Justine Coleman
The HillSun, 27 Oct 2019 17:35 UTC
© Reuters/Brian Snyder"In her zeal!" Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail in 2016.
Former adviser to President Clinton Dick Morris said Sunday that Hillary Clinton most likely wants to get into the 2020 presidential race because she thinks "God put her on the Earth" to be president.
Morris told John Catsimatidis on his radio show that the major question revolving around the 2020 election is whether "the ghost of Hillary Clinton" will enter the election."My feeling is that she wants to," Morris said. "She feels entitled to do it. She feels compelled to do it. She feels that God put her on the Earth to do it. But she's hesitant because she realizes the timing is bad."The former adviser said he thinks Hillary Clinton is waiting for an opportunity to jump into the race and particularly for former Vice President Joe Biden to drop out.
Comment: Elsewhere, Slick Willy himself is also putting out feelers...
She has also been appearing for interviews on
lots of evening TV shows...
Over at The Graun, they're wetting themselves at the prospect:
Killary is delusional if she thinks she stands a chance. She must REALLY want to bomb some countries. Her bloodlust is not getting quenched.
RTMon, 28 Oct 2019 17:17 UTC
© Getty Images
Members of the BRICS trade bloc Russia, India, and China have decided to connect their financial messaging systems to bypass the SWIFT international money transfer network.
Russia's financial messaging system SPFS will be linked with the Chinese cross-border interbank payment system CIPS. While India does not have a domestic financial messaging system yet, it plans to combine the Central Bank of Russia's platform with a domestic service that is in development.The new system is expected to work as a "gateway" model when messages on payments are transcoded in accordance with a certain financial system.
© NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty
In mid-March 2017, California congressman Devin Nunes, then Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), found out the FBI had obtained a warrant to spy on Donald Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. And they'd used the Steele dossier, opposition research paid for by the Clinton campaign, as evidence.
But Nunes and his committee couldn't say anything, not to the U.S. public, not even to fellow members of Congress. The FBI and DOJ had buried the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant, like so much of the anti-Trump operation, under the heading of classified intelligence.It marked a low point for Nunes' team. Shortly after, former DOJ prosecutor Kashyap Patel joined them. At first Patel's new colleagues didn't know what to make of him. As a New Yorker, Patel's style sometimes clashed with those of the easygoing Californians, southerners, and midwesterners who made up the HPSCI staff.
© Global Look Press / Zamir UsmanovA nested doll with the image of the Russian President Vladimir Putin and the US President Donald Trump
Remember the
Spinal Tap scene where the witless band member explains that because
their numbers go to 11 they can always get that little bit extra? Putin Derangement Syndrome went past 11 a long time ago: we need a whole new set of superlatives, "craziest" just won't do anymore.
After writing this
compendium of nonsense about Putin from Western sources in 2015, I ran a short series on Putin Derangement Syndrome; I gave up when
Putin Derangement Syndrome and Trump Derangement Syndrome merged into a crescendo of craziness, far past what I could have imagined. (And Trump Derangement Syndrome is also passed 11 - "
Why Ivanka Trump's new haircut should make us very afraid".)
In the past, American hysteria campaigns against the enemy-of-the-moment ended when their target did. Noriega went to jail, Milosevic died in jail, Hussein and Qadaffi were killed, bin Laden was killed, Aidid - but who remembers him? The frenzy built up and up and stopped at the end before it got to 11.
But Putin is still there and growing stronger by the moment. And the frenzy therefore has to go past 10, past 11 and ever upwards. One of the craziest (to say nothing of disgusting) things was this absurd cartoon from the (formerly) staid NYT. But that was a whole year ago.
No longer
bare chests, Aspergers, big fish, gunslinger walks - in 2015 they were laughing; today Putin has super powers. Two events sent it past 11. Somebody leaked e-mails from the DNC showing that it was rigging the nomination for Clinton and she lost a
99% certain election. Immediately, her campaign settled on blaming Russia for both.
That strategy had been set within twenty-four hours of her concession speech. [9 November 2016] Mook and Podesta assembled her communications team at the Brooklyn headquarters to engineer the case that the election wasn't entirely on the up-and-up. For a couple of hours, with Shake Shack containers littering the room, they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument. (From Shattered, quoted here.)
The bogus - bogus because most of the people on his team were part of the conspiracy and knew there was no collusion - Mueller investigation dragged on until - despite the endless "
bombshells" - it finally stopped. But the crazies insist... not guilty but...
not exonerated! And
Trumputin's principal conspiracist rants on.
RTMon, 28 Oct 2019 15:48 UTC
© Reuters / Alaa al-MarjaniIraqi youth watch the news of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi death, in Najaf, Iraq October 27, 2019
While Russia still has no independent confirmation that US forces have killed Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Donald Trump is due credit if they did, Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman has said.
"The news itself can't be taken negatively by the Russian authorities," Dmitry Peskov said.
"Indeed, our troops saw American planes and American drones in the area, which may have been on a mission there."Earlier, the Russian Defense Ministry cast doubt on Washington's claim of al-Baghdadi's death, saying there's no credible data to prove his demise. If confirmed, however, Trump's efforts should be recognized, Peskov believes.
If indeed the information about al-Baghdadi's elimination is confirmed, then we can talk about the US president's significant contribution to the fight against international terrorism.
Moscow's skepticism is not unfounded, seeing as how
rumors of al-Baghdadi's grave injury or death have surfaced repeatedly for the past four years, only to be later dispelled. Trump, however, has teased that some footage of his ultimate takedown at the hands of US troops could be released at some point.
Comment: There's little doubt at this point that
something took place. Locals saw the explosions and journalists have visited the site of operation, showing rubble of the destroyed building and bodies.
Whether or not Baghdadi was actually killed there is what is doubtful. All we have is the say-so of the military who were apparently able to do an on-the-spot DNA test on the shredded body parts using DNA they already had on file. Russian media are skeptical too:
As Abdel Bari Atwan
put it:
I have followed al-Qaida and ISIS closely as a journalist for a long time, and one thing they always do is issue official statements confirming the death of their commanders — if only to fulfil their religious obligation to inform the families, facilitate inheritance procedures and permit their wives to remarry if they choose. But unlike Bush Jr.'s administration, Obama's and Trump's never showed us pictures of their trophies. Their burial places are unknown. This suggests that they have something to hide, and we may not learn the truth about it for decades.
On the off chance that the U.S. military releases footage, a clear image of what appears to be Baghdadi fleeing and whimpering, as Trump put it, would at least go some way to confirming the story so far. Trump is apparently
considering releasing some footage, but we're not holding our breath that it will contain anything definitive:
"The question was, 'am I considering releasing video footage of the raid,' and we may take certain parts of it and release it. Yes", Trump said while boarding Air Force One on his way to Chicago.
To compound the absurdity, however, two US defense officials have said Baghdadi's body was
buried at sea (!), just like Osama. And no, it's not a joke.
Two Iraqi security officials told
Reuters that Ismael al-Ethawi, a close aide to Baghdadi, provided important information after he was arrested by the Turks and handed over to the Iraqis, apparently in February 2018:
"Ethawi gave valuable information which helped the Iraqi multi-security agencies team complete the missing pieces of the puzzle of Baghdadi's movements and places he used to hide," one of the Iraqi security officials said. "Ethawi gave us details on five men, including him, who were meeting Baghdadi inside Syria and the different locations they used," he told Reuters.
...
Ethawi, who holds a PHD in Islamic Sciences, was considered by Iraqi intelligence officials to be one of the leader's top five aides. He joined al Qaeda in 2006 and was arrested by U.S. forces in 2008 and jailed for four years, according to the Iraqi security officials.
Baghdadi later tasked Ethawi with key roles such as delivering religious instructions and the selection of Islamic State commanders. After the group largely collapsed in 2017, Ethawi fled to Syria with his Syrian wife.
Another turning point came earlier this year during a joint operation in which U.S., Turkish and Iraqi intelligence agents captured senior Islamic State leaders, including four Iraqis and one Syrian, the Iraqi security officials said.
"They gave us all the locations where they were meeting with Baghdadi inside Syria and we decided to coordinate with the CIA to deploy more sources inside these areas," said one of the Iraqi officials, who has close ties to multiple security agencies.
"In mid-2019 we managed to locate Idlib as the place where Baghdadi was moving from village to village with his family and three close aides," the official said.
Informants in Syria then spotted an Iraqi man wearing a checkered headdress in an Idlib marketplace and recognized him from a photograph, the official said. It was Ethawi, and they followed him to the home where Baghdadi was staying.
"We passed the details to the CIA and they used a satellite and drones to watch the location for the past five months," the official said.
Two days ago, Baghdadi left the location with his family for the first time, traveling by minibus to a nearby village.
"There it was his last moment to live," the official said.
The timeline they provide is incoherent. Ethawi was arrested by U.S. forces in 2008 until 2012. At some point he joins ISIS, then flees to Syria in 2017. Then, he's arrested in February 2018 and handed over to the Iraqis, only to be "spotted" in Idlib in "mid-2019"? The Reuters article continues:
Baghdadi was also on the run from local enemies in Syria. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the group formerly known as the Nusra Front and which dominates Idlib, had been mounting its own search for Baghdadi after receiving information he was in the area, according to a commander in an Idlib jihadist group.
...
According to the Idlib commander, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham recently captured another aide to Baghdadi known as Abu Suleiman al-Khalidi, one of three men seen sitting alongside Baghdadi in his last video message. The capture of Khalidi was "the key" in the search for Baghdadi, the commander said.
His comments raised the possibility that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which locals say is believed to have contacts with Turkish forces in northwest Syria, may have passed on what it learned to other intelligence agencies.
Baghdadi may have concluded that hiding in Idlib was his best hope after Islamic State was all but wiped out in Iraq and Syria. He could have blended in, while lax security and checkpoints operated by armed groups that rarely search vehicles increased his chances of survival, the commander said.
He said Baghdadi was believed to have been in Idlib for about six months, and that his main reason for being there was to try to hide. But he said Baghdadi was still seen as a major threat because his presence would have attracted supporters in an area where Islamic State has sleeper cells.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham fighters raided the town of Sarmin about two months ago after receiving information about Baghdadi being there, but he was not found, according to the commander.
CNN reports on another alleged source of information - this revelation also coming from the Iraq government:
One of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's closest collaborators, a relative through marriage, provided key information about the ISIS leader that helped lead to his capture, a senior Iraqi government official told CNN.
Mohammed Ali Sajet -- an ISIS member since 2015, who acted as a guide for Baghdadi -- was detained by Iraqi authorities about two months ago on the outskirts of the capital Baghdad.
A senior official with the Iraqi government told CNN that Sajet provided information about Baghdadi's possible location in Syria, as well as details about a courier that was working with the elusive leader.
"We followed the courier, a raid killed him and that is how we got his wife," said the senior government official. "He had documents that led to his wife."
The official said that the courier's wife led the Iraqis to another location, which had more documents pointing to Baghdadi's whereabouts.
"We give them (the Americans) a tip," said the official. "We used human intelligence and we get closer."
While the Iraqi source said the intelligence was central to the manhunt, multiple officials and countries have claimed to have provided information that led to Baghdadi's capture. It was likely a combination of intelligence gathering between several parties that resulted in Baghdadi's demise.
In an exclusive interview with Saudi-owned Al Arabiya TV station, Sajet said Baghdadi's "hiding tactics were excellent."
"We didn't expect this to happen. Even he didn't expect to be killed due to his security measures," he said, speaking to Al Arabiya from detention in Iraq.
"I met him in an area close to the Syrian-Iraqi border. His security was good. They were tending and herding sheep. He was there, hiding underground and there was a tent above him."
"Their movement was hard due to the tight grip of security forces on the area I saw him in," he added.
"He was talking about deteriorating security status due to the security forces. He wanted to change his location and didn't know how to."
Fadhil Abu-Ragheef, an Iraqi security expert, told CNN that Sajet gave information to the Iraqis, who shared it with the US and ultimately led them to Baghdadi's compound in Syria's northwestern Idlib province.
Sajet told Al Arabiya that another ISIS member told him he had secured a location in Idlib for Baghdadi.
The Iraqis began to gather more information about Baghdadi six months ago, when they captured a group of six ISIS members west of Anbar, according to Abu-Ragheef. Those six individuals led investigators to Sajet.
Some in the group were also related to Sajet by marriage, and were able to paint a picture for the intelligence services about the terror leader's movements. They would move in the desert and were responsible for bringing Baghdadi food, beverages and women. Sajet described the conditions at one of al-Baghdadi's hideouts to Al Arabiya.
"He was in an 8-meter-long underground tunnel with a width of 5 to 6 meters. It had a library, religious books, and the Quran and things of sort. It had lights and various things so the hiding situation was good," he said.
Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin told reporters there was "intense"
military coordination with the US before the Baghdadi operation:
"Our military and intelligence units were in contact with their American counterparts on this issue and they coordinated. Especially...the night when the operation was conducted, we can say there was intense diplomacy between our military authorities. A terrorist organisation nesting in Syria, near our border, or any other region, is not something we can accept", he stated.
And according to the SDF, a
second raid in Idlib yesterday resulted in the killing of an ISIS spokesman:
SDF Commander in Chief Mazloum Abdi said on Twitter that IS spokesman Abu Hassan al-Muhajir was "targeted" in a village near the town of Jarablus, near the border with Turkey, in a coordinated operation between SDF intelligence and the U.S. Army.
In a later post on Twitter, SDF spokesman Mustefa Bali said Muhajir had been killed.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based monitoring group, confirmed Muhajir's death, saying he was among five IS members who were killed in a U.S.-led operation backed by the SDF.
"The two U.S.-led operations have effectively disabled top [IS] leadership who were hiding" in northwestern Syria, Bali said, adding that "more still remain hiding in the same area."
For yesterday's coverage, see:
King Salman receives President Vladimir Putin, the Peacekeeper.
Thierry Meyssan underlines the extreme gravity, not of the US withdrawal from Syria, but of the collapse of the world's current landmarks. According to him, we are entering a short transition period, during which the current masters of the game, the "financial capitalists" - and those he refers to here have nothing to do with either original capitalism or the original bank - will be rejected in favour of the rules of law laid down by Russia in 1899.
It's a time that only happens once or twice a century. A new world order is emerging. All previous references disappear. Those who were doomed to grieve triumph, while those who ruled are thrown into hell.
The official statements and interpretations made by journalists clearly no longer correspond to the events that follow one another. Commentators must change their discourse as quickly as possible, overturn it in its entirety or be caught up in the whirlwind of history.
The main news of today was Zelensky's visit to the village of
Zolotoye and his communication with Ukrainian Nazis. The bulk of information resources claim that Zelensky tried to personally negotiate with the mutinous Ukrainian Nazis, but nothing transpired, and he embarrassed himself. Other sources claim it was the "last Chinese warning" to the Nazis. Others simply scoffed at the guarantor.
I have a completely different narrative. Zelensky often gets into funny stories and has worked as a clown all his life, that's true. But this doesn't mean he's a complete imbecile. You know, in detective novels, if you want to find a criminal, ask yourself "Who benefits?". So,
let's wonder why the whole president of the state was in the front-line village for two days.
RTSun, 27 Oct 2019 20:38 UTC
© Reuters / Axel SchmidtAlternative for Germany (AfD) member Armin-Paul Hampel and Bjoern Hoecke, AfD top candidate for the Thuringia state election react to exit polls
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) lost yet another regional election, coming behind both left-wing Linke and right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the eastern state of Thuringia.
It's not the first time in 2019 that Germany's ruling party has taken a hammering in local polls.
Merkel's CDU and its coalition partner, the left-wing Social Democrats (SPD) already saw their formerly safe lead in Saxony and Brandenburg eroded last month by the rise of the AfD.The AfD, which surged from nothing into third place in 2017's federal elections, took 23.8 percent of the vote in Thuringia, according to exit polls released Sunday. Merkel's CDU took 22.5 percent. The left-wing Linke won the state, taking 29.7 percent of the vote.
RTSun, 27 Oct 2019 16:01 UTC
© RTMaria Butina
Accused of spying and jailed in the US, Russian student and gun rights activist Maria Butina has told RT about her ordeal, from staring down a dozen armed FBI agents at her door to how Hollywood cliches served as proof of guilt.
Arrested in July 2018, Butina spent eight months in custody, most of it in solitary confinement, before eventually pleading guilty in December. Meanwhile US media telling juicy stories about her that later proved false.
"They just took some Hollywood clichés and made me the scapegoat," she said. "The color of my hair and my features served as proof of guilt. That's the way it should be, because we see it this way in the movies."
Comment: Butina also reflected on the manner of her
arrest:
"When I was arrested for the first time and put into a big black van, it all felt like a movie - a bad, ridiculous Hollywood blockbuster," she said.
Butina denied being a spy and insisted she just was a foreign student making friends. There was zero proof to the contrary and the charges were "bogus," she said. On top of that, the gun activist explained, the prosecution did not even bother to properly translate her tweets."The translation was completely horrendous. The phrase 'tech bordering on fantasy' was translated into English as 'secret equipment.'"You cannot translate it that way!"
The FBI questioned Butina for 52 hours, but according to her, the whole interrogation was "absolutely pointless." From the start, she said that she had no ties with the Russian government and the agents "quickly ran out of questions."
The activist said the FBI kept asking the same things about her activities over and over again because "they just couldn't believe that people can do good things for no special reason, simply because they believe in friendship between the countries and strive for people's right for self-protection." The lengthy interrogation was just for show, to make it look like the investigators "were doing something serious," while they had nothing.
The terrible treatment she received in the U.S.
prison system:
"The worst thing is the US Marshals Services where they humiliate you; forbid you from going to the toilet for 16 hours; deny you water or food," Butina said as she talked to RT and Sputnik news agency on a plane that was taking her from the US back to Moscow. After that a low-security prison in Tallahassee, Florida seemed like "paradise" for her as she was allowed to go for walks and got a lot better rations.
"I was just a stack of bones," she recalled, but daily jogging and other exercises helped a lot. "I had problems with my memory, but it returned to me. My eyesight also improved."
Butina recalled that just one day before she was to be released, a guard, who became unhappy with how the prisoners were executing their duties in the kitchen, warned them: "If you will do that again I will f**k each and every one of you."
When a guard is cursing at you in the most obscene words possible... It just shouldn't be like that. We're women after all.
At first, the relations with fellow inmates were "tense" after she was transferred from Alexandria to a correctional facility in Tallahassee because "everybody watched the news" where she was portrayed as a villain, the 30-year-old recalled.
But that changed quickly when people got to know her. The activist said that a newspaper article in her defense was also passed on inside the prison and after some time "even some guards were telling me: 'It seems that they lied to us on this one.'"
"We had good relations with the other inmates," Butina said, also adding that many in prison simply called her "Russia," instead of using her real name.
The activist worked in the kitchen in Tallahassee and also volunteered as a math teacher, training inmates for the GED exam. She said she was proud that all of her students passed.
The US justice system is "very generous" at handing out sentences as "people remain in prison for a long time over the smallest violations. They are just taking their lives away from the girls. No correction is happening, while behind bars."
© SAEED KHAN/AFP/Getty ImagesMalaysians protest in support for Palestine in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on 1 June 2010
Malaysian prime minister,
Mahathir Mohammad, announced on Friday that his country is to open an accredited embassy to Palestine,
Anadolu News Agency reported.
"We know that Israel will not allow Malaysia to open an embassy in the Occupied Territory. As such, we will open the embassy in Jordan," Mohammad announced.
Mohammad revealed that the embassy would be accredited to Palestine, and it would more freely facilitate the extension of aid to Palestinians.
Addressing the 18th summit of Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in Azerbaijan,
Mohammad criticised the silence of the international community for "doing nothing" against Israeli actions.
Comment: See also:
And check out SOTT radio's:
Comment: Elsewhere, Slick Willy himself is also putting out feelers...
She has also been appearing for interviews on lots of evening TV shows...
Over at The Graun, they're wetting themselves at the prospect: