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Evil Rays

Did NSA kill the phone spying program exposed by Snowden... to replace it with something better? Of course


RT
Wed, 06 Mar 2019 20:58 UTC
cell phone tower
© Pixabay / markusspiske
The National Security Agency has reportedly ended the intrusive spying program that combs through Americans' calls and texts and won't be seeking to renew it, begging the question - what are they doing now that's more effective?

The secretive agency hasn't used the controversial system - the descendant of the 'Stellar Wind' metadata collection program exposed by NSA contractor Edward Snowden in 2013 - in months, according to Luke Murry, national security adviser to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who told the Lawfare podcast that the administration wouldn't even bother renewing its congressional authority for the program when it expires at the end of the year.

The NSA program - which reportedly had never thwarted a single terrorist attack - was essentially mothballed last June, according to Murry. Which, many believe, would only indicate the agency has been busy with something else for the last eight months.
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Telephone

SOTT Focus: Russian Trolls Strike Again! Regime Change Operator Elliot Abrams Blabs US Venezuela Plans in Prank Call


Sputnik
Wed, 06 Mar 2019 20:38 UTC
Elliott Abrams
© Associated Press/Manuel Balce CenetaElliott Abrams talks to reporters after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo named the hawkish former Republican official to handle U.S. policy toward Venezuela during a news conference at the State Department in Washington, Friday, Jan. 25, 2019
Vovan and Lexus, Russian telephone pranksters known for their trolling of politicians from around the world, have struck again, targeting US special representative for Venezuela Elliott Abrams to find out more about the US-backed effort to unseat that country's legitimate government. Sputnik got ahold of the full audio from the talks.


Comment: Oh boy, another impressive scalp from those two!


Posing as Swiss President Ueli Maurer, who also serves as the country's finance minister, the pranksters contacted Abrams on two occasions - in mid-February and early March, speaking to him for over 23 minutes about Swiss policy on the ongoing effort to freeze the Venezuelan government's assets as part of broader plans to replace President Nicolas Maduro with US-backed opposition leader Juan Guaido.


Comment: TROLL-LOL-LOL!!!


The highlight of the pair of conversations was when 'Maurer' asked Abrams about the chances of Washington following through with its threat to use military force to topple Maduro. Here is what he revealed:

Comment: Truly amazing. The pathocrats have become a global laughing stock!

More from RT:
According to them, they told Guaido's envoy that Maduro keeps his money in the Fund Nurlan Baidilda (which actually exists and is owned by a Russian citizen). Vecchio took this information as truth and later shared it with Bloomberg and posted it on Twitter.

Vovan and Lexus are supreme trollsters!

'Plan Venezuela' is literally turning into a joke.

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Broom

SOTT Focus: The Orientalism of Western Russophobia

Max Parry
Sott.net
Wed, 06 Mar 2019 18:48 UTC
putin ghengis khan
Western russophobia, or 'eurasiaphobia': Wall Street Journal depiction of Vladimir Putin as Ghengis Khan, July 2018
Last year marked the 40th anniversary of the publication of Edward W. Said's pioneering book, Orientalism, as well as fifteen years since the Palestinian-American intellectual's passing. To bid farewell to such an important scholar shortly after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, which Said fiercely criticized until his dying breath before succumbing to leukemia, made an already tremendous loss that much more impactful. His seminal text forever reoriented political discourse by painstakingly examining the overlooked cultural imperialism of colonial history in the West's construction of the so-called Orient. Said meticulously interrogated the Other-ing of the non-Western world in the humanities, arts, and anthropology down to its minutiae. As a result, the West was forced to confront not just its economic and political plunder but the long-established cultural biases filtering the lens through which it viewed the East which shaped its dominion over it.

His writings proved to be so influential that they laid the foundations for what is now known as post-colonial theory. This became an ironic category as the author himself would strongly reject any implication that the subjugation of developing countries is a thing of the past. How apropos that the Mandatory Palestine-born writer's death came in the midst of the early stages of the 'War on Terror' that made clear Western imperialism is very much alive. Despite its history of ethnic cleansing, slavery, and war, the United States had distinguished itself from Britain and France in that it had never established its own major colonies within the Middle East, Asia or North Africa in the heart of the Orient. According to Said, it was now undergoing this venture as the world's sole remaining superpower following the end of the Cold War with the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
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Stop

Senators Paul and Udall introduce bill to end the Afghanistan War

Ellen Mitchell
The Hill
Tue, 05 Mar 2019 01:56 UTC
Senators Paul/Udall
© Daily Kos, CBS NewsSenators Tom Udall (D-NM) and Rand Paul (R-Ky)
Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Tom Udall (D-N.M.) on Tuesday introduced a bill that would end the nearly two-decade-long Afghanistan War.

The 2019 American Forces Going Home After Noble Service Act would have the United States declare victory in Afghanistan and set a 45-day deadline for a plan to withdraw all U.S. forces within a year, according to a statement accompanying the bill's text. It would also set a "framework for political reconciliation to be implemented by Afghans."

Additionally, the legislation would require the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) to be repealed at the end of the withdrawal. Passed in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the AUMF has come under political scrutiny in recent years as it is still used to bypass Congress in justifying military operations against terrorist groups.

And the bill would have the federal government pay, within one year, a $2,500 bonus to the more than 3 million military service members who have served in the war - a one-time cost of about $7 billion. That bonus would be "an immediate savings of over 83% when compared to the current yearly costs," the statement says.

Comment: An interview with Senators Paul and Udall on this proposal begins at 2:37.



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Arrow Down

Havana slams Trump for permitting lawsuits against Cuban firms as an 'arbitrary and unacceptable threat'


RT
Tue, 05 Mar 2019 04:44 UTC
Trump CubaUSflags
© Express NewsUS President Donald Trump
US President Donald Trump, seemingly punishing Havana for supporting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, has tightened the trade embargo in a way that would open [a] way for Americans to sue government-linked Cuban companies.

The measure takes the unprecedented step of permitting lawsuits against Cuban companies using properties confiscated after Fidel Castro took power in 1959, though it limits such suits to about 200 businesses and government agencies that are already subject to "enhanced" sanctions due to their close ties with the Cuban government.

"I strongly reject the State Department's announcement to authorize lawsuits under Title III of the Helms-Burton act, against a list of Cuban companies arbitrarily sanctioned by the Trump administration," Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez tweeted, calling the beefed-up sanctions an "unacceptable threat against the world."

The move activates part of a 1996 Helms-Burton Act, which if fully unleashed could potentially trigger a barrage of international lawsuits - against the US, by allies who aren't interested in curtailing their business ventures in Cuba in order to conform to an embargo even Trump's predecessor saw as a Cold War relic. The Helms-Burton Act was designed to "pressure" Cuba into "peaceful democratic change" - a contradiction not unlike the sanctions recently passed against sanction-choked Venezuela.

Comment: More from NBC News, 3/4/2019:
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a 30-day "partial waiver" to a law known as the Libertad or Helms-Burton Act, allowing U.S. citizens to bring lawsuits in U.S. federal court against about 200 Cuban entities on a "restricted list" that have been subject to U.S. sanctions. The list includes entities under the control of Cuban military intelligence or security forces, but foreign companies invested in the island will be protected against such suits - at least for now.

According to research from the U.S. Cuba Trade & Economic Council, a nonprofit that promotes trade with Cuba, companies in 20 countries could face lawsuits from owners who have certified claims to confiscated property. The list includes numerous U.S. and European airlines and cruise lines, and major hotel chains such as Spain's NH Hotel Group and Melia Hotels International. There are also concerns that both the major port in Havana and the international airport are built at least partially on land owned before the revolution by Cubans who later emigrated to the U.S.

Exempting companies in the U.S. and allied countries will help prevent a backlash from companies like Marriott International, which has started expanding into Cuba since the two countries restored relations under President Barack Obama. It could also avert a new tension point with Europe, where countries are still bristling from the Trump administration's threats to sanction companies that maintain business in Iran.

Pompeo told the U.N. Security Council in January. "Let's be crystal clear: The foreign power meddling in Venezuela today is Cuba." Cuba has adamantly denied that claim, with Rodriguez, the foreign minister, challenging the United States to provide proof. He said the roughly 20,000 Cubans in Venezuela are all civilians.


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X

Iranian FM: Israel's habitual lying is psychological warfare; Iran-Russia ties are strong

Joaquin Flores
FRN
Tue, 05 Mar 2019 00:00 UTC
Bahram Qassemi
© Pars TodayIranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, Bahram Ghasemi, explained to reporters that media reports which tout the line that Israel is working with Russia to withdraw Iranian forces from Syria, are false. Some of these reports even find their way into Russian state-run media outlets such as RT and Sputnik, raising questions about the effectiveness or aims of its possibly unchecked or unsupervised news-writers, critics of Israeli media efforts have noted.

"Iran's ties with Moscow are strong and we are always in touch and consult with each other," the ministry spokesman told reporters in Tehran, who disregarded the suggestions that Russia was working against Syria's sovereign right to have Iranian military and strategic assistance in its war against U.S-Israeli sponsored terrorism.

On a visit last week to Moscow where he met Russian President Vladimir Putin, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressed the Jewish state would "not allow the military entrenchment of Iran in Syria".

Comment: See also:

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Light Sabers

'Vile anti-Semitic' Ilhan Omar row shows pitfalls of US identity politics


RT
Wed, 06 Mar 2019 20:17 UTC
Benjamin Netanyahu
© Global Look Press / Ron Sachs
In a story that perfectly illustrates the perils of runaway identity politics, the historic-first congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) is facing a rebuke in the House over "anti-Semitic" comments about the Israel lobby.

The Democrat-majority House is expected to vote Wednesday on a resolution condemning anti-Semitism. It is unknown as of yet if it will specifically name Omar, but there is little doubt it is aimed squarely at her recent comments, which Republicans and many fellow Democrats have denounced as unacceptably anti-Jewish.

Omar's sin, so to speak, was to "talk about the political influence in this country that says it is OK to push for allegiance to a foreign country," as she put it, speaking at an event in Washington, DC, last Wednesday.

Just two weeks prior, Omar came under fire for criticizing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its influence on US politics. She apologized following some outrage, but her apology was deemed not apologetic enough. While Democrats have called out Republicans for racism and Islamophobia over their attacks on Omar, that has done little to resolve the Israel controversy within the party.
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Footprints

'Cold feet': Christopher Steele backs out of rare public appearance

Chuck Ross
The Daily Caller
Mon, 04 Mar 2019 03:27 UTC
Christopher Steele
© PA images via Getty ImagesChristopher Steele
Former British spy Christopher Steele is backing out of a public appearance before a pro-democracy group, a move which comes in the wake of congressional testimony that undercuts some of the core allegations that the former British spy makes in his infamous anti-Trump dossier.

According to Politico, Steele was scheduled to speak by video at an event hosted next week by the Renew Democracy Initiative, a pro-democracy group founded by chess master Garry Kasparov. But the former MI6 officer cancelled the appearance after getting "cold feet," according to Anne Applebaum, a Washington Post columnist who is moderating the panel on which Steele was to appear.

The event would have been Steele's first public remarks in nearly two years, since just after BuzzFeed News published the dossier.

Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen undercut one of dossier's most serious allegations during testimony last Wednesday before the House Oversight and Reform Committee. Cohen denied, under oath, that he has visited Prague or the Czech Republic. Steele alleged that Cohen visited Prague in August 2016 to meet with Kremlin officials to arrange secret payments to hackers who stole emails from the DNC and Clinton campaign.

Comment: See also:

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Dig

Syria: Russian DM finds 300 fresh graves near Rukban refugee camp


Sputnik
Tue, 05 Mar 2019 19:45 UTC
Rukban camp
© AP/Raad AdaylehRukban refugee camp
The Russian Defense Ministry said on Tuesday that the satellite images had shown 300 fresh graves near the fence of the Rukban refugee camp located on the Syrian territory controlled by the United States.

According to the ministry, the camp is surrounded by a ditch and a fence with the US-controlled militants refusing to let refugees leave the facility.

"In fact, the camp has long time ago lost its status turning into a reservation with forcibly kept hostages. A cemetery with 300 fresh graves is found at the southern side at the fence of the camp," the ministry's statement said.

Comment: See also:

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Boat

France: Its only aircraft carrier sets sail for the Mediterranean 'to fight ISIS'


RT
Tue, 05 Mar 2019 16:52 UTC
French flagship
© AFP/Christophe SimonFrench Navy's flagship carrier Charles de Gaulle sails out of the port of Toulon, March 5, 2019.
France's nuclear aircraft carrier, Charles de Gaulle, has been dispatched on a lengthy mission, following repairs. It is set to battle remnants of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) and partake in several multinational drills.

The aircraft carrier departed for the eastern Mediterranean on Tuesday from the southern French port city of Toulon. The flagship is accompanied by several other surface vessels and a nuclear attack submarine.

The first deployment of the ship, after 18 months of repairs, and five of sea trials, was marked quite pompously, with French Defense Minister Florence Parly appearing on the carrier in person to say farewell to its crew.

The minister lauded the carrier as an "instrument for cooperation, which allows France to shine throughout the world" and insisted that the deployment will make a valuable contribution to the fight against IS.

Comment: See also:

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