Puppet Masters
Speaking to reporters at the White House on Wednesday, Trump said he had received a "great" letter from Kim and expected to meet with him soon.
Trump defended his policy on North Korea and said that there would have been a "big fat war in Asia" if he had not sat down with Kim during their historic summit in Singapore last June.
The visit was separately confirmed to the Russian news agency RIA, and to CNN by foreign ministry officials in Moscow.
Earlier, Pompeo said the US needed to have a better understanding of what Whelan has purportedly done, as no details have been made public, and may press for his instant release.
The full MH17 case will be presented here, to be judged by the public, because no court of law which possesses the power to bring this (or even any) case on the MH17 murders, is willing to do so, and because the evidence in this 17 July 2014 case has become overwhelming, and is unrefuted. This evidence is accepted by both sides. But it still remains effectively hidden from the publics in the United States and its allied countries. (The present news-report, which is the first ever to present this entire case, is submitted to all news-media in English-speaking countries, so that any of them that wishes to provide its audience access to this uncontested and conclusive evidence in the MH17 case can do so, by publishing this article. Any of them that won't, don't want their audience to have access to the conclusive evidence in this case, because this article is being made available to all of them to publish, free of charge; so, there is no other reason not to publish it.)
That the Guardian story would be seen as an earth-shattering revelation - one that would bring massive amounts of traffic, attention, glory and revenue to the paper - was obvious. And that's precisely how it was treated, as it instantly ricocheted around the media ecosystem with predictable viral speed: "The ultimate Whoa If True. It's ... [the] ballgame if true," pronounced MSNBC's Chris Hayes who, unlike many media figures reacting to the story, sounded some skepticism: "The sourcing on this is a bit thin, or at least obscured."
But Hayes' cable news colleague Ari Melber opened his MSNBC show that night excitedly touting the Guardian's scoop while meticulously connecting all the new inflammatory dots it uncovered, asking one guest: "how does this bombshell impact the collusion part of the probe"?
"This is about the transfer of power," said Gleb Pavlovsky, a political analyst and former Kremlin aide. "Putin encourages this game, dropping ambiguous hints."
The comments from Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the State Duma and a top member of the ruling party, at a scripted Kremlin meeting with Putin late Tuesday were vague and didn't mention succession. But analysts said they showed the authorities already are preparing the ground for changes before the end of Putin's current term in 2024.
"There are questions in society, esteemed Vladimir Vladimirovich," Volodin said, addressing Putin in the respectful form, according to a Kremlin transcript. "This is the time when we could answer these questions, without in any way threatening the fundamental provisions" of the constitution, he added. "The law, even one like the Basic Law, isn't dogma."
Comment: The problem with a lack of term limits is that the precedent is set for a bad leader to game the system and stay in power longer than is helpful. The problem with term limits is that a good leader doesn't have time to implement good policies and see them come to fruition. It's a tough nut to crack, and it will be interesting to see how the Russians choose deal with it in the coming years.
Quoting an unnamed senior Israeli official, the Saudi daily said that Kochavi, then director of Military Intelligence, was in favor of removing Assad from power - even by assassination - over the regime's support of Hezbollah.
According to the report, Kochavi recommended removing the Assad regime because "it would bring calamities to Israel from Iran, Hezbollah, the militias and Russian influence in the region." But the head of the Mossad, Yossi Cohen, "wanted an address in Syria" - someone it could communicate with by back channels if need be.
The "prolonged conflict in Syria saw Israel often hold negotiations with the regime in Damascus in order to reach an agreement in Syria," the report quoted the official as saying, adding that the diplomatic-security cabinet "held extensive discussions on the situation about Syria and decided that Israel would not allow an Iranian military presence there."
The report stated that while Israel had several opportunities to target Assad and his top leaders during the eight-year long civil war, Jerusalem instead decided to focus on preventing Iranian entrenchment in the country by targeting Iranian and Hezbollah assets instead, "while making sure [Israel] inflicts minimal damage to the Damascus regime."

A picture taken on September 27, 2018 shows Israel's controversial wall separating the settlement of Pisgat Zeev (foreground) and the Palestinian neighborhood of Anata in East Jerusalem al-Quds.
On Sunday, the Wall and Settlement Resistance Committee lodged an appeal to the so-called Israeli Supreme Court, denouncing the Israeli regime's seizure of approximately 1,200 dunams (1.2 square kilometers) of Palestinian-owned land.
Hassan Bureija, head of the committee, told the Arabic-language Voice of Palestine radio station that Israeli officials have granted 1,182 dunams (1.18 square kilometers) of private Palestinian land to the Israeli Ministry of Construction and Housing in order to erect an outpost south of Bethlehem, situated about 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) south of Jerusalem al-Quds.
Moderators say they often rely on Google Translate to read posts, while facing pressure to make decisions on acceptable content within a matter of seconds, according to the report.
The guidelines - which are reportedly reviewed every other Tuesday morning by "several dozen Facebook employees who gather over breakfast," are filled with "numerous gaps, baises and outright errors," according to the Times.
Moderators were once told, for example, to remove fund-raising appeals for volcano victims in Indonesia because a co-sponsor of the drive was on Facebook's internal list of banned groups. In Myanmar, a paperwork error allowed a prominent extremist group, accused of fomenting genocide, to stay on the platform for months. In India, moderators were mistakenly told to flag for possible removal comments critical of religion. -NYT
Comment: It's not just that they have a convoluted policy, there seems to be a willful censoring of content they disagree with, whether it falls under the guidelines or not. But perhaps that is intended, since a convoluted policy provides them a neat little excuse in the form of 'plausible deniability'. See also:
- Facebook lays out its plan for censoring disagreeable content
- Israel and Facebook working together to decide what the masses can see and read
- Time to pay attention: Facebook is supporting the police state by purging pages calling for police accountability
- In defense of free speech: Censorship never ends well
"In my view, 2018 will be the year of national cohesion," the centrist Macron ambitiously wrote in his New Year's Eve message a year ago. That prediction hasn't aged well, and Twitter noticed.
"We saw that [cohesion] with the Benalla affair and Yellow Vests," one user noted, adding that "words are no longer enough to conceal poor management of the country and decisions that go against the interests of [French] people."
"What clairvoyance","#nostradamus", the sarcastic comments went on.
And, if 2018 was thought to be the year of unity, many people got worried about imminent 2019. "And after the cohesion of the nation, what would you call Year 2019?"
Others said that Macron was right, and there was "cohesion" in the country - against his government, that is.
Comment: As if more evidence was needed as to how out of touch Macron really is, he prances off to St Tropez to celebrate New Year protected in his elitist bubble. Although, he must have been feeling a bit more comfortable considering over Christmas he refused to divulge his whereabouts for fears the people of France might come looking for him: Yellow Vest protesters attempt to storm Macron's Mediterranean castle
See also:
- 'Macron resign!' Yellow Vest protests enter 5th week - 33,000 people throughout France brave aggressive security forces
- Yellow Vests Rise Against Neo-liberal King Macron
- Russian President Vladimir Putin Addresses People as New Year Arrives (VIDEO)
- 4 killed, 35 missing after gas explosion rips through residential building in Russia - UPDATE
A Freedom of Information request found that the parliamentary authorities have had to write off more than £17,000 worth of unpaid catering bills since 2010.
The debt was wracked up by four unnamed MPs, 21 tradespeople and one internal member of staff on food and drink.
The research also found that a peer had a £243 restaurant bill written off while an MP left a £30 catering bill outstanding.
All restaurant facilities are subsidised for MPs, who earn £77,379 a year and members of the House of Lords, who earn a £305 per day attendance allowance, plus travel expenses.
Comment: The same MPs who 'awarded' themselves £11,000 worth in payrises in just 3 years, and who are currently overseeing devastating 'austerity' measures and a devastating surge in poverty in Britain. If this were any old commoner, bailiffs would be at their door demanding payment:
- New report shows that Britain has violated every single article in the Declaration of Human Rights
- UK in crisis: Children in poverty surges by 100,000 in a year - totalling a staggering 4.1 million
- UK's poverty wages, extortionate rents and austerity: Homeless families who work soars 73% in 5 years
- Life expectancy for poorest girls in England falls for first time since 1920s
- UK retailers requesting rent reductions, shutting stores and laying off staff as economy tanks














Comment: Expect the war party to go yet crazier should Trump make a comprehensive and 'great deal' with North Korea. Imagine Trump pulling troops out of South Korea like he's planning to with Syria!