Comment: See also:

• The geo-politics of Turkey's incursion in Syria
• U.S. Didn't 'Withdraw' From Syria - It Redeployed, And Now Controls 75% of The Country's Oil
• Interview with Flemish priest in Syria: "Putin and Assad saved my life"
• Marie Yovanovitch: An Obama holdover accused of telling Ukraine to 'ignore Trump because he'll be impeached' and meddling in Ukraine's election

Comment: Common sense says there's more to Epstein's death than presented; thus whitewashed assessments are suspect. Epstein was the tip of an iceberg and just that idea alone is enough to not trust the 'evidence' nor Barr's conclusions. Barr was in fact directly intimately involved (twice) in Epstein's 'career'. Did he capitulate? If so, why and for whom?

Comment: Additional from Politico, 15/11/2019: Kamala Harris' campaign in meltdown

Officials said they've become increasingly frustrated at the campaign chief's lack of clarity about what changes have been made to right the ship and Rodriguez' plans to turn the situation around. They hold him responsible for questionable budget decisions, including continuing to bring on new hires shortly before the layoffs began.

"It's a campaign of id. What feels right, what impulse you have right now, what emotion, what frustration. No discipline. No plan. No strategy."

"From the outset of this race, [Rodriguez] has had all the responsibility with none of the authority. He's been managing this race with at least one, if not two, hands tied behind his back," a senior campaign official and longtime Harris hand said of the Rodriguez-Maya Harris dynamic.

One recently departed aide tried to sum up the mess: At the staff level, the person said, "everybody has had to consolidate. Everybody has had to make cuts. And people are pissed. They see a void. They want to push someone out. And I understand that. But the root cause of all of this is that no one was empowered really to make the decisions and make them fast and make them decisively. The apparatus wasted her talent more than she blew it."

The unorthodox composition of the campaign is further complicated by other factors. Rodriguez's California business partners — Ace Smith, Sean Clegg and Laphonza Butler — are senior Harris advisers atop a flat leadership structure.

She has slid into low single digits and is now banking on a top-tier performance in Iowa to pull her back into contention.

See also:

• Idiots think Tulsi Gabbard was hired by 'Russia' to bring down Kamala Harris
• Kamala Harris dons progressive mantle in public, strips it off in private as she courts Israel lobby
• Fmr attorney Kamala Harris' record on criminal justice is appalling
• One day after announcing wage gap plan, report shows men are paid more than women in Kamala Harris' office
• Kamala Harris: A distinguished career serving injustice

Comment: It's telling as to the decrepit state of the US that it's the same story throughout, even with its beloved Military Industrial Complex, projects are over budget, past deadlines, and/or faulty upon completion, and it's the same with the cooperative projects, such as that with the US FAA and the deadly Boeing MAX disasters.

• Tough luck, Aussies! Pentagon won't compensate Australia for faulty Boeing fighter jet that went aflame on takeoff
• Some Boeing 737 MAX parts "improperly manufactured" that need to be replaced - FAA
• "Astonishing fraud": Pentagon stashes billions, spends it later to avoid accountability
• Faulty US welding delays Britain's new £31 billion nuclear missiles
• US Navy destroyer crashes into Philippine container ship near Japanese coast - Update: 7 found dead, at least 3 injured

Comment: See also:

• Putin to meet with ex-US Secretary of State Kissinger
• Kissinger: It is not possible that Putin would voluntarily start an assault on Ukraine just after the Sochi Olympics
• Kissinger, US intelligence community endorse "World Without Israel"
• Intelligence officers confirm Kissinger role in Turkish invasion of Cyprus and Chilean coup

Comment: And that attack in 2017 just happened to occur one week before the last UK general election...

UPDATE 20:00 CET

Here's video footage of the police shooting the suspect dead:




UPDATE 20:30 CET

Police have confirmed the 'stabber-jihadist' killed two people. Here's a still from video footage of him apparently showing his 'fake suicide vest':

Interestingly, the three 'London Bridge stabber-jihadists' two years ago were also wearing fake suicide vests:

UPDATE 11:30 CET

The London Times is reporting that 'stabber-jihadist' had previously served jail-time for an "Islamist terrorism-related offence," was released from prison about a year ago, and "agreed to wear an electronic tag as part of his bail conditions."

It's been noted in past attacks that 'lone-wolf jihadists' were either 'radicalized' in prison or - more specifically - went on a rampage soon after leaving prison walls.

UPDATE NOV 30

Not only was the stabber - 28-year-old Usman Khan - previously convicted in 2012 for terrorism offenses; the violence began at a Cambridge-sponsored "prisoner rehabilitation" conference where Khan was expected to speak, among other ex-cons...


Khan was released in December of last year. He had apparently plotted to attack the London Stock Exchange in 2010.

Johnson has pledged to bolster prison sentences for serious crimes as a result: "I think that the practice of automatic, early release where you cut a sentence in half and let really serious, violent offenders out early simply isn't working, and you've some very good evidence of how that isn't working, I am afraid, with this case." Unsurprisingly, the BBC has backed down from its beef with BoJo - agreeing for him to appear on the Andrew Marr show, even though they had previously said he wouldn't appear unless he agreed to speak with Andrew Neil.

On a lighter note, the fact that one of the citizens who confronted and subdued Khan used a narwhal tusk has caught the public's attention. The man - a Polish chef named Luckasz - was at the conference with Khan. After Khan started attacking people, Luckasz grabbed the tusk from a wall in the building. He can be seen in the footage brandishing the makeshift spear.





Unsurprisingly, IS laid claim to the knife rampage on Saturday, according to SITE Intelligence Group, which we suppose you could call the PR group for ISIS's PR group, as they're usually the only ones to publish statements from Amaq. SITE Director Rita Katz noted that the attack "bore IS-inspired hallmarks." There is, however, no evidence to support the claim from what the UK police have so far shared with the public.

The claim was broadcast through the group's Amaq News Agency, a propaganda outlet that disseminates its message through apps like Telegram. Europol announced that it had successfully removed "a significant portion of key actors within the IS network" from the platform. The coordinated effort saw the jihadist-linked accounts being removed from Telegram "at an impressive pace" in the days ahead of the London attack.


UPDATE DEC 1

Johnson has revealed that 74 convicted terrorists are roaming the streets of the UK after being granted early release from prison.

Johnson: "I am sure that people can imagine that what we are doing with the other 74 individuals is to ensure that they are being properly invigilated to ensure that there is no threat and we took that action because we were concerned ... If you are convicted of a serious terrorist offence, there should be a mandatory minimum sentence of 14 years - and some should never be released."

Corbyn's take:

Speaking to Sky on Sunday, veteran peace campaigner Corbyn said people convicted of terrorism offences should "not necessarily" serve their full prison terms because it depended on the circumstances of their imprisonment. "I think there has to be an examination of how our prison services work and, crucially, what happens to them on release from prison." The probation service had failed to monitor Khan after his release...and there should be a "full investigation" into the circumstances around Khan's sentence and subsequent release.

The two victims have now been identified: 23-year-old Saskia Jones and 25-year-old Jack Merritt, who worked rehabilitating criminals, and who was coordinating the conference which Khan was attending:

Sometime during the scheduled storytelling and creative writing workshops, Khan's rampage began. Merritt and another woman were stabbed to death, three others were injured, and Khan was subdued by members of the public on London Bridge - which reportedly included some of the convicts attending the workshop - before police officers shot him dead at point blank range. He wore a fake suicide vest under his jacket, and had reportedly threatened to "blow up" the conference building.

Merritt's father described him in a tweet as a "beautiful spirit" and "champion for underdogs everywhere," while colleagues paid tribute to his work with offenders.

Jack "was the sweetest, most caring and selfless individual I've ever met," criminology lecturer Serena Wright said. Suffolk Law Centre Director Audrey Ludwig praised his "deep commitment to prisoner education and rehabilitation."

The father of Jack Merritt said this: "My son, Jack, who was killed in this attack, would not wish his death to be used as the pretext for more draconian sentences or for detaining people unnecessarily."

The judge that handed down Khan's prison sentence in 2012 warned that he was a "serious jihadi" who should not be eligible for early release from prison. Here's Khan on the BBC in 2008 after a raid on his apartment:

However, he was arrested two years later for plotting to blow up the London Stock Exchange, kill then-Mayor Boris Johnson, bomb a series of London pubs, and establish a terror training camp on family land in Kashmir.

Comment: Despite his social position, Johnson has no class.