Puppet MastersS


Cell Phone

Missing Strzok-Page text messages were destroyed by the DOJ before the IG could review them

Bre Payton
The Federalist
Thu, 13 Dec 2018 00:00 UTC
Strzok/Cellphone
© CNBC.com/Tennessee Star/KJN
The Department of Justice wiped text messages between former FBI employees Lisa Page and Peter Strozk from their cell phones before the Office of the Inspector General could review them, a new report from the DOJ watchdog reveals.

Page and Strozk's involvement with special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation has been heavily scrutinized after it was revealed they had sent numerous anti-Trump text messages back and forth to one another. Mueller has been tasked with looking into whether or not Donald Trump and his campaign associates coordinated with Russian officials to steal the 2016 election away from Hillary Clinton.

The 11-page report reveals that almost a month after Strzok was removed from Mueller's team, his government-issued iPhone was wiped clean and restored to factory settings by another individual working in Mueller's office. The special counsel's Record's Officer told investigators that "she determined it did not contain records that needed to be retained."

"She noted in her records log about Strzok's phone: 'No substantive texts, notes or reminders,'" the report states.

Comment: "Now you see 'em, now you don't..." Who was instructed to do what by whom?

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Attention

The federal judge overseeing Michael Flynn's sentencing found evidence FBI created multiple 302 summaries

Margot Cleveland
The Federalist
Thu, 13 Dec 2018 00:00 UTC
Flynn
© Reuters/Jonathan ErnstGeneral Michael Flynn leaves US District Court
On Tuesday, attorneys for Michael Flynn filed a sentencing memorandum and letters of support for the former Army lieutenant general in federal court. The sentencing memorandum reveals for the first time concrete evidence that the FBI created multiple 302 interview summaries of Flynn's questioning by now-former FBI agent Peter Strzok and a second unnamed agent, reported to be FBI Special Agent Joe Pientka.

Further revelations may be forthcoming soon following an order entered late yesterday by presiding judge Emmet Sullivan, directing the special counsel's office to file with the court any 302s or memorandum relevant to Flynn's interview.

Flynn, who served briefly as President Donald Trump's national security advisor, pleaded guilty more than a year ago to making false statements to federal investigators during a January 24, 2017 interview. During that interview, Strzok and (presumably) Pientka questioned Flynn about a telephone conversation the Trump advisor had with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

While Flynn's sentencing memorandum methodically laid out the case for a low-level sentence of one-year probation, footnote 23 dropped a bomb, revealing that the agents' 302 summary of his interview was dated August 22, 2017. As others have already noted, the August 22, 2017 date is a "striking detail" because that puts the 302 report "nearly seven months after the Flynn interview." When added to facts already known, this revelation takes on a much greater significance.

Comment: See also:

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Arrow Down

China to suspend added tariff on US autos

David Reid
CNBC
Fri, 14 Dec 2018 00:00 UTC
chinese carworkers
© China Daily/ReutersEmployees assembling SAID Volkswagen in Urumqi, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, China.
China has said it will temporarily halt its additional 25 percent tariff on vehicles made in the United States. The relief will last for three months staring from January 1, as part of an agreed truce between Beijing and Washington.

The Chinese finance ministry said on its website that China will suspend 25 percent tariffs on 144 vehicles and auto parts originating from the U.S. and 5 percent tariffs on an additional 67 auto items.

U.S. President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping agreed to lessen the impact of trade tariffs for the first 90 days of 2019, following a dinner in Argentina on December 1.

The U.S. has slapped a 25 percent tariff on finished vehicles built in China and 10 percent on most auto parts. China's 40 percent tariff on U.S. car imports will now reduce to 15 percent for 90 days.

That brings the auto tariffs in China back down to the same level as before the point that the two countries began imposing tit-for-tat levies.

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Target

Erdogan: 'Cleanse them'; remove Kurdish militias or Turkey will send troops


RT
Fri, 14 Dec 2018 13:10 UTC
Erdogan/US military
© Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan REUTERS/Umit Bektas; (R) FILE PHOTO: American army vehicles drive north of Manbij. Reuters/Rodi SaidTurkish President Tayyip Erdogan REUTERS/Umit Bektas; (R) FILE PHOTO: American army vehicles drive north of Manbij.
The US must have Kurdish militias withdraw from the Syrian town of Manbij, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday, otherwise he will order his troops to take the key settlement.

The threat, delivered during a speech in Istanbul, ramps up Erdogan's rhetoric targeting the YPG militias. Earlier on Wednesday, he publicly complained that the US, which support the Kurds in northeastern Syria, is failing to deliver on its promise to clear Manbij of Kurdish fighters. Ankara considers Syrian Kurdish paramilitaries as an extension of the Turkey-based anti-government guerrillas and brands the YPG as terrorists.

"Manbij is a place where Arabs live, but they have surrendered the area to the terror organization," the Turkish president told a judiciary conference. "Now we are saying that you should cleanse, remove them, or else we will enter Manbij. I am speaking very clearly."

Comment: More from Sputnik:
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and its component, the People's Protection Units (YPG), have promised to fight "to the death" in the event of a new Turkish operation in northeastern Syria, SDF spokeswoman Jihan Sheikh Ahmed told Sputnik on Friday.

"We will defend the north and the east of Syria to the death," Ahmed said commenting on the SDF response on a possible operation.

The spokeswoman added that the SDF would not like to see a situation similar to what happened earlier this year in Afrin, where Ankara conducted a military operation.

Later in the day, Syria's main Kurdish parties and other allied groups issued a joint statement on the issue, calling Turkish plans a "declaration of war" and calling on world powers to prevent an assault on the region.

"All the forces in the north and east Syria...are asked to agree on strategies to confront this aggression," the statement read.

The statements followed Thursday's media reports, saying that the Turkish military was reinforcing troops stationed in the province of Kilis on the Syrian border with armoured vehicles. These reports emerged after a statement made by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday that Ankara would launch a new military operation in Syria within days to free the east of the Euphrates from the US-backed Kurdish militia.
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Stop

Truce agreement achieved for Yemen's lifeline port city of Hudaydah


RFE/RL
Thu, 13 Dec 2018 14:05 UTC
Port HudaydahYemen
© Abduljabbar Zeyad/ReutersPort Hudaydah, Yemen
Warring sides in Yemen's conflict have agreed to a cease-fire for the key port city of Hudaydah.

The delegations from the Yemeni government and the Shi'ite Huthi rebels reached agreement on December 13 at the end of UN-brokered talks in Sweden aimed at ending nearly four years of civil war.

The Red Sea port city of Hudaydah is the main lifeline for two-thirds of the country, and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said the cease-fire was crucial to getting aid to millions of Yemenis.

The agreement will see "a mutual redeployment of forces from the port and the city and the establishment of a governorate-wide cease-fire," Guterres said.
"The UN will play a leading role in the port and this will facilitate the humanitarian access and the flow of goods to the civilian population. And it will improve the living conditions for millions of Yemenis. The agreement could "be a starting point for peace and for ending [the] humanitarian crisis in Yemen."
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Smoking

Totalitarian hell: Sweden votes to extend smoking ban to most public places


Daily Mail, UK
Thu, 13 Dec 2018 10:31 UTC
Smoking ban in Sweden
© Shutterstock/Zitke
Sweden is banning outdoor smoking in certain public places, including playgrounds and train station platforms.

In a 142-120 vote on Wednesday, the Riksdagen extended the smoking ban as of July 1, 2019.

Smoking in outdoor restaurants and entrances to booths for smokers will also be banned.

In Sweden, smoking is currently allowed in designated smoking areas in most workplaces and public places.

Official figures show only 11 per cent of the Swedish population of 10 million smoked daily in 2016, with about 10 percent smoking occasionally.

Comment: For the truth about tobacco and why the PTB want to stamp out smoking, see:

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Vader

AFRICOM: The Empire's neocolonial occupation force

Eric Draitser
Counterpunch
Tue, 11 Dec 2018 19:06 UTC
africom logo
© Blleininger/CC BY 2.0
Amid the George HW Bush imperial death-orgy, the endless saga of Midtown Mussolini's daily news cycle, the seemingly unprecedented political upsurge in France, and countless other show-stopping news stories, you likely missed three very sad, yet revealing, incidents out of the Sahel region of West-Central Africa.

First, on November 18th, a massive offensive against a Nigerian military base by a faction of the Boko Haram terror group known as the Islamic State West Africa (ISWAP) killed upwards of 100 soldiers. The surprise attack came at a time when Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, who famously (and repeatedly) has declared victory against Boko Haram and terrorism, has faced a crisis of legitimacy, falling approval ratings, and an impending election in early 2019.

Just days later, on November 22nd, while most Americans were gathering with family and eating turkey on Thanksgiving, a contingent of about 50 armed militants kidnapped at least 15 girls in Niger, just outside a town in the Diffa region, near the border with Nigeria. While Boko Haram did not officially claim responsibility, many have attributed the action to the terror group, or one of its factions, given their propensity to use kidnappings for propaganda and fundraising.

Comment:

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Binoculars

Best of the Web: British Security Service Infiltration, the Integrity Initiative and the Institute for Statecraft

Craig Murray
craigmurray.org.uk
Thu, 13 Dec 2018 18:15 UTC
two temple place
The British state can maintain its spies' cover stories for centuries. Look up Eldred Pottinger, who for 180 years appears in scores of British history books - right up to and including William Dalrymple's Return of the King - as a British officer who chanced to be passing Herat on holiday when it came under siege from a partly Russian-officered Persian army, and helped to organise the defences. In researching Sikunder Burnes, I discovered and published from the British Library incontrovertible and detailed documentary evidence that Pottinger's entire journey was under the direct instructions of, and reporting to, British spymaster Alexander Burnes. The first historian to publish the untrue "holiday" cover story, Sir John Kaye, knew both Burnes and Pottinger and undoubtedly knew he was publishing lying propaganda. Every other British historian of the First Afghan War (except me and latterly Farrukh Husain) has just followed Kaye's official propaganda.

Some things don't change. I was irresistibly reminded of Eldred Pottinger just passing Herat on holiday, when I learnt how highly improbable left wing firebrand Simon Bracey-Lane just happened to be on holiday in the United States with available cash to fund himself, when he stumbled into the Bernie Sanders campaign.
Recent university graduate Simon Bracey-Lane took it even further. Originally from Wimbledon in London, he was inspired to rejoin the Labour party in September when Corbyn was elected leader. But by that point, he was already in the US on holiday. So he joined the Sanders campaign, and never left.

"I had two weeks left and some money left, so I thought, Fuck it, I'll make some calls for Bernie Sanders," he explains. "I just sort of knew Des Moines was the place, so I just turned up at their HQ, started making phone calls, and then became a fully fledged field organiser."
It is, to say the least, very interesting indeed that just a year later the left wing, "Corbyn and Sanders supporting" Bracey-Lane is hosting a very right wing event, "Cold War Then and Now", for the shadowy neo-con Institute for Statecraft, at which an entirely unbalanced panel of British military, NATO and Ukrainian nationalists extolled the virtues of re-arming against Russia.
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Clock

Neocon Bolton says no Trump-Putin meeting while Russia holds Ukrainian ships and sailors


RFE/RL
Fri, 14 Dec 2018 18:03 UTC
A Ukrainian serviceman stands on board a Coast Guard ship in the Sea of Azov.
© Yevhen Maloletka / APA Ukrainian serviceman stands on board a Coast Guard ship in the Sea of Azov.
U.S. national-security adviser John Bolton says there will be no meeting between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin while Moscow still holds the Ukrainian ships and sailors it seized near Crimea.

"I don't see circumstances in the foreseeable future where such a meeting could take place until the ships and the crews are released," Bolton told reporters on December 13.

Russia seized three Ukrainian Navy ships on November 25 and arrested 24 sailors in the Kerch Strait that links the Black Sea with the Sea of Azov.

Moscow alleged that the vessels had illegally entered Russian territorial waters near the Crimea region, which Russia occupied and annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

Ukraine and most UN member states do not recognize the annexation.

Comment: Says the guy whose nation illegally kidnaps, incarcerates and tortures foreigners in total contravention of international law. Guantanamo Bay, Bolton.

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Bulb

Latin American Marshall Plan: Mexico's Obrador has a solution to the border crisis

Patrick Lawrence
Consortium News
Fri, 14 Dec 2018 17:47 UTC
López Obrador's $20 billion development plan gives Washington a chance to help rectify the historic damage it's done to the living conditions of people in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.

Immigrant caravan from Mexico
With President Donald Trump on Tuesday threatening to shut down the government if he doesn't get his wall, it's good that someone in a position of authority actually has a workable solution to the migrant crisis festering on the Mexican border with the U.S.

The day after Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office as Mexico's president on Dec. 1, his foreign minister flew to Washington to propose a $20 billion development plan to make Central America a place for people to stay rather than flee. Three-quarters of the money would help create jobs and fight poverty. The rest would pay for border control and law enforcement.

The plan would be funded by Mexico, the U.S. and the three Central American that produce the most refugees and migrants, according to the size of their economies. The U.S. would pay most, which seems just given the decades of support-including millions in military assistance and police training-that Washington offered corrupt, anti-democratic dictators who oversaw the impoverishment of Central America. In addition, the U.S. backed the 2009 coup in Honduras that has directly led to an influx of refugees streaming towards the U.S. border.

At last there is a plan that addresses the causes, and not just the symptoms of Central America's migrant and refugee crisis: poverty, unemployment, drug trafficking, gang violence, police corruption, the world's highest murder rates. At last an implicit assertion that the U.S. bears some responsibility-and arguably the largest share-for the unlivable conditions of many Guatemalans, Hondurans and Salvadorans appears to be at hand.
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