Puppet Masters
The Defense Department is set to give the contract, worth as much as $10 billion over ten years, to one of the two companies next month. Amazon, whose cloud-computing technology leads the market, is seen as the favorite.
But Trump recently was made aware of letters Republican members of Congress have written to the White House and military leaders complaining that the contract's terms froze some companies -- including Oracle Corp. -- out of the competition, according to two people familiar with the matter. Trump expressed frustration he wasn't aware of the concerns and asked aides to show him the correspondence, the people said.
...the women included long-time Epstein friends Sue Hamblin and Jennifer Kalin as well as Russian model Lana Pozhidaeva.Of note, the 77-year-old Barak says he's planning to sue the Daily Mail for libel, and rejects the report's 'loathsome' insinuations.
A fourth, unidentified, woman was seen joining Epstein on a trip to Teterborough Airport in New Jersey, where Epstein keeps his plane and where he was arrested on the tarmac on July 6 after he flew in from France.
At the time, the identity of the man seen with his own security detail going to Epstein's mansion on East 71st Street was unclear. Now DailyMail.com has confirmed it was Barak. -Daily Mail
The former PM - who has formed a new party to try and unseat current Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu - admitted to the Daily Beast that he had indeed been to Epstein's NY residence, and the financier's infamous 'pedophile island' in the Caribbean, but insists that he's 'never met Epstein in the company of women and young girls.'
DailyMail.com has obtained exclusive pictures of one of Benjamin Netanyahu's main challengers hiding his face as he entered the convicted sex offender's Manhattan townhouse.Of note, the Mail does not say if the women were inside Epstein's mansion at the same time as Barak.
A bevy of young women were also seen going into the multi-millionaire's lavish seven-story home on the same day that Ehud Barak was snapped.
...
The photographs were taken in January 2016 after Epstein, now 66, had returned to New York after an overseas trip.
Within hours at least four young women had gone to the home that the federal government wants to seize as part of its new case against the financier. -Daily Mail
Barak, who served as Israel's PM from 1999 - 2001, and later defense minister from 2007 - 2013, received millions of dollars from Epstein as an investment in his company, Carbyne, which makes geolocation software for emergency services. Barak wrote on Facebook last weekend that he is trying to break off relations with Epstein.
"For almost five years, a company associated with Epstein has been a passive investor in a limited partnership, legally registered in Israel and under my control," he wrote, adding "Every investor in this partnership is bound by the same commercial contract. As soon as the present charges related to Epstein became known, I instructed my lawyers to examine the options we have for expelling the company associated with Epstein from this partnership."
At the weekend, Barak told the Israeli version of Meet the Press that he had no idea that Epstein's charges involved underage girls. 'He'd served his sentence for soliciting prostitution — the indictment didn't say she was a minor,' he said.Of course, Barak still took money in 2014 from the convicted pedophile and registered sex offender - which was publicly available information at the time.
'The American system itself did not label him as a persona non grata,' Barak added. 'The secretary who just resigned in the Trump administration was the prosecutor and he said he'd been negligent — so you expect me to have noticed [anything wrong]?' he added, referring to Alex Acosta who resigned as labor secretary last week. -Daily Mail
According to the Mail citing the Miami Herald, Carbine also received a $2.5 million investment from Epstein's former close friend, Les Wexner.
Netanyahu pounces
The Israeli PM's party has called for a criminal investigation into Barak's ties to Epstein - while Netanyahu tweeted that he should be investigated 'immediately.' In a July 9 tweet, he posted a video of Barak's ties to Epstein, asking in Hebrew, "What else did the sex offender give to Ehud Barak?"
The resolution, introduced on Thursday by Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), cites numerous instances of intimidation and outright violence by left-wing radicals as the basis for their formal designation as domestic terrorists. In particular, it mentions recent clashes in Portland, Oregon, that saw far-left Rose City Antifa facing off with far-right Proud Boys and police.
The highlight of the late June skirmish was the assault on journalist Andy Ngo by Antifa protesters. The Quillette reporter was beaten and doused with milkshakes that, according to some accounts, contained quick-drying cement. Ngo also said his camera equipment was stolen.

Attorney General William Barr is sworn in to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the Mueller report, in Washington, May 1, 2019.
William Barr, a two-time attorney general who served at the CIA in the 1970s, would seem to be an ultimate Washington insider. According to his Wikipedia biography, he has — or he had — "a sterling reputation" both among Republicans and Democrats. That changed when Barr announced his ongoing investigation into the origins of Russiagate, a vital subject I too have explored.
As Barr explained,
"What we're looking at is: What was the predicate for conducting a counterintelligence investigation on the Trump campaign ... How did the bogus narrative begin that Trump was essentially in cahoots with Russia to interfere with the US election?"
Comment:
- Barr thinks 'spying did occur' against Trump campaign
- William Barr slams mainstream media for ignoring evidence of surveillance against Trump campaign
- Trump turns AG Barr loose to request any information from intelligence agencies necessary regarding Russiagate probe: "I've declassified everything"
- Lock her up! Lindsey Graham suggests Bill Barr may reopen Hillary investigation
- Ex-FBI and CIA officials may draw withering fire for their role in Russiagate
"We have said this president is racist, we have condemned his racist remarks. I believe he is fascist," Omar told reporters on Thursday, adding that she believes the verbal attacks are targeting not only her, but the very right to have a dissenting opinion.
Comment: It's emotional labeling like this that is the reason most Americans don't like Ilhan and the rest of the squad...
"I want to remind people that this is what this president and his supporters have [turned] our country, that is supposed to be a country where we allow democratic debate and dissent to take place," Omar said.
Trump said the USS Boxer shot down the drone after it got within 1,000 yards, "ignoring multiple calls to stand down and was threatening the safety of the ship and the ship's crew."
"The drone was immediately destroyed," Trump said. "This is the latest of many provocative and hostile actions by Iran against vessels operating in international waters."
The Pentagon added the Iranian drone was within a "threatening range" of the Boxer.
Comment: According to Iran, they didn't lose a drone:
US President Donald Trump claimed on Thursday that a US warship destroyed an Iranian drone in the Strait of Hormuz after the aircraft ignored multiple warnings to stand down.
Later on Thursday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told reporters at the UN in New York that Tehran has no information about a drone being downed by the United States.
"We have no information about having lost the drone today", Zarif said.
Trump characterized the alleged actions of an Iranian drone as a hostile and provocative action against vessels operating in international waters, adding that the United States has the right to defend itself, its facilities and interests.
The Pentagon said in a statement that an Iranian drone came within "threatening range" of a US warship in the Strait of Hormuz before being destroyed by American forces in a defensive action.
"All drones belonging to Iran in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz... returned safely to their bases after their mission of identification and control, and there is no report of any operational response by USS 'Boxer,'" Brigadier General Abolfazl Shekarchi told the Tansim news agency.If that's the case, what they did they shoot down exactly? Iran's deputy foreign minister has a suggestion:

A state probe of campaign finance violations showed that Rep. Ilhan Omar filed federal taxes in 2014 and 2015 with her current husband, Ahmed Hirsi, while legally married to but separated from Ahmed Nur Said Elmi.
Omar supplied this email to the Minnesota Campaign and Public Disclosure Board's investigation into her campaign financing. That investigation concluded on June 6 by ordering Omar to refund $3,500 in misused campaign funds, and to pay a $500 fine. It also revealed that in 2014 and 2015, Omar may have broken federal and state law by filing a joint tax return with her husband Ahmed Abdisalan Hirsi — when she was married to another man.
Comment: When the Star-Tribune finally got on top of it:
New documents revisit questions about Rep. Ilhan Omar's marriage history
Screenshots of comments under the SomaliSpot post. The fraudulent arrangement was an open secret in Minnesota's Somali community. From Powerline:
The Somalispot post has been taken down. The item was originally posted here; it is preserved in a Google cache here with accompanying comments. Comments on the Somalispot post suggest that the information is something of an open secret in the Somali community. Inputting the name Ilhan Omar, I have confirmed both marriages as noted in the Somalispot post via the online Minnesota Official Marriage System.
[...]
UPDATE: The cached version of the Somalispot post has also been removed.

An AV-8B Harrier aircraft lakes off on the flight deck of USS Boxer in the Arabian Sea off Oman. July 17, 2019.
President Donald Trump had earlier claimed that the assault ship USS 'Boxer' shot down an Iranian drone that was approaching it in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran denied losing any aircraft that day.
"The concentration of forces of different countries in the Persian Gulf is so high that any incidents are possible there," the Russian diplomat told reporters on Friday, adding that the main task now is to "prevent the escalation."
Question: Can an improvement in the relations with the United States be expected in the near future?
Sergey Lavrov: An improvement will hardly materialise any time soon, since it is anything but easy to sort out the mess that our relations are in, which is not our fault. After all, bilateral relations require reciprocal efforts. We have to meet each other half way.
Russia is ready to move in this direction, as we have said on a number of occasions. We proceed from the premise that Russia and the United States bear special responsibility. We are the two largest nuclear powers, the founding members of the United Nations and permanent members of its Security Council. Cooperation between our two countries is key to ensuring stability and predictability in international affairs. However, not everything depends on us. It takes two to tango, as the saying goes.
The situation is quite complicated on the American side. On the one hand, President Donald Trump talks about seeking to be on good terms with Russia, but this attitude is far from prevalent in Washington. We see this in unfriendly steps, such as various groundless accusations Russia faces, imposing financial and economic sanctions, seizing diplomatic property, kidnapping Russian nationals in third countries, opposing Russia's foreign policy interests, as well as attempts to meddle in our domestic affairs. We are seeing system-wide efforts to reach out to almost all countries around the world and persuade them to scale back their relations with Russia.

Saeed is the founder of the Lashkar-e-Taiba armed group and heads its Jamaat-ud-Dawa humanitarian wing
Pakistani police have arrested Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the founder of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) armed group and head of its Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) humanitarian wing, intercepting him on his way to court in the central city of Gujranwala,
Saeed was arrested on Wednesday by a group of counterterrorism department police at the Kamoke toll plaza, about 50km north of Pakistan's second city Lahore, JuD spokesman Nadeem Awan told Al Jazeera.
"The cases against him are all related to fundraising," Awan said. "He is charged with terrorism financing."














Comment: Bloomberg reported earlier on the nasty battle being waged behind the scenes by competing tech giants for the lucrative cloud contract. Dirty tricks aren't the sole province of politics: