Puppet Masters
"ISIS has managed to find some of the secret underground storage facilities, still holding chemical weapons, hidden in the desert. Unfortunately, they weren't properly guarded," said Ahmed Gaddafi Al-Dam, a cousin of Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader who was killed in 2011.
Al-Dam, the stolen gas was then trafficked to the northern part of the country and sold.
"There are two known cases of this chemical agent being stolen. I know this from my sources in Tripoli. In the first case, seven drums of sarin were stolen, and in the second, I think it was five."
Ominous Timing: Turkish Dispatch to Mosul
Amidst the Russo-Turkish row, the Turkish government dispatched a Turkish battalion of twenty-five M-60 Patton tanks to the Mosul District of Iraq's Ninawa Governorate. The Turkish press even announced that Ankara had declared that it was establishing a permanent military base inside Iraq's Mosul District. The Iraqi federal government reacted immediately by calling the Turkish move a hostile act that violated international law and Iraqi sovereignty.
Comment: More on Mosul, and the shady developments in the area:
EU leaders called the deal a key way to stem the tide of asylum-seekers. Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said it marked a new beginning in Ankara/Brussels relations.
Given Turkey's horrific human rights record and unsavory history, especially under Erdogan, distrust remains high.
Agreement terms call for Ankara to increase Aegean Sea patrols in areas bordering Greece and Bulgaria, crack down on human smuggling gangs, and accept refugees turned away by EU countries.
On Thursday, the Russian-language edition of the Turkish state-run Anadolu Agency news service unceremoniously reported that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had met with Mustafa Dzhemilev, one of the key organizers of the so-called 'food' and 'electricity' blockades of Crimea.
Erdogan and Dzhemilev, a Ukrainian lawmaker and key figure of the Mejlis movement, which claims to represent the Crimean Tatar community, met in a hotel in the southern Turkish city of Konya, speaking for about 40 minutes, Anadolu Agency reported. Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan was also said to be in attendance.
"We welcome support from Russia in fighting terrorism," the agency quotes Hafter as telling reporters after his meeting with United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) Chief Martin Kobler in the city of Marj, Northeastern Libya.
The military leader assured that if Russia proposes a plan for fighting terrorism in Libya, Tripoli will cooperate with Moscow, adding that "Russians are serious in [the] fight against terrorists".
Comment: There is little chance Russia will become involved in Libya without a formal government in place.
Update: CISA is now the law: OBAMA SIGNS SPENDING, TAX BILL THAT REPEALS OIL EXPORT BAN
* * *
Back in 2014, civil liberties and privacy advocates were up in arms when the government tried to quietly push through the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, or CISA, a law which would allow federal agencies - including the NSA - to share cybersecurity, and really any information with private corporations "notwithstanding any other provision of law." The most vocal complaint involved CISA's information-sharing channel, which was ostensibly created for responding quickly to hacks and breaches, and which provided a loophole in privacy laws that enabled intelligence and law enforcement surveillance without a warrant.
Ironically, in its earlier version, CISA had drawn the opposition of tech firms including Apple, Twitter, Reddit, as well as the Business Software Alliance, the Computer and Communications Industry Association and many others including countless politicians and, most amusingly, the White House itself.
In April, a coalition of 55 civil liberties groups and security experts signed onto an open letter opposing it. In July, the Department of Homeland Security itself warned that the bill could overwhelm the agency with data of "dubious value" at the same time as it "sweep[s] away privacy protections." Most notably, the biggest aggregator of online private content, Facebook, vehemently opposed the legislation however a month ago it was "surprisingly" revealed that Zuckerberg had been quietly on the side of the NSA all along as we reported in "Facebook Caught Secretly Lobbying For Privacy-Destroying "Cyber-Security" Bill."
Even Snowden chimed in:
Comment: Yet another "win" for those that would seek to wed corporate interests with those of the national security surveillance state - in other words, fascism. So much for the recent court rulings that deemed such powers unconstitutional.
See also:
- NSA's bulk phone data collection ruled unconstitutional, 'almost Orwellian,' by federal judge
- Ex-MI5 agent: US Freedom Act is a 'surveillance act in disguise'
- NSA surveillance is not used for 'finding terrorists' at all, so what exactly IS it used for then?
Watch it, below...
"My attitude to this organization is special - I see it as a cancerous tumor on the whole European continent. It would only be for the better if this organization is dissolved," Naryshkin said during a meeting with Serbian lawmakers on Thursday.
This dissolution could be conducted in several stages, the Duma speaker suggested. "First of all, the USA should be excluded from the bloc and after this it would be possible to painlessly disband the whole organization," he said. "This would be a good step towards greater security and stability on the whole European continent."
Comment: Yet another step towards 'plausibly deniable' covert aggression aimed towards Russia. Naryshkin sees things as they are, not as the mouthpieces for Western hegemony would like him and others to think.
Frankly, my father did not even like to touch on the subject of the war. It was more like I was simply nearby when the adults were discussing or recalling things among themselves. All my knowledge about the war - about what happened to my family - arose out of those overheard conversations between adults. Still, there were times when they spoke to me directly.
My father was a sailor. He was called up in 1939 and served in a submarine squadron in Sevastopol. On his return, he worked in a factory in Peterhof where he lived with my mother. I think they even built some kind of little house there.
When war broke out he was working in a military company, which entitled him to an exemption from conscription. However, he applied first to join the party and then again to be sent to the front. He was dispatched to a NKVD sabotage squad. It was a small contingent of 28 people who were sent into the nearby rear to carry out acts of sabotage - blowing up bridges, railway tracks, etc. Almost immediately they ran into an ambush - someone betrayed them. They entered a certain village, then left it, and when they returned some time later the Nazis were already waiting for them. They were chased through the woods. My father survived by hiding in a swamp where he spent hours under water breathing through a reed. I remember this from his story. He said that while he was in the swamp breathing through the reed, he could hear the German soldiers passing by, just a few steps away from him, and how the dogs were yapping...
All but one of the world's 10 biggest arms producers have contributed to Clinton's previous campaigns, giving her — along with the top Republican receiver Ted Cruz — a significant margin over the other candidates.
The numbers, collected by the Federal Election Commission and compiled by Open Secrets, also reveal that Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders make the list of top 20 senators and top six presidential candidates to receive money from arms and defense companies.
Most of the funding is channeled through Political Action Committees, which have no limits to how much they donate. About 18 percent comes from individual contributions, totaling almost US$10 million between all of the companies.
Comment: Those donations come with conditions. Killary has to promise to continue bombing countries, civilians, and vital infrastructure. She is the perfect stooge for the military-industrial complex, since she has shown every willingness to do exactly those things. The US military in her hands is a scary notion, but really anyone who is elected president signs up for the exact same thing. Either you continue the foreign policy of destroying foreign nations in the name of US hegemonic control, or you'll be replaced by someone who will.














Comment: A related story: Sarin materials brought via Turkey & mixed in Syrian ISIS camps - Turkish MP to RT