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Fri, 05 Nov 2021
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MSM's attempts to spin Trump's attacks on senseless wars as disrespect for military are a dismal distortion of reality

trumpsalute
© Getty Images/David Dee Delgado
US President Donald Trump salutes the military
The New York Times and CNN are desperate to paint Donald Trump as an enemy of the military, due to his desire not to get involved in pointless wars. But this is simply not true, and Trump has the backing of many soldiers.

Someone should tell the New York Times, CNN and other mainstream media outlets that soldiers don't actually like getting killed or maimed for no good reason. Nor do they like generals and presidents who spill their blood in vain.

Alas, ignorance of these obvious truths probably isn't the issue. This is likely just another case of the biggest names in news pretending to not get the point so they can take the rest of us along for a ride in their confidence game of alternative reality.

The latest example is the New York Times spinning President Donald Trump's critique this week of Pentagon leadership and the military industrial complex as disrespect for the military at large. "Trump has lost the right and authority to be commander in chief," the Times quoted retired US Marines General Anthony Zinni as saying. Zinni cited Trump's alleged "despicable comments" about the nation's war dead - reported last week by The Atlantic, citing anonymous sources - as one of the reasons Trump "must go." Never mind that Trump and all on-the-record administration sources denied The Atlantic's report.

Cell Phone

New DOJ documents show wholesale destruction of evidence by Mueller team - 30 phones 'accidentally' wiped!

Mueller
© The White House/Wikimedia Commons
Robert Mueller
Newly released records from the Department of Justice reveal that multiple top members of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigative team claim to have "accidentally wiped" data off phones they used during the anti-Trump probe.

Many devices were wiped or otherwise disabled before DOJ authorities were able to access and examine them or the records they contained, including that of disgraced former FBI lawyer Lisa Page.

According to email correspondence between the Special Counsel's Office and the DOJ Office of the Inspector General, Page's phone had been reset to factory settings, "and therefore all data was wiped from the device" before the OIG received it.

Destruction of data and communication pervaded the team, with more than 20 instances of Mueller team members wiping their devices, some in seemingly creative ways. While some data was "accidentally wiped," other inaccessible data was blamed on personnel incorrectly entering passwords too many times, resulting in information being nuked. Other devices were left in airplane mode with either incorrect or no passwords provided, rendering the data inaccessible.

Comment: Who knew phone wiping was so contagious? The 'mask of justice' has just been ripped off this case and those phonies may require cellular distancing.
An 87-page document, released by the Justice Department on Thursday under the Freedom of Information Act, reveals that Mueller's investigators "accidentally" or deliberately wiping their devices when the DOJ inspector-general asked for them.

As many as 31 phones may have been affected, including the devices that had been "reassigned."

Weissman was Mueller's principal deputy. He is generally considered to have actually been in charge of the 'Russiagate' probe, especially after the former FBI director couldn't recall much of anything during his July 2019 testimony before Congress.

Another discovery in the document was that the phone belonging to FBI lawyer Lisa Page got "lost" by the Mueller team, and the name of the official who had custody of it: Christopher Greer. It was eventually retrieved, but the IG report found that it had been wiped two weeks after Page had left the special counsel team.
UPDATE: Trump tweets:



The Republican chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee is calling for an investigation:
Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) penned a letter to the Justice Department on Friday, asking DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz to launch a probe after documents surfaced this week showing that Mueller's team scrubbed information from up to 31 devices amid the Russiagate investigation.

"These reports are troubling and raise concerns about record retention and transparency," Johnson wrote.
Therefore, I respectfully request that your office open an investigation into this matter to determine what, why, and how information was wiped, whether any wrongdoing occurred, and who these devices belonged to
Asking the DOJ to respond within a week's time, Johnson also called on the department to answer a number of specific queries about the phones, including when Justice officials became aware that they had been wiped, and whether data could still be retrieved from the devices.



Heart - Black

'Orwellian in the extreme': Conservatives slam media for blaming GOP for Dems' decision to tank Covid-19 relief bill

McConnell
© Reuters/Joshua Roberts
Senator Mitch McConnell, (R-Kentucky)
Conservatives are slamming mainstream media outlets after their almost identical coverage of the Senate Democrats' decision to vote against a coronavirus relief bill appeared to blame Republicans for the "failure."

After months of negotiations, a coronavirus stimulus package, which included funding for schools and Covid-19 testing, unemployment benefits, and the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), was voted down by every Democrat in the Senate on Thursday. The only Republican to join them was Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky).

Needing 60 votes to pass, the bill earned a 52-47 outcome and it's now unlikely a coronavirus stimulus package will pass before November's presidential election.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) tweeted:
"Every Senate Democrat just voted against hundreds of billions of dollars of COVID-19 relief. They blocked money for schools, testing, vaccines, unemployment insurance, and the Paycheck Protection Program. Their goal is clear: No help for American families before the election."

Comment: Dysfunctional and self-destructive, Congressional infighting does not further either party's commitments to the public, nor do themselves any favor. Congress' role is a 'functionary for the people', the prime mandate most regularly kicked to the curb.


Beaker

Russian envoy to UNSC: 'OPCW should not be a 'geopolitical tool,' as Germany to involve it in Navalny case

Navalny/OPCW
© Vasily Maximov/AFP/Getty Images/OPCW/KJN
Alexey Navalny • Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
Russian ambassador to the UN Vasily Nebenzya slammed Germany for withholding information about the health of opposition activist Alexey Navalny and condemned Western attempts to politicize the chemical weapons watchdog.

"Russia is deeply concerned by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons becoming an instrument in the geopolitical struggle," Nebenzya said Thursday at the United Nations Security Council session on the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

He outlined how the OPCW had been used by Western governments to blame Damascus for alleged chemical attacks in Syria while outright ignoring evidence of actual chemical weapons use by terrorist groups.

After ambassadors of the US, UK, Belgium, Germany and Estonia called on Russia to conduct a "full and transparent" investigation into Navalny's alleged poisoning, Nebenzya said that it had "nothing to do with the topic of today's discussion."

Comment: The OPCW has proven itself to be a puppet expert to a particular group of overlords.


Green Light

'A historic opportunity': Afghan peace talks to begin 19 years after US invasion

Taliban delegation
© Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs/AP
A start date for talks between the Taliban and an Afghan delegation that includes members of the government will begin Saturday, in a diplomatic breakthrough that could bring the country a step closer to peace after four decades of war.

Taliban spokesman Dr. Muhammad Naeem said in a statement that the group "would like to declare its readiness to partake in the inauguration ceremony of Intra-Afghan negotiations" between Sept. 12 and Sept. 22. He added that the talks are to be held in Qatar where the Taliban maintain a political office.

Senior members of the current Afghan government will also attend the negotiations in Doha at the behest of President Ashraf Ghani, the government said in a statement.

Welcoming the talks, President Donald Trump told a news conference Thursday, that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo would attend the negotiations. Pompeo said in statement that they marked
"a historic opportunity for Afghanistan to bring an end to four decades of war and bloodshed. This opportunity must not be squandered. Immense sacrifice and investment by the United States, our partners, and the people of Afghanistan have made this moment of hope possible. I urge the negotiators to demonstrate the pragmatism, restraint, and flexibility this process will require to succeed."

Eye 2

Covering all the bases: US prosecutors disrupt Spanish probe into alleged CIA-linked firm which spied on Assange

assange protest Old Bailey
© REUTERS/Henry Nicholls
A supporter protests outside the Old Bailey in London ahead of a hearing to decide whether Julian Assange should be extradited to the United States.
US prosecutors are reportedly refusing to cooperate with a Spanish investigation into the company accused of spying on Julian Assange while he sought asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy, unless the judge accedes to a list of demands.

Judge Jose de la Mata of Spain's High Court is conducting an ongoing investigation into UC Global. The firm was previously in charge of security at the Ecuadorian embassy in London and now stands accused of spying on WikiLeaks founder Assange and passing sensitive information to US intelligence.

Testimony from witnesses, including former staff at UC Global, alleges that the company's former owner, David Morales, furnished the CIA with recordings and reports of Assange's daily activities and conversations while residing in the embassy.

Comment:


No Entry

Trump refuses deadline extension for TikTok to arrange US sale

tiktok Trump
© Getty Images
President Donald Trump said he won't extend his Sept. 15 deadline for ByteDance Ltd. to sell the U.S. operations of its popular TikTok video-sharing app.

"We'll either close up TikTok in this country for security reasons, or it will be sold," Trump told reporters Thursday before boarding the presidential aircraft for a campaign trip to Michigan. "There will be no extension of the TikTok deadline."

Administration officials had been considering whether to give more time to TikTok's Chinese owner to arrange a sale of the app's U.S. operations to an American buyer, though a decision hadn't yet been presented to Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.

Comment:


Wolf

Weasel Vindman, not whistleblower, was the driving force behind impeachment farce

vindman
© AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
“That’s Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, please.”
The most interesting thing about Byron York's exhaustively reported and richly detailed new impeachment book, Obsession: Inside the Washington Establishment's Never-Ending War on Trump, is that the whistleblower who filed the official complaint that got impeachment rolling isn't ever identified.

It turns out that the heated discussion over the whistleblower, who was previously identified by Real Clear Investigations as the CIA's Eric Ciaramella, was a diversion from allowing the American people to understand who was the actual instigator of the failed effort to oust President Donald Trump from office.

Rather than being a witness who independently supported the claims of the whistleblower, the National Security Council's Lt. Col Alex Vindman was the driving force behind the entire operation, according to the book's interviews with key figures in the impeachment probe and other evidence. The whistleblower's information came directly from Vindman, investigators determined.

Comment: More from Fox News:
York reveals Vindman, who retired from the Army in July after being fired from the National Security Council in February, was the driving force for Democrats' impeachment in his new book, "Obsession: Inside the Washington Establishment's Never-Ending War on Trump."

"It didn't take a real rocket scientist that the source of this, the original source of this, was Lt. Col. Vindman," York told "The Ingraham Angle" Wednesday night, laying out the facts of the case.


"If you remember early on in the Ukraine matter, the Democrats said they wanted the whistleblower to testify, and then they changed their mind and they didn't want the whistleblower to testify and they began to shut off any Republican attempts to find out who the whistleblower was," he said.

The Washington Examiner chief political correspondent asked, "So the question is if the whistleblower wasn't in the White House, how did he learn what was going on?"

He points out Vindman was one of several people who listened to Trump's call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, "but [Vindman] was the only one who was disturbed by what took place. He was the only one who thought there was a problem there."

[...]

Trump reacted to an excerpt on Vindman in York's book Thursday.

"No, Vindman knew the call itself to the Ukrainian President was 'perfect', but also knew the whistleblower report described the call incorrectly, way off. Why didn't Vindman say so? That's why Shifty didn't want the whistleblower to testify. A big scam!" Trump tweeted.

York also claimed former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team, formed in May of 2017, knew early on there wasn't evidence for Trump-Russia collusion but continued to investigate.

"[Mueller] looked into everything, but what was happening was Trump lawyers could see that Mueller wasn't getting anywhere and by the fall and certainly by the end of the year, they knew that collusion was a dry hole for Mueller," York said. "He had not come up with what he was supposed to find."



Eagle

Trump claims Iran will sign new agreement 'very rapidly' after his reelection

iran deal
© AP Photo / Brendan Smialowski
A fresh agreement between the US and Iran will be signed "very rapidly" by Tehran if US President Donald Trump wins his reelection campaign in early November, 45 told reporters on Thursday.

"If we win the election, Iran will come and sign an agreement with us very rapidly. I would say within a week, but let's give ourselves a month," he claimed during a September 10 news conference at the White House.

Trump notably withdrew the US from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement, or Iran nuclear deal, on May 8, 2018, citing Tehran's continued "pursuit of nuclear weapons and the means of delivering them."

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently made the same argument to the United Nations Security Council after the US set forth a resolution to extend the international arms embargo against Tehran - set to expire October 18.

"We will never allow the Islamic Republic of Iran to have a nuclear weapon," the Washington official vowed.


Comment: Fair enough - they currently don't and most likely never will. How about we now deal with the actual rogue nuclear state: Israel?


However, US allies France, Germany and the United Kingdom openly declared that Washington's push to invoke the "snapback" mechanism was actually in violation of the JCPOA, which is still being upheld by its remaining signatories.

Comment: In other U.S.-Iran news, Iran says the U.S. withdrew its drones from an area closed off for military drills after given a warning by Iranian military.
According to the officer, Iranian forces detected a concentration of US drones trying to gather information in the exercise areas. "These activities were detected by the army's signal detection systems, and the drones were warned by the air defences," he said.

"Since then, we have been witnessing a noticeable change in the activities of American drones," Irani added. "They were forced to leave the area after seeing the level of readiness of the surveillance, identification and defence systems of the Iranian military," the senior naval officer said.





Mr. Potato

Belarusian Guaido! Lithuania recognizes exiled Tikhanovskaya as 'elected leader' of Belarus

Tikhanovskaya belarus
© Global Look Press / Valdas Kopustas
Protesters in Vilnius in front of Belarus Embassy express their support to Svetlana Tikhanovskaya
Lithuanian MPs have unanimously voted for a resolution to recognize former Belarusian presidential candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who fled to Lithuania after the disputed election, as the elected leader of her country.

In the resolution, titled "On the Illegitimate Union Imposed by Russia on Belarus" and adopted on Thursday, the Lithuanian parliament threw its weight behind the presidential election's official runner-up, deeming her and the Belarusian opposition's Coordination Council "the only legitimate representatives of the Belarusian people."

The resolution refers to Tikhanovskaya as the "elected leader" of the country, while Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is called "an illegitimate leader."


Comment: Slight logic problem: if the election results were rigged, how do they know the actual results? Lukashenko officially got 80% of the vote. Do they know for a fact he didn't get 60% of the vote? They don't, because they can't.


The document takes aim at relations between Minsk and Moscow in particular, preemptively labeling all future integration agreements between the two neighbors as "null and void" and a "de facto annexation" so long as Lukashenko signs them.

The MPs also proposed slapping sanctions on Russian officials and Lukashenko if they attempt to ink such agreements, which the deputies argued "are made to limit the sovereignty of the country by illegal means against the will of the Belarusian people."