US and UK privately shared concerns about "our strange situation" as the FBI launched its 2016 investigation into whether Donald Trump's campaign was colluding with Russia, the Guardian has learned.

Text messages between Andrew McCabe, the deputy director of the FBI at the time, and Jeremy Fleming, his then counterpart at MI5, now the head of GCHQ, also reveal their mutual surprise at the result of the EU referendum, which some US officials regarded as a "wake-up call", according to a person familiar with the matter.


Comment: McCabe's history now, but notice that Fleming was subsequently PROMOTED up the spook chain...


While Russia had previously been viewed as a country that would seek to interfere in western elections, the Brexit vote was viewed by some within the FBI as a sign that Russian activities had possibly been successful, the person said.


Comment: Which shows just how out of touch these people really are. More to the point, it shows that they were going with 'Russia did it' by the time the Brexit referendum in late June 2016 result stunned them into realizing the Old Order was under threat...


Their exchanges offer new insights into the start of the FBI's Russia investigation, and how British intelligence appears to have played a key role in the early stages.

Comment: Masterful use of English by The Guardian!

Yes, this top spook organized security for the London Olympics... and torture sites, abductions, black propaganda, psy-ops, mass manipulation, 'special executive ops' (assassinations), coups, regime change, etc, etc.

Oh, and, it turns out, attempting a coup against the president of the USA.


Cult

Best of the Web: Jeffrey Epstein dreamed of seeding 'master-race' with his DNA, planned 'baby factory' at his New Mexico ranch

Jeffrey Epstein
© Patrick McMullan/Getty ImagesFederal prosecutors announced charges of sex trafficking against wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein on Monday. Epstein is seen here in 2005.
The Jeffrey Epstein story somehow got even more disturbing today. A New York Times report says that the sex offender and billionaire was using his connections to elite scientists and academics in an attempt to help foster his dream of "seed[ing] the human race with his DNA by impregnating women at his vast New Mexico ranch."


Comment: Epstein's ego was psychopath-sized, apparently. More on his plans for a new human race from Fox:
Among the scientists Epstein consulted were Nobel prize-winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann, who discovered the quark, Nobel laureate and M.I.T.'s theoretical physicist Frank Wilczek, paleontologist and evolutionary neurologist Oliver Sacks, the well-known physicist Stephen Hawking, and molecular engineer George M. Church, who has identified genes that could be modified to create superior humans.

He had allegedly revealed his 'superior race' plans to a a wide array of people beginning in the early 2000s.



Despite his 2008 sex-trafficking conviction, Epstein regularly held dinners, lunches, and conferences attended by many of the world's most prominent scientists, including Steven Hawking. Three people told the Times about one particular pursuit Epstein discussed at these events: "On multiple occasions starting in the early 2000s," the Times reports, "Mr. Epstein told scientists and businessmen about his ambitions to use his New Mexico ranch as a base where women would be inseminated with his sperm and would give birth to his babies. Mr. Epstein's goal was to have 20 women at a time impregnated at his 33,000-square-foot Zorro Ranch in a tiny town outside Santa Fe."

Comment: The utter freak probably only felt safe discussing this idea with his peers because some of them had similar ideas...

Bill Gates had a closer relationship with Jeffrey Epstein than he admitted, The New York Times reports


Brick Wall

Best of the Web: Is it time for America to break apart?

LGBT protest trump
Fine then. Who is? And what is your country?
There is a question that increasingly arises, uncomfortably, in our conversations...from brief exchanges at work at the water cooler, at home with family, after church on Sunday, with our email messages to friends and associates. To watch any amount of television news these days, to switch back and forth between, say, CNN and Fox, and to listen to their interpretations of any event or issue, no matter what, that same question clambers in the background like an unchained wild beast:

What has happened — what is happening — to the geographical entity we call the United States, to its people, to its culture? Does it not seem like the country is coming apart at the seams, in just about everything, from its once-established moral base in a more or less historic Christian framework to its very vision of reality, of what is real and what is not?

Millions of "woke" social justice progressives now control the Democratic Party and most of our media; they dominate our entertainment and sports industries; they push for open borders and what amounts to "population replacement" of natives by illegal aliens; and they have a stranglehold on the near entirety of our educational system, from the primary grades to our colleges.

Dollars

Best of the Web: US gives the world a free choice: Dollar debt or death - Keynote speech by Michael Hudson

Lincoln/skull money
© nuzzel.com/Global Look Press/KJN
Today's world is at war on many fronts. The rules of international law and order put in place toward the end of World War II are being broken by U.S. foreign policy escalating its confrontation with countries that refrain from giving its companies control of their economic surpluses. Countries that do not give the United States control of their oil and financial sectors or privatize their key sectors are being isolated by the United States imposing trade sanctions and unilateral tariffs giving special advantages to U.S. producers in violation of free trade agreements with European, Asian and other countries.

This global fracture has an increasingly military cast. U.S. officials justify tariffs and import quotas illegal under WTO rules on "national security" grounds, claiming that the United States can do whatever it wants as the world's "exceptional" nation. U.S. officials explain that this means that their nation is not obliged to adhere to international agreements or even to its own treaties and promises. This allegedly sovereign right to ignore on its international agreements was made explicit after Bill Clinton and his Secretary of State Madeline Albright broke the promise by President George Bush and Secretary of State James Baker that NATO would not expand eastward after 1991. ("You didn't get it in writing," was the U.S. response to the verbal agreements that were made.)

Likewise, the Trump administration repudiated the multilateral Iranian nuclear agreement signed by the Obama administration, and is escalating warfare with its proxy armies in the Near East. U.S. politicians are waging a New Cold War against Russia, China, Iran, and oil-exporting countries that the United States is seeking to isolate if cannot control their governments, central bank and foreign diplomacy.

Smiley

Best of the Web: No, YOU'RE the 'Russian asset': Meme war turns tables on Washington Post

the washington post
With the Washington Post stuck in a mud-slinging meme war with Senate Republicans and President Donald Trump, the capital's paper of record has found itself on the receiving end of internet trolls' meme-cannons.

Confused? The sordid saga began Friday, when the Post published an op-ed titled "Mitch McConnell is a Russian asset," in which columnist Dana Milbank accused the Senate Majority Leader of selling out to the Kremlin by refusing to bring a trio of anti-election-meddling bills to the Senate floor. That the bills came bundled with untenable (to the GOP at least) Democratic demands was immaterial; McConnell was quickly dubbed "Moscow Mitch" on Twitter.

Asked by reporters on Tuesday to respond, President Trump said, "The Washington Post called Mitch McConnell what? I think the Washington Post is a Russian asset by comparison."


Though Trump has called the Post "garbage,""fiction," and "more like a poorly written novel than good reporting," "Russian asset" is a new one for the president.

The Post wasted no time fact-checking Trump's quip, proudly tweeting out: "Trump makes unfounded claim The Washington Post is a 'Russian Asset."

The irony wasn't lost on McConnell, however. "OMG I'm so sorry this is happening to you" tweeted his campaign team, with the patronizing just dripping from the emojis.

Comment: Sweet memetic justice. The sad thing is that the idiots at WaPo probably don't even see how they are being treated exactly the same as they have treated all the people they have labeled Russian agents. They're that delusional.


Question

Best of the Web: If Greta Thunberg is worried about the end of the world, why does she pose with status quo politicians?

Greta Thunberg France
Greta Thunberg speaks in the French parliament on Tuesday.
After nearly a year of her endless tour through parliaments and conferences, the climate activist must by now realize that she is little more than a feelgood photo op and an advert for train travel. Is Greta Thunberg OK with this?

In France on Tuesday, the 16-year-old delivered her stenciled masterclass of rhetoric presented as stark plain-spokenness.

"You say that nothing in life is black or white. But that is a lie. A very dangerous lie," she told the packed hall of deputies from a lectern adorned with the tricolor and parliamentary insignia. "Either we choose to go on as a civilization or we don't. That is as black or white as it gets."

Comment: Perhaps one ought to have compassion for the somewhat autistic Greta, who like Syrian Twitter-girl Bana before her, is a puppet of larger forces. But on no account should she be paid any mind. Her campaign of eco-fear is propaganda through and through. Al Gore has passed the torch.


Eagle

Best of the Web: 'United States' to Imperial America: Our Hidden Empire

empire immerwahr
The global expanse of US military bases is well-known; but it's actual territorial empire is largely hidden. The true map of America is not taught in our schools. Abby Martin interviews history Professor Daniel Immerwahr about his new book, 'How To Hide An Empire,' where he documents the story of our "Greater United States."


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Bullseye

Best of the Web: Not wrong: Trump triples down on criticism of Baltimore democrats - "Disgusting, rat infested mess!"

West Baltimore
© Reuters / Jim BourgWest Baltimore neighborhood.
President Trump has unleashed a Twitterstorm on Rep. Elijah Cummings, advising the congressman to clean up the "worst" congressional district in the US instead of criticizing the treatment of migrants at the border.

"Rep, Elijah Cummings has been a brutal bully, shouting and screaming at the great men & women of Border Patrol about conditions at the Southern Border, when actually his Baltimore district is FAR WORSE and more dangerous." President Donald Trump said in his first tweet on Saturday. "His district is considered the Worst in the USA."



Unlike the "clean, efficient and well run" US southern border with Mexico, Maryland's 7th congressional district is just "filthy," the president said.
Cumming District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.
Advising the African-American politician to spend more time in Baltimore, Trump spent most of Saturday tweeting footage of the problems faced by Cummings' constituents.

Comment: More Trump:





Baltimore IS a sh*thole.




Bad Guys

Best of the Web: Pepe Escobar: US and Iran stuck on negotiation Ground Zero

Hormuz
© FlickrChokepoint: The Strait of Hormuz.
Donald Trump says he's 'okay either way', whether there's war with Iran and Tehran seems to be okay with that too, warns Pepe Escobar.

All bets are off in the geopolitical insanity stakes when we have the President of the United States (POTUS) glibly announcing he could launch a nuclear first strike to end the war in Afghanistan and wipe it "off the face of the earth" in one week. But he'd rather not, so he doesn't have to kill 10 million people.

Apart from the fact that not even a nuclear strike would subdue the legendary fighting spirit of Afghan Pashtuns, the same warped logic - ordering a nuclear first strike as one orders a cheeseburger - could apply to Iran instead of Afghanistan.

Trump once again flip-flopped by declaring that the prospect of a potential war in the Persian Gulf "could go either way, and I'm OK either way it goes," much to the delight of Beltway-related psychopaths who peddle the notion that Iran is begging to be bombed.

Comment: See also:


NPC

Best of the Web: The Russians hacked our pizza! DHS warns of efforts to divide Americans over pineapple on pizza

dhs pizza
Department of Homeland Security issues a warning using pineapple pizza.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is warning that Russian agents could seek to further divide Americans by exploiting U.S. passions over whether pineapple belongs on pizza.

It's a cheesy, playful warning -- but it's trying to deliver a serious message. Posted online Wednesday by the department's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the tongue-in-cheek warning aims to help Americans identify and protect against propaganda campaigns from Russia and other foreign adversaries.

After all, the DHS warning says, Russian agents are capable of simultaneously insisting online that "Being anti-pineapple is un-American!" while also pushing out posts saying "Millennials are ruining pizza!"

"Foreign influencers are constantly on the lookout for opportunities to inflame hot button issues in the United States," the new DHS warning says. "They don't do this to win arguments; they want to see us divided."