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Fmr FBI SSA Robyn Gritz's letter to Judge Sullivan supporting Michael Flynn

Sara Carter
saraacarter.com
Fri, 14 Dec 2018 22:35 UTC
Flynn

Michael Flynn
Former FBI Supervisory Special Agent Robyn Gritz has asked SaraACarter.com to post her letter to Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in support of her friend and colleague retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, who will be sentenced on Dec. 18. The Special Counsel's Office has requested that Flynn not serve any jail time due to his cooperation with Robert Mueller's office. Based on new information contained in a memorandum submitted to the court this week by Flynn's attorney, Sullivan has ordered Mueller's office to turn over all exculpatory evidence and government documents on Flynn's case by mid-day Friday. Sullivan is also requesting any documentation regarding the first interviews conducted by former anti-Trump agent Peter Strzok and FBI Agent Joe Pientka -known by the FBI as 302s- which were found to be dated more than seven months after the interviews were conducted on Jan. 24, 2017, a violation of FBI policy, say current and former FBI officials familiar with the process. According to information contained in Flynn's memorandum, the interviews were dated Aug. 22, 2017.

Letter from Supervisory Special Agent Robyn Griz

The Honorable Emmet G. Sullivan. December 5, 2018 U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia
333 Constitution Avenue, N.W.
Washington D.C. 20001

Re: Sentencing of Lt. General Michael T. Flynn (Ret.)

Dear Judge Sullivan:

I am submitting my letter directly since Mike Flynn's attorney has refused to submit it as well as letters submitted by other individuals. I feel you need to hear from someone who was an FBI Special Agent who not only worked with Mike, but also has personally witnessed and reported unethical & sometimes illegal tactics used to coerce targets of investigations externally and internally.

About Myself and FBI Career

For 16 years, I proudly served the American people as a Special Agent working diligently on significant terrorism cases which earned noteworthy results and fostered substantial interagency cooperation. Prior to serving in the FBI I was a Juvenile Probation Officer in Camden, NJ. Currently, I am a Senior Information Security Metrics and Reporting Analyst with Discover Financial Services in the Chicago Metro area. I have recently been named as a Senior Fellow to the London Center for Policy Research.

Comment:

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Bad Guys

'Blatant & brazen': Russian lawmaker lambastes US "interference" in Nord Stream 2 deal


RT
Sun, 16 Dec 2018 12:54 UTC
nord stream 2
© RIA NOVOSTI/Tomas Eugster
Washington has absolutely no say in the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline deal, and pressuring Germany into dumping the project equates to meddling in other nations' domestic affairs, Senator Konstantin Kosachev said.

The calls for Berlin to halt the pipeline's construction are "blatant and brazen interference into the affairs of its sovereign partners," something Washington "has no right to do," the lawmaker wrote on social media on Sunday.

The Nord Stream 2 project is designed to deliver Russian natural gas to Germany across the Baltic Sea. The US Department of State earlier urged Berlin "to heed the concerns of the many neighbors whose security will be damaged by this pipeline."


Comment: American profits will be damaged, pretty much everyone else will benefit.


Comment: If last winter is anything to go by, the US will have a hard time convincing shivering Europeans that Russian gas is 'evil': Russia to the rescue! Britain receives another gas delivery after record cold causes shortage and 400% price increase

See also:

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Black Magic

"The editorial board wants blood": Leaked messages show BBC wants to 'prove' Russia linked to Yellow Vest protests


RT
Sun, 16 Dec 2018 17:23 UTC
BBC camera
© Global Look Press / Matt Cetti-Roberts
FILE PHOTO.
The BBC is desperate in its quest to 'find' the dreaded Kremlin hand behind the French protests, messages obtained by Russian media indicate. They reveal attempts by one of its journalists to find any trace of Russian involvement.

A series of screenshots, purporting to show a conversation between BBC Russia journalist Olga Ivshina and a stringer working in France, was published by RIA Novosti on Sunday.

In it, the journalist first asks about Moscow's general involvement in the protests, but the stringer replied that no Russians were actually seen during the demonstrations. Ivshina, however, did not give up, since uncovering even the slightest Russian involvement would apparently do the trick. The journalist was bursting with ideas, one of the screenshots suggests.

Comment: One wonders how the majority in France, who support the Yellow Vests protests over plummeting living standards and the corruption of Macron's government, feel about being used by the British taxpayer funded BBC for their sinister propaganda purposes? The BBC will also struggle to explain why similar movements are popping up all over Europe, and even further afield: 'Macron resign!' Yellow Vest protests enter 5th week - 33,000 people throughout France brave aggressive security forces

Although this behavior from the BBC is standard:

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Attention

An examination of Bellingcat's Kerch gaff and how Kurt Volker bought into Ukraine's lie

George Eliason
MintPress News
Fri, 14 Dec 2018 00:00 UTC
PoroshenkoVolker
© Mikhail Palinchak/PPS/AP
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Kurt Volker in Kiev, Ukraine, Jan. 23, 2018.
For 5 years Ukraine has bamboozled supporters by using "independent" researchers like Bellingcat that work with Ukraine's Intel to fabricate its innocence.

On November 25th, the Kerch incident happened, worsening the West's relationship with Russia ahead of the G-20 Meeting in Argentina.

Seemingly right on cue, Russian planners couldn't find anything better to do than cause another major international incident right in front of the entire world. They did this even as Russian President Vladimir Putin was set to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump. The formal meeting that never happened was canceled because of Ukraine's hyper histrionics.

Special Representative for Ukraine negotiations, Kurt Volker, wasted no time getting on Ukraine's already crashing wagon by citing Bellingcat's conclusion that the Ukrainian ships "may have been" fired on in international waters. Bellingcat suspects the Russian ships may have been 500 yards outside of their territory. This flaccid statement by Bellingcat is all Volker and Ukraine found to stand behind. Volker is undeterred even though the Bellingcat report's only value is to spin another nut into Ukraine's InfoWar machine.

Bellingcat is a western based arm of Ukrainian Intel and InfoWar. Bellingcat OSINT school attendance can be cross-referenced against people from Ukraine and the various Diasporas supporting a nationalist Ukraine or Syria. When Ukrainian supporters at the seminars are multiplied by a per seat value, we can know exactly who built Bellingcat's reputation and how Bellingcat receives financing.

When Bellingcat's OSINT results are looked at against Ukrainian Intel, Bellingcat is anti-American, anti-Democracy, against Christianity, against free-speech, support Ukraine's Bandera nationalists and ISIS.

Comment: The drivers behind Ukraine's Neo-Nazi agenda appear to be the same cadre that serve and supply Trump's official sources of information on Russia and Ukraine. To put it concisely, the US is being played...right into WWIII.
See also:

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Oil Well

Oil industry's covert campaign to rewrite US car emissions rules

Hiroko Tabuchi
The New York Times
Thu, 13 Dec 2018 00:00 UTC
Marathon refinery
© Kirk Allen/Center for Public Integrity
Marathon Oil tar sands refinery in southwest Detroit.
When the Trump administration laid out a plan this year that would eventually allow cars to emit more pollution, automakers, the obvious winners from the proposal, balked. The changes, they said, went too far even for them.

But it turns out that there was a hidden beneficiary of the plan that was pushing for the changes all along: the nation's oil industry.

In Congress, on Facebook and in statehouses nationwide, Marathon Petroleum, the country's largest refiner, worked with powerful oil-industry groups and a conservative policy network financed by the billionaire industrialist Charles G. Koch to run a stealth campaign to roll back car emissions standards, a New York Times investigation has found.

The campaign's main argument for significantly easing fuel efficiency standards - that the United States is so awash in oil it no longer needs to worry about energy conservation - clashed with decades of federal energy and environmental policy.

"With oil scarcity no longer a concern," Americans should be given a "choice in vehicles that best fit their needs," read a draft of a letter that Marathon helped to circulate to members of Congress over the summer. Official correspondence later sent to regulators by more than a dozen lawmakers included phrases or sentences from the industry talking points, and the Trump administration's proposed rules incorporate similar logic.

Comment: Oil scarcity excuse is bogus. Global warming excuse is bogus. CO2 emissions excuse is bogus. Whether we agree or not with manufacturing decisions, the science behind any impetus for current or future manufacturing parameters must be based on real science with accurately proven results.
See also:

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Key

Pompeo: China should free the Canadians held after Huawei's arrest

Lesley Wroughton, David Ljunggren
Reuters
Fri, 14 Dec 2018 12:11 UTC
Pompeo
© Unknown
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Friday China should free two Canadian citizens who were detained this week after authorities in Canada arrested a senior Chinese technology executive on a U.S. extradition warrant.

Pompeo's comments were the first by a senior U.S. official on the arrests, which Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said could escalate a growing trade conflict between China and the United States.

"The unlawful detention of two Canadian citizens is unacceptable," Pompeo told reporters after talks in Washington with Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland. "They ought to be returned ... We ask all nations of the world to treat other citizens properly."

Canadian officials were granted consular access on Friday to one of the two detainees in China and were still trying to contact the second, the Foreign Ministry said.

China detained the two - businessman Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, a former diplomat and an adviser with the International Crisis Group (ICG) - after Canadian police arrested Huawei Technologies Co Ltd's chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, on Dec 1.

Comment: See also:

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Propaganda

WaPo claims an American was 'tortured then executed' in Syria, admits absence of evidence

Tony Cartalucci
Land Destroyer Report
Sat, 15 Dec 2018 00:00 UTC
Layla Shweikani
© Twitter
Syrian American Layla Shweikani
A particularly scurrilous op-ed appeared in the pages of the Washington Post accusing the Syrian government of detaining, torturing, then executing an American citizen, Layla Shweikani.

Considering US attempts to establish various pretexts to justify its ongoing military occupation of Syria and its attacks on Syrian forces - such an accusation could dangerously escalate the conflict if not checked and exposed.

The Accusation

The op-ed titled, "Assad's regime killed an American - and no one seems to care," written by Jason Rezaian - arrested, tried, and convicted of espionage in Iran - begins by claiming:
Last month the U.S. government confirmed that an American citizen had died in Syrian captivity. Sources concluded that Layla Shweikani, a U.S. citizen with Syrian roots, had been tortured and then executed.
The article claims that the Syrian government's civil registry recorded her death in late 2016. Claims that she died in Syrian government custody come from James Jeffery, the US special envoy for Syria Engagement, but the factual basis of this claim was not provided in the article, nor during recent testimony (video) provided by Jeffery to the US House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Comment: There is no excuse for irresponsible reporting and accusations not based in facts or verifications. The public has become complacent in its acceptance of sub-standard and opinion-swaying media at the dictates of manipulators in order to shape and color an outcome. Without facts, proof and truth in reporting, there is no way to know the fate of Layla Shweikani.

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Star of David

Israelis, Palestinians upset by Aussi recognition of only W. Jerusalem: 'We expected more'


RT
Sat, 15 Dec 2018 23:06 UTC
Scott Morrison

Australian PM Scott Morrison
Palestinian and Israeli officials were oddly united in expressing bitter disappointment in Australia's 'half-way' decision to recognize West Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state, and the move also faced criticism at home.

Canberra is to open a defense and trade office in Jerusalem after it formally recognized West Jerusalem as Israel's capital, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced on Saturday. Relocating the country's embassy, however, will only take place after a two-state solution is reached. Until then, Australia will hold off on its decision to recognize East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine.

The Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister immediately rejected and condemned the decision, accusing Morrison of a "total bias" towards Israel and seeking to "appease the Zionist lobby" in Australia. "The recognition of West Jerusalem as Israel's capital must be accompanied by recognition of East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine," Riad al-Maliki said. The same sentiment was shared by PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi who accused the Australian leadership of "using Palestinian rights to bribe the Zionist lobby to gain its support in the election."


Comment: For Israel it is all. Never half. Never nothing. For Palestine it is almost nothing. Never half. Never all.
See also: Australia has recognized West Jerusalem as the Israeli capital

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Radar

US spy plane flight detected above waters closed for Russian drills


Sputnik
Sat, 15 Dec 2018 20:37 UTC
Boeing P-8A Poseidon
© CC BY-SA 2.0 / aceebee
Boeing P-8A Poseidon
American spy planes often circulate along Syria's borders, especially close to Russia's Hmeymim air base and naval base in Tartus, which houses the Russian Navy and serves as a logistics centre.

A US P-8A Poseidon plane, developed to detect enemy ships and submarines, has been detected flying along the Syrian coast above waters that were closed for drills by the Russian Navy, according to an aviation enthusiast's data from radars.

The plane was circulating for about an hour 30 kilometres away from the Syrian coast, where Russia's Hmeymim airbase and naval base in Tartus are located.

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Bad Guys

17 civilians killed, mostly women and children, by another US-led coalition strike on Syrian village near Hajin


RT
Sun, 16 Dec 2018 16:56 UTC
US airstrike syria
© AP Photo / Vadim Ghirda
Syria's daily al-Watan newspaper reported that women and children account for the majority of the casualties.

A US-led coalition airstrike near the Syrian city of Hajin has killed at least 17 civilians, the Syrian broadcaster Ikhbariya reported on Sunday.

According to media reports, the airstrike targeted a Syrian village, Albu Khater, located to the south-east of the city of Hajin. In addition to the aforementioned death toll, two more civilians sustained injuries as a result of the strike.

Meanwhile, Syria's al-Watan newspaper reported that women and children account for the majority of the casualties.

Comment: Below is a list of just some of the recent US airstrikes on Syria, the majority which killed civilians, of which many were women and children:

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