Puppet MastersS


Briefcase

DOJ says federal judge ruling to block asylum restrictions 'absurd' & will be appealed

el salvador migrant flag
© Reuters / Hannah McKayA migrant from El Salvador making his way to the US border crossing in Tijuana, Mexico, November 20, 2018
The Trump administration is pushing back on the decision by a federal judge in California to block asylum restrictions put in place to deal with caravans of migrants that have arrived on the US-Mexican border.

"It is absurd that a set of advocacy groups can be found to have standing to sue to stop the entire federal government from acting so that illegal aliens can receive a government benefit to which they are not entitled," the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a joint statement on Tuesday, hours after a federal judge in San Francisco issued a month-long injunction against the policy, saying it violated federal law.

Bad Guys

The only regime change really needed should be made in Washington

pompeo James Jeffrey
© U.S. Department of State/ flickrSecretary Pompeo officiates the Swearing-In Ceremony for Ambassador James F. Jeffrey.
One of the things to look forward to in the upcoming holiday season is the special treats that one is allowed to sample. Fruitcake and nuts are Thanksgiving and Christmas favorites. They usually come in tins or special packages but it seems that this season some of the nuts have escaped and have fled to obtain sanctuary from the Trump Administration.

Currently, there is certainly a wide range of nuts available on display in the West Wing. There is the delicate but hairy Bolton, which has recently received the coveted "Defender of Israel" award, and also the robust Pompeo, courageously bucking the trend to overeat during the holidays by telling the Iranian people that they should either surrender or starve to death. And then there is the always popular Haley, voting audaciously to give part of Syria to Israel as a holiday treat.

Arrow Up

Has a possible ray of hope appeared in the relationship between the US and China?

XiTrump
© UnknownChinese President Xi Jinping • US President Donald Trump
The New Eastern Outlook has been covering the current shape and transformation of Sino-American relations on a regular basis. This is quite understandable as the discussion involves one of the aspects of the global political game that impacts the development of the situation in not only the Indo-Pacific, but the entire world.

This topic was last reported on one month ago, and at the time the outlook on the actual state of the relationship between the two leading nations was, at best, not optimistic.

The impact of the trade war, which had begun in earnest, is compounded by the latest tensions in the South China Sea, caused by the dangerously close maneuvers initiated by US and Chinese warships on 30 September. A few days later, the Vice President of the United States, Mike Pence, referring to the latest incident, confirmed the US military's long-term intention to ignore PRC's claims of dominance in vast swathes of and islands in the South China Sea.

As expected, Beijing's reaction towards the decision (also made by the US at the end of September) to sell Taiwan components for its jet fighters for $330 million was negative. This is the second move, of this nature, made by the current US administration. A year earlier the United States signed an agreement with Taiwan to supply it with various U.S.-produced arms worth $1.4 billion.

Comment: Is it a pullback for a scheme never intended to go this far? Or one not working out as planned? Lowering tensions between superpowers would be a welcomed sign.


Heart - Black

The 'resistance' struggles for justification in Trump's prosecution of Assange

Assange
© Associated PressJulian Assange
Ever since suspicions were confirmed that the Trump administration is indeed working to prosecute and imprison WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for publishing authentic documents, the so-called "Resistance" has been struggling to explain exactly why it is so enthusiastically supportive of that agenda. And when I say struggling, I am being very, very generous.

When news broke that a court document copy-paste error had inadvertently exposed the fact that the Trump administration is pursuing an agenda which experts of diverse political persuasions agree would have devastating effects on the freedom of the press, #Resistance pundit and DC think tank operative Neera Tanden responded by tweeting, "Never mess with karma". As of this writing if you do a Twitter search for the words "Assange" and "karma" together, you will come up with countless Democratic Party loyalists using that concept to justify their support for a Trump administration assault on the press that is infinitely more dangerous than the president being mean to Jim Acosta.

The trouble with that of course is that "karma", as far as observable reality is concerned, is not an actual thing. It's a Hindu religious concept that is supported by no more factual evidence than the Roman Catholic claim that a priest literally turns bread and wine into the body and blood of a Nazarene carpenter who died thousands of years ago. A Democratic pundit using the concept of "karma" to justify enthusiastic support for Trump's fascistic attack on press freedoms is exactly the same as a Republican pundit using "God wills it" to justify the existence of poverty, and it is just as intellectually honest.

But it's also the best argument these people have got.

Comment: For the Greenwald article, go here:
Prosecution of Assange bodes grave threats to freedom of the press - Obama DOJ consensus


Star of David

Israeli sources: Hamas in possession of 'game-changing' missiles

Gate Gaza Strip
© ALRAY
An Israeli website known for its close links to the regime's military intelligence services has admitted that the Palestinian resistance movement of Hamas is now possessing "game-changing" missiles that could hit targets in Israel with considerable ease and precision.

The Debka file said, in a report on Saturday, that its sources had identified the type of modern missiles used by Hamas in recent attacks on the Israeli-occupied territories that inflicted considerable damage and casualties on the regime and forced the Israeli government to accept a ceasefire with the Palestinians.

It said, according to Al Ray Palestinian Media Agency, that the missiles were of the 333mm-caliber type and had a medium range of 11 kilometers. The report added that the missiles were capable of destroying Israel's "artillery emplacements, Iron Dome batteries, armored force concentrations - whether over ground or in trenches, as well as combat engineering equipment and command centers".

"It is not launched from stationary batteries, but from any combat 4×4 vehicle or jeep, each of which carries two rockets," said the report, adding that the main advantage of the missiles was its mobility which allowed Hamas to fire them from any area in the Gaza Strip without Israeli radars noticing them.

Comment: Finally a strategic advantage for the Palestinian resistance. Will Israel be as bold and brazen, or more so?


Cell Phone

Text messages support Roger Stone's claims regarding Wikileaks backchannel

Randy Credico/Roger Stone
© SuperteaseRandy Credico • Roger Stone
  • New text messages show that Roger Stone learned about WikiLeaks' plans to release Clinton-related emails through Randy Credico.
  • The messages, which Stone's lawyers extracted from an old phone on Wednesday, back up Stone's claims about how he learned of WikiLeaks' plans. The messages severely undercut Credico's denials that he was a source for Stone.
  • Robert Mueller has been investigating whether Stone had advance knowledge of WikiLeaks' plans to release emails stolen from John Podesta.
Text messages released on Wednesday appear to support Trump confidant Roger Stone's testimony that a New York radio show host was his source for information about WikiLeaks' plans to release information damaging to Hillary Clinton's campaign.

"Julian Assange has kryptonite on Hillary," Randy Credico wrote to Stone on Aug. 27, 2016, according to text messages that Stone provided to The Daily Caller News Foundation.

"You are not going to drag my name into this are you," Credico wrote on Sept. 29, 2016, suggesting that he was worried that Stone would identify him as his source for public claims he was making about WikiLeaks' plans.

"[B]ig news Wednesday," Credico wrote on Oct. 1, 2016, days before WikiLeaks began releasing emails stolen from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. "Now pretend u don't know me."

Credico also suggested in the texts that his source for some information about WikiLeaks was one of the group's lawyers, who he said was one of his "best friends." Stone has long claimed that the lawyer, Margaret Ratner Kunstler, was a source for Credico.

NBC News first reported details of the text exchanges.


Comment: See also:


USA

Pentagon encourages enhanced dialogue between US and Russian troops in Syria

US soldier/flag
© AP/APTV
US Department of Defense spokesman Eric Pahon told Sputnik on Monday that the existing deconfliction channel between the Russian and US militaries in Syria has worked well.

"More dialogue could only be better," Pahon said. "We are talking with the Russians in the area... The more we talk and the more we are able to avoid miscalculation, the better." Pahon said the established military-to-military deconfliction channel has been working well and there have not been any interruptions, but pointed out that the US military is prohibited from actually cooperating with Russia.
"General Dunford has had communications with his counterpart on the mil-to-mil level. We haven't had any significant incidents between the coalition aircraft or Russian aircraft operating in the area. So, clearly we were able to deconflict our operations and that continues," Pahon said.
In August, The US government extended its ban against cooperating militarily with Russia in a bilateral format through 2019, according to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

The prohibition, first enacted in the 2017 NDAA, says none of the funds authorized may be used for any bilateral military-to-military cooperation with Russia until Moscow implements the Minsk accords and returns Crimea to Ukrainian sovereignty.

However, the 2019 law adds a provision - missing from two previous NDAAs - that explicitly authorizes negotiations between Washington and Moscow.

Attention

Another GDPR disaster: Journalists ordered to hand over their secret sources under 'data protection' law

Newsprint
© Unknown/KJN
When the GDPR [EU's General Data Protection Regulation] was being debated, we warned that it would be a disaster for free speech. Now that it's been in effect for about six months, we're seeing that play out in all sorts of ways. We've talked about how it was used to disappear public court documents for an ongoing case, and then used to disappear a discussion about that disappearing court document. And we wrote about how it's been used against us to hide a still newsworthy story (and that leaves out one other GDPR demand we've received in an attempt to disappear a story that I can't even talk about yet).

When I wrote about all of this both here on Techdirt and on Twitter, I had a bunch of "data protection experts" in Europe completely freak out at me that I had no idea what I was talking about, and how any negative impact was simply the result of everyone misreading the GDPR. I kept trying to point out to them that even if that's true in theory, out here in the real world, the law was being used to disappear news stories and was creating massive chilling effects and burdens on journalists. And the response was the same: nah, you're reading the law wrong.

And now we have an even more horrifying story of the damage the GDPR is doing to journalism. There's a Romanian investigatory journalism publication called RISE Project that has reported on corruption in Romanian politics. Not surprisingly, not everyone is happy about that. OCCRP -- the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project -- a partner to RISE Project has the worrisome details about how the very Romanian government that RISE Project has been breaking corruption stories on has magically found the need to use the GDPR to demand the journalists turn over their sources.

Comment: Rules and regulations are rarely fair. The scale is always tipped to the powerful. It is only the public that is fooled into thinking 'protections' are for them.


Oil Well

Iran shall thrive despite US sanctions, remarks FM Zarif

Hunt Zarif
© Atta Kenare/AFP/GettyUK FM Jeremy Hunt • Iran FM Javad Zarif
Iran's foreign minister has said his country will not only survive newly reimposed US sanctions but it will thrive.

The Trump administration announced sanctions this month covering banking, oil exports and shipping, aimed at forcing Tehran to stop what the US described as its "destabilising activities" in the Middle East.

Speaking after meeting the British foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, in Tehran on Monday, Javad Zarif said:
"We are used to pressure and we are used to resisting pressure. Sanctions always hurt and they hurt ordinary people, but sanctions seldom change policy, and that has been the problem with US sanctions all the time. They do not take people back to the negotiating table. In fact, they strengthen the resolve to resist.

"We will certainly survive. We will not only survive - we will thrive. We have tried to minimise the impact on the population but the ordinary people are going to suffer, the economy is going to suffer."
Speaking to the Guardian, Zarif said he was confident the Iranian oil industry would find markets, even though the US measures have pushed down exports sharply. "There are always markets for oil, it depends on the conditions and the price," he said. "I believe Iran will always sell oil."

Comment: See also:
UK FM Hunt will make his first visit to Iran, discuss the nuclear deal


Clipboard

US Senator Rubio urges Venezuela be placed on US state terrorism sponsors list

Maduro
© ReutersVenezuelan President Maduro
The prospect of Venezuela being included on the US list of state sponsors of terrorism is looming as a result of increased lobbying from Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), WaPo reports.

A person "familiar with the deliberations" told the Washington Post on Monday that, while no timetable for adding Venezuela to the list had been decided, discussions had "moved forward" in recent days, thanks to Rubio's insistence. The State Department has shopped the move around to various agencies for feedback, including the Department of Health and Human Services, and the US Agency for International Development.

The administration will have a difficult time finding proof to tie the Venezuelan government to terrorism, according to another anonymous source, this one a US official. Rubio and two other Republican senators implored Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a September letter to declare Venezuela a terrorism sponsor, accusing the country of links to both Hezbollah and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) but neglecting to furnish proof.

Comment: If Venezuela is a terrorist-sponsor state, it surely doesn't have any money to pay the buggers. See also: