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Star of David

Israel, Bahrain fully normalize diplomatic relations


The New Arab
Fri, 11 Sep 2020 00:00 UTC
Bahrain
© Getty ImagesBahrain
Bahrain has become the latest Arab nation to agree to normalise ties with Israel as part of a broader diplomatic push by President Donald Trump and his administration to fully integrate the Jewish state into the Middle East.

Trump announced the agreement on Friday, following a three-way phone call he had with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa. The three leaders also issued a brief six-paragraph joint statement, attesting to the deal.

"Another HISTORIC breakthrough today!" Trump tweeted.
The announcement on the 19th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 extremist attacks came less than a week before Trump hosts a White House ceremony to mark the establishment of full relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. Bahrain's foreign minister will attend the event.

It represents another diplomatic win for Trump less than two months before the the presidential election and an opportunity to shore up support among pro-Israel evangelical Christians. Just last week, Trump announced agreements in principle for Kosovo to recognize Israel and for Serbia to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Comment: As the sands shift in the Middle East, rapid change is upon them...a sandstorm ahead?
10 commenters
© The New Arab
Following the normalization of relations between Israel and Bahrain, Palestine's ambassador to Manama was recalled to Ramallah on Friday.

On Friday, just weeks after its Persian Gulf neighbor the United Arab Emirates extended recognition and full diplomatic relations to Israel, the Kingdom of Bahrain did the same. In response, the Palestinian Authority has ordered its diplomatic envoy to the island nation to return home and threatened to do the same to any other Arab nation that recognizes Israel.
After the Israel-UAE deal, Palestinian leaders denounced Abu Dhabi's actions as "stabbing them in the back."
Few Muslim nations have been willing to recognize Israel since its creation in 1948, after which it fought a war against Syria, Jordan, and Egypt, as many other Arab nations sent troops or material to support the struggle. Israel triumphed, and in doing so, forced out nearly 700,000 Palestinian Arabs - nearly half the territory's population - in an event Palestinians refer to as "al-Nakba," or "the catastrophe."

The latest agreement was finalised during a telephone call between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Bahrain King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, according to a joint US-Bahrain-Israel statement published on Twitter by US President Donald Trump.

The statement hailed the agreement as a "historic breakthrough" that it said would further peace in the region.



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MIB

Ex-Zelensky chief of staff faces questioning over allegations Kiev has secret 'normalization' deal with Moscow

Jonny Tickle
RT
Fri, 11 Sep 2020 14:30 UTC
zelensky putin
© REUTERS/Charles Platiau/Pool; Sputnik / Mikhail Klimentyev
Ukraine's State Bureau of Investigation has summoned President Volodymyr Zelensky's former administration head for questioning, after suggesting that the government has a secret agreement with Russia to normalize relations.

Speaking to journalist Dmitry Gordon, ex-chief of staff Andrey Bogdan said that the Zelensky administration, under current head Andrey Ermak, had made a number of promises to Russia, including dealing with Crimea's status, re-starting flights between Ukraine and Russia, and prisoner exchanges. Although he did not claim to have seen the promises himself, Bogdan said that he heard about the document from a number of diplomats and intelligence officials.

"The agreement is some kind of algorithm. We give you ships, you give us water in Crimea. We give you prisoners, you give us direct flights," he said.

Comment: If true a deal would be good news for Ukrainians but bad news for the nefarious, international, players intent on profiting from the continued bloodshed in Ukraine:

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Star of David

Syria repels Israeli attack on Aleppo as missiles shot down before reaching their targets


RT
Fri, 11 Sep 2020 00:42 UTC
sunrise Aleppo
© Reuters/Omar SanadikiSunrise Aleppo
Syria's air defenses thwarted an Israeli attack on Aleppo city early Friday morning, as multiple missiles were intercepted before reaching their targets, Syrian state-run television reported.

The strikes occurred around 1:30am local time on Friday, the Syrian Arab News Agency reported, citing a military source who noted the country's air defenses had repelled "most of the enemy missiles." The source pinned the attack on Israel, however Tel Aviv has yet to comment on the incident. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.

The news agency shared footage of the blast on social media, while an unconfirmed photo purporting to show smoke rising from an area around al-Safirah, a town in Aleppo's countryside, also made the rounds online.

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Attention

The US Is doing far worse than what it accuses China of doing to the Uighurs

Caitlin Johnstone
Medium
Thu, 10 Sep 2020 00:00 UTC
Fire explosion
© Unknown
Disney is the subject of controversy in mainstream circles again, not because it is a sprawling monopolistic media megaconglomerate whose giant Mickey head is devouring the world like Galactus, but because parts of its live-action version of Mulan were filmed in Xinjiang province.

Vox reports:
"Some viewers who paid to stream the movie on Disney+ last weekend found something troubling in the credits: Disney thanked eight government bodies in Xinjiang, a western province in China where around 2 million Uighur Muslims have been forced into concentration camps by the Chinese government. It turns out parts of Mulan were filmed in Xinjiang two years ago, well after the world knew about Beijing's plan to 'reeducate' Uighurs with Communist Party doctrine."
Now it is worth pointing out at this point that there is no reason to accept on faith the claim that two million Uighur Muslims have been forced into concentration camps in Xinjiang. The US-centralized empire is ramping up a propaganda campaign against China to manufacture support for cold war escalations with the goal of preventing the emergence of a true multipolar world, and that empire has an extensive history of lying about these things. There are massive, gaping plot holes in the Xinjiang narrative we're being fed by the State Department stenographers in the mass media, and its key points of evidence always trace back to extremely dubious sources like the odious fanatic Adrian Zenz.
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Propaganda

MSM's attempts to spin Trump's attacks on senseless wars as disrespect for military are a dismal distortion of reality

Tony Cox
RT
Fri, 11 Sep 2020 12:06 UTC
trumpsalute
© Getty Images/David Dee DelgadoUS President Donald Trump salutes the military
The New York Times and CNN are desperate to paint Donald Trump as an enemy of the military, due to his desire not to get involved in pointless wars. But this is simply not true, and Trump has the backing of many soldiers.

Someone should tell the New York Times, CNN and other mainstream media outlets that soldiers don't actually like getting killed or maimed for no good reason. Nor do they like generals and presidents who spill their blood in vain.

Alas, ignorance of these obvious truths probably isn't the issue. This is likely just another case of the biggest names in news pretending to not get the point so they can take the rest of us along for a ride in their confidence game of alternative reality.

The latest example is the New York Times spinning President Donald Trump's critique this week of Pentagon leadership and the military industrial complex as disrespect for the military at large. "Trump has lost the right and authority to be commander in chief," the Times quoted retired US Marines General Anthony Zinni as saying. Zinni cited Trump's alleged "despicable comments" about the nation's war dead - reported last week by The Atlantic, citing anonymous sources - as one of the reasons Trump "must go." Never mind that Trump and all on-the-record administration sources denied The Atlantic's report.
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Cell Phone

Best of the Web: New DOJ documents show wholesale destruction of evidence by Mueller team - 30 phones 'accidentally' wiped!

Kylee Zempet
The Federalist
Thu, 10 Sep 2020 00:00 UTC
Mueller
© The White House/Wikimedia CommonsRobert Mueller
Newly released records from the Department of Justice reveal that multiple top members of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigative team claim to have "accidentally wiped" data off phones they used during the anti-Trump probe.

Many devices were wiped or otherwise disabled before DOJ authorities were able to access and examine them or the records they contained, including that of disgraced former FBI lawyer Lisa Page.

According to email correspondence between the Special Counsel's Office and the DOJ Office of the Inspector General, Page's phone had been reset to factory settings, "and therefore all data was wiped from the device" before the OIG received it.

Destruction of data and communication pervaded the team, with more than 20 instances of Mueller team members wiping their devices, some in seemingly creative ways. While some data was "accidentally wiped," other inaccessible data was blamed on personnel incorrectly entering passwords too many times, resulting in information being nuked. Other devices were left in airplane mode with either incorrect or no passwords provided, rendering the data inaccessible.

Comment: Who knew phone wiping was so contagious? The 'mask of justice' has just been ripped off this case and those phonies may require cellular distancing.
An 87-page document, released by the Justice Department on Thursday under the Freedom of Information Act, reveals that Mueller's investigators "accidentally" or deliberately wiping their devices when the DOJ inspector-general asked for them.

As many as 31 phones may have been affected, including the devices that had been "reassigned."

Weissman was Mueller's principal deputy. He is generally considered to have actually been in charge of the 'Russiagate' probe, especially after the former FBI director couldn't recall much of anything during his July 2019 testimony before Congress.

Another discovery in the document was that the phone belonging to FBI lawyer Lisa Page got "lost" by the Mueller team, and the name of the official who had custody of it: Christopher Greer. It was eventually retrieved, but the IG report found that it had been wiped two weeks after Page had left the special counsel team.
UPDATE: Trump tweets:



The Republican chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee is calling for an investigation:
Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) penned a letter to the Justice Department on Friday, asking DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz to launch a probe after documents surfaced this week showing that Mueller's team scrubbed information from up to 31 devices amid the Russiagate investigation.

"These reports are troubling and raise concerns about record retention and transparency," Johnson wrote.
Therefore, I respectfully request that your office open an investigation into this matter to determine what, why, and how information was wiped, whether any wrongdoing occurred, and who these devices belonged to
Asking the DOJ to respond within a week's time, Johnson also called on the department to answer a number of specific queries about the phones, including when Justice officials became aware that they had been wiped, and whether data could still be retrieved from the devices.


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Heart - Black

'Orwellian in the extreme': Conservatives slam media for blaming GOP for Dems' decision to tank Covid-19 relief bill


RT
Thu, 10 Sep 2020 21:25 UTC
McConnell
© Reuters/Joshua RobertsSenator Mitch McConnell, (R-Kentucky)
Conservatives are slamming mainstream media outlets after their almost identical coverage of the Senate Democrats' decision to vote against a coronavirus relief bill appeared to blame Republicans for the "failure."

After months of negotiations, a coronavirus stimulus package, which included funding for schools and Covid-19 testing, unemployment benefits, and the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), was voted down by every Democrat in the Senate on Thursday. The only Republican to join them was Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky).

Needing 60 votes to pass, the bill earned a 52-47 outcome and it's now unlikely a coronavirus stimulus package will pass before November's presidential election.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) tweeted:
"Every Senate Democrat just voted against hundreds of billions of dollars of COVID-19 relief. They blocked money for schools, testing, vaccines, unemployment insurance, and the Paycheck Protection Program. Their goal is clear: No help for American families before the election."

Comment: Dysfunctional and self-destructive, Congressional infighting does not further either party's commitments to the public, nor do themselves any favor. Congress' role is a 'functionary for the people', the prime mandate most regularly kicked to the curb.

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Beaker

Russian envoy to UNSC: 'OPCW should not be a 'geopolitical tool,' as Germany to involve it in Navalny case


RT
Thu, 10 Sep 2020 23:06 UTC
Navalny/OPCW
© Vasily Maximov/AFP/Getty Images/OPCW/KJNAlexey Navalny • Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
Russian ambassador to the UN Vasily Nebenzya slammed Germany for withholding information about the health of opposition activist Alexey Navalny and condemned Western attempts to politicize the chemical weapons watchdog.

"Russia is deeply concerned by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons becoming an instrument in the geopolitical struggle," Nebenzya said Thursday at the United Nations Security Council session on the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

He outlined how the OPCW had been used by Western governments to blame Damascus for alleged chemical attacks in Syria while outright ignoring evidence of actual chemical weapons use by terrorist groups.

After ambassadors of the US, UK, Belgium, Germany and Estonia called on Russia to conduct a "full and transparent" investigation into Navalny's alleged poisoning, Nebenzya said that it had "nothing to do with the topic of today's discussion."

Comment: The OPCW has proven itself to be a puppet expert to a particular group of overlords.

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Green Light

'A historic opportunity': Afghan peace talks to begin 19 years after US invasion

Saphora Smith, Mushtaq Yusfzai
Yahoo News
Thu, 10 Sep 2020 00:00 UTC
Taliban delegation
© Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs/AP
A start date for talks between the Taliban and an Afghan delegation that includes members of the government will begin Saturday, in a diplomatic breakthrough that could bring the country a step closer to peace after four decades of war.

Taliban spokesman Dr. Muhammad Naeem said in a statement that the group "would like to declare its readiness to partake in the inauguration ceremony of Intra-Afghan negotiations" between Sept. 12 and Sept. 22. He added that the talks are to be held in Qatar where the Taliban maintain a political office.

Senior members of the current Afghan government will also attend the negotiations in Doha at the behest of President Ashraf Ghani, the government said in a statement.

Welcoming the talks, President Donald Trump told a news conference Thursday, that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo would attend the negotiations. Pompeo said in statement that they marked
"a historic opportunity for Afghanistan to bring an end to four decades of war and bloodshed. This opportunity must not be squandered. Immense sacrifice and investment by the United States, our partners, and the people of Afghanistan have made this moment of hope possible. I urge the negotiators to demonstrate the pragmatism, restraint, and flexibility this process will require to succeed."
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Eye 2

Covering all the bases: US prosecutors disrupt Spanish probe into alleged CIA-linked firm which spied on Assange


RT
Fri, 11 Sep 2020 18:24 UTC
assange protest Old Bailey
© REUTERS/Henry NichollsA supporter protests outside the Old Bailey in London ahead of a hearing to decide whether Julian Assange should be extradited to the United States.
US prosecutors are reportedly refusing to cooperate with a Spanish investigation into the company accused of spying on Julian Assange while he sought asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy, unless the judge accedes to a list of demands.

Judge Jose de la Mata of Spain's High Court is conducting an ongoing investigation into UC Global. The firm was previously in charge of security at the Ecuadorian embassy in London and now stands accused of spying on WikiLeaks founder Assange and passing sensitive information to US intelligence.

Testimony from witnesses, including former staff at UC Global, alleges that the company's former owner, David Morales, furnished the CIA with recordings and reports of Assange's daily activities and conversations while residing in the embassy.

Comment:

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