Puppet Masters
The verdict was reached by the five Marines and two sailors Tuesday after the prosecution and defense made their closing arguments the day before. The jury did find Gallagher guilty of unlawfully taking a picture with the corpse of the teenage ISIS fighter he was accused of killing.
"Our stance from the very beginning of this has been that Eddie needs to have a fair trial and we're going to stand behind him no matter what because he's our brother. And the courts have prevailed," Brad Bailey, president of the Navy SEALs Fund, told the Washington Examiner. "We understand that it's a very contentious accusation and one that deeply divided our community. And I hope that everyone can learn a lot from this on both sides and we can get back to taking care of business."
"The notion that the Department of Defense's network and Pentagon-issued computers may be used to view, create, or circulate such horrifying images is a shameful disgrace, and one we must fight head on," Abigail Spanberger (D-Virginia) said in a statement on Tuesday as she and co-sponsor Mark Meadows (R-N. Carolina) introduced the End National Defense Network Abuse (END Network Abuse) Act in the House.
The Defense Criminal Investigative Services (DCIS) will receive training in how to root out and successfully prosecute those using Defense Department equipment to access and trade child porn under the new legislation. The bill also integrates DCIS into a "multi-jurisdictional task force" with "federal, state, and local law enforcement," social services, and child protection groups to help victims of child sexual exploitation - and to roll back the tide of filth engulfing Defense Department networks.
Comment: They've known about this since 2008 and only now they're attempting to do something about it?? Pedophile scandals plague the Western establishment and yet very rarely is anyone charged, more often than not we only find out the names of the criminals once they've died:
- Did PM Tony Blair cover up paedophile scandal? List of child sex offenders in British government
- The Netherlands: A Leading Distributor And Producer of Child Pornography
- UK 'Establishment': Unmasking psychopathic faces - Pedophilia and murder in VERY high places
- Pizzagate: Podesta pedo perps and Clinton's international child sex trafficking ring exposed
An airstike against a detention centre for illegal migrants in a suburb of the Libyan capital killed 40 and wounded 80, Reuters reported, citing a health official.
A representative of Tripoli's medical service confirmed Wednesday that the airstrike near the Libyan capital had really left at least 40 people dead.
Comment: And the legacy of Western meddling in Libya continues to bear fruit:
- Gaddafi's frozen assets: How UK is capitalising on the Libyan people's money
- Russia and Egypt discuss intensifying efforts to resolve Syria, Libya crises, "just solution to Palestine problem"
- The 'Humanitarian' Destruction of Libya: Gaddafi, NATO, and the War on Africa
The comments by President Hassan Rouhani come as tensions remain high between Iran and the U.S. over the deal, which President Donald Trump pulled America from over a year ago.
Authorities on Monday acknowledged Iran broke through a limit placed on its stockpile of low-enriched uranium.
An increasing stockpile and higher enrichment closes the estimated one-year window Iran would need to produce enough material for a nuclear bomb, something Iran denies it wants but the nuclear deal sought to prevent.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has rushed an aircraft carrier, B-52 bombers and F-22 fighters to the region and Iran recently shot down a U.S. military surveillance drone. On Wednesday, Iran marked the shootdown by the U.S. Navy of an Iranian passenger jet in 1988, a mistake that killed 290 people and shows the danger of miscalculation in the current crisis.
"The liberal idea has become obsolete. ... (Liberals) cannot simply dictate anything to anyone as they have been attempting to do over the recent decades."
Such was the confident claim of Vladimir Putin to the Financial Times on the eve of a G-20 gathering that appeared to validate his thesis.
Consider who commanded all the attention at the Osaka summit.
The main event was Trump's meeting with China's Xi Jinping and their agreement to renew trade talks. Xi runs an archipelago of detention camps where China's Uighur Muslims and its Kazakh minority have their minds coercively "corrected."
A major media focus at the summit was Trump's meeting with Putin where he playfully admonished the Russian president not to meddle again in our 2020 election. The two joked about how both are afflicted with a media that generates constant fake news.
As the newly elected politicians took their seats for the first time, they turned around as the European anthem 'Ode to Joy' rang out in the parliament building in Strasbourg.
The protest appeared to get under the skin of the parliament's president Antonio Tajani. "Rising to your feet is a matter of respect," Tajani said. "It does not mean that you necessarily share the views of the European Union. Even when you listen to the anthem of another country you rise to your feet."
In the field of electric automobiles, China is far, far ahead. In fact, anyone who visits a major or secondary Chinese city, would be shocked to see that the implementation of 'zero emission' vehicles there is not something that is in the planning stage, it has for several years been a dream come true, reality: dozens of Chinese cities already have an excellent network of metro trains, of ecological electric buses, and of enormous public sidewalks that encourage people to stroll and remain healthy. Even police cars in China are electric.
Russia is doing extremely well, in several fields. In fact, it is at the vanguard, when it comes to such grounds as science and culture. Those days of 'humiliation' of the Gorbachev and Yeltsin era are far back, when Moscow naively believed Thatcherites and Reaganites! Russia is rolling: now producing and exporting excellent, often organic food. Its icebreakers are opening new paths for both people and goods. Russian space rockets are second to none, and its passenger airplanes are back in the skies. Nuclear and other power plants are helping to supply energy to many countries, all over the world.
You name it; China and Russia are producing it, developing it, helping to create it! Both nations are cooperating, scientifically, working for people, not just for business.
Head of the Mossad, Israel's intelligence service Yossi Cohen told the Herzliya Conference on Tuesday that "just recently, renewal of formal relations with Oman was declared", referring to "the establishment of a representative office of the foreign ministry in that country".
He described the renewal in bilateral ties as "only the visible tip of a much broader secret effort", saying that apart from Israel's historic treaties with Jordan and Egypt, other Arab countries had covertly joined "the states of peace, some of them in an unseen manner".
"We do not yet have with them official peace treaties but there is already a communality of interests, broad cooperation and open channels of communication," Cohen pointed out.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry has not commented on the Mossad chief's remarks yet.
This comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Oman in late October 2018 to discuss "a number of issues of mutual interest to achieve peace and stability in the Middle East", according to a joint statement by Netanyahu and Oman's Sultan Qaboos bin Said.
Comment: These "diplomatic" overtures have far less to do with "peace," "security," "technology," and "economic matters" than they likely do with Israel getting Middle Eastern countries on-board with the plan to draw Lebanon and Iran into military conflict with the Zionist state in the near future. Israel's pathological leadership wants to know who'll come along for the ride, who won't, and how much they have to promise new allies in a share of the spoils; that's Israel's idea of "an accelerated process of normalisation".
See also:
- Israel attempts to bolster diplomatic cover for its planned bloodbath in Lebanon
- Former Mossad chief admits 'Israel does not want peace'
- Israel escalates tensions with Iran by waging information war
- Are Israel and the US prepping for war in the Middle East?
- Hezbollah leader Nasrallah warns Israel may attack Lebanon this summer
The Trump 2020 campaign needs panache, not more cash. If Trump wants to make a switch - as both his predecessors, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, flirted with doing - why would he lean further into the establishment?
Here's why it would make sense for the president to just go all the way — and name Carlson his running mate.
First, Tucker gets Trump. The duo have personal chemistry far exceeding the rapport that Pence or Haley enjoy. Haley bitterly opposed Trump during the 2016 primary and a former senior administration official has long informed me that her hiring during the transition was a 'keep your enemies closer' affair. In Carlson, Trump would get to anoint an heir apparent he actually likes.
Comment: Fox News interviews Tucker Carlson on Trump's historic visit to N. Korea (slight delay)

US Ambassador to David Friedman • White House Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt • US Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
The Palestine Liberation Organization on Sunday slammed the participation of senior US officials at a ceremony opening an ancient Jewish pilgrimage road excavated in the Silwan neighborhood of East Jerusalem as participation in a "war crime," and said the Trump administration was fanning the flames of the conflict.
US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman joined other Israeli and American bigwigs in symbolically breaking down a wall, which led to the "Pilgrimage Road," a now-subterranean stairway that was said to have served as a main artery for Jews to the Temple Mount thousands of years ago.
Archaeologists have been excavating at the City of David National Park in the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan for the past eight years. The area has several tiny Jewish enclaves.
Comment: More on 'Sledge-Hammer Diplomacy' from RT:
The dig had also started without the permission of the Silwan residents living overhead. It has been reported that some Palestinian families even had to leave their houses because of cracks and destruction caused by the excavations. Palestinians have fiercely criticized the symbolism behind a US ambassador swinging a sledgehammer as an endorsement of occupation and colonial practices.















Comment: When US war crimes go unpunished why would one expect the minions carrying them out to suffer justice?