Puppet MastersS


Attention

Controversial release of Fusion GPS transcript sparks rift in Senate's Russia probe


RT
Wed, 10 Jan 2018 01:30 UTC
GrassleyFeinstein
© AxiosSen. Chuck Grassley, Rep. Chair Senate Judiciary Committee • Sen. Dianne Feinstein
"Somebody's already been killed," as a result of the Trump-Russia dossier being published, a co-founder of Fusion GPS has testified to the Senate. That's according to a controversial release of a partially redacted transcript.

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) has released the 312-page transcript of the interview Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson gave to the Senate Judiciary Committee last August as part of its investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Fusion GPS, being hired by Hillary Clinton's campaign arms in the Democratic Party and a law firm, had commissioned ex-MI6 agent Christopher Steele to collect opposition intelligence on President Donald Trump during the campaign season.

The transcript, which was released Tuesday, states that during the interview with congressional investigators, Simpson's lawyer, Josh Levy, said that someone has already died because of the GPS Fusion commissioned dossier.

Comment: Is Feinstein's unilateral action 'a senior moment' signifying an inability to discern appropriate from inappropriate procedure, or is it a blatant, partisan attempt to sabotage the findings by pre-empting standard protocol in an ongoing investigation? Grassley is justified in his response.

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Stop

Trump orders limits on 'unmasking' of US citizens caught in surveillance


RT
Wed, 10 Jan 2018 01:55 UTC
Trump
© Kevin Lamarque / Reuters
President Donald Trump has ordered the intelligence community to develop new rules to handle requests from government officials who want to reveal the identities of US citizens collected through foreign surveillance.

Trump signed a memorandum Tuesday, ordering Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Dan Coats to create a policy requiring each branch of the intelligence community to create their own procedures for responding to so-called "unmasking" requests.

Specifically, Trump gave the DNI 30 days to implement a policy that would limit intelligence agencies from uncovering the identity of non-public US citizens and information "concerning known non-consenting United States persons that was originally omitted from disseminated intelligence reports."

The purpose of the memorandum is to improve the efficiency of "unmasking" requests and ensure the intelligence community complies with privacy laws, a White House official told Bloomberg.

The memorandum comes after Republicans complained about President Barack Obama's national security advisor Susan Rice admitting to revealing the identity of members of Trump's campaign team, whose identities had been concealed in surveillance reports.

Comment: The administration is overhauling how Washington intel does business by redefining policy aspects and enforcing tighter controls and accountability that affect citizen rights and privacy. That said, what intel does best is circumvent protocol.

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Cell Phone

FBI director Wray blasts strong encryption as 'urgent public safety issue'


RT
Wed, 10 Jan 2018 02:13 UTC
ChristopherWray
© Jonathan Ernst / ReutersFBI Director Christopher Wray
In another blast at privacy, FBI director Christopher Wray has said that powerful encryption which blocks law enforcement agencies from accessing data on devices represents an "urgent public safety issue."

In a speech at a cyber security conference in New York on Tuesday, Wray said the FBI was unable to access data from nearly 7,800 devices last year despite possessing the legal authority to do so, Reuters reports. This was more than half of the devices the bureau tried to crack into. "This is an urgent public safety issue,"Wray said, adding that finding a solution to the problem is "not so clear cut."
In an effort to protect data many devices and applications now encrypt content by default. Some applications, such as WhatsApp or Telegram, use end-to-end encryption, which means private communications cannot be intercepted.

Comment: Likely Wray's rant is hype to keep US citizens fearful enough to demand companies provide back-door access to all devices which, in essence, legalizes spying on ordinary citizens without their knowledge - that they do anyway.

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Propaganda

Insane Demand: America wants Assad to pay $250+ billion reconstruction cost in Syria

Eric Zuesse
The Duran
Mon, 08 Jan 2018 00:00 UTC
The United States Government says that Syria's Government caused the U.N.-estimated "at least $250 billion" cost to restore Syria from the destruction that Syria's war produced, and so Syria's Government should pay those reconstruction costs.
syria before and after war
© Unknown
That link is to a New York Times article, which explicitly blames Syrian "President Bashar al-Assad's ruthless triumph" - which was won against all of the jihadist groups (which the U.S. and its allies had brought into Syria to overthrow and replace Assad's Government) - for having caused the devastation in Syria; the U.S. and its allies say they aren't to blame for it, at all, by their having organized and armed and trained and manned that 6-year invasion of Syria; and, so (they say, and the NYT article implicitly assumes it to be true), if the invaders-occupiers of Syria might ultimately agree to pay some portion of these $250B+ reconstruction costs, then this would be sheer generosity by the U.S. and its allies - nothing that these governments are obligated to pay to the surviving residents in Syria.
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Footprints

Freedom at last? Media reports Assange has been granted an Ecuadorian passport


RT
Wed, 10 Jan 2018 19:31 UTC
Julian Assange
© Neil Hall / ReutersWikiLeaks founder Julian Assange speaks on the balcony of the Embassy of Ecuador in London, Britain
WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange has cryptically uploaded a picture of himself dressed in the national colors of Ecuador. The country's media reports the whistleblower has been granted an Ecuadorian passport.

Assange's passport was issued on December 21, Ecuadorian outlet El Universo reports, citing "reliable sources" and providing the civil registry number to check on the government website. The document number 1729926483, upon checking on the Internal Revenue Service, is indeed registered to one Julian Paul Assange.

Comment: Ecuador seeks third party to mediate 'safe passage' for Julian Assange

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Info

Why Trump's break-up with Pakistan could backfire

Shubham Ghosh
The Duran
Tue, 09 Jan 2018 19:04 UTC
Pakistan US flags
© Joshua Roberts / Reuters
US President Donald Trump's lashing out at Pakistan on Twitter on January 1 and the consequent deterioration of relation between the two old allies has been the high point of international politics in the year which has just begun.

Trump's accusing Pakistan of "lies" and "deceit" and the charges that it has given the US nothing in lieu of the massive help it has received is not something that contradicts the reality but the problem is that it is far too late for the American leadership to catch hold of Pakistan now.

The way Islamabad has hit back at the Americans, despite the fact that its own leadership is in a state of fragility, reveals how much hollow Trump's roar has sounded. Trump can rip Pakistan another hundred times during his tenure but it won't mark any difference in the latter's stand for sure. Because not only times have changed, they have gone against the United States.

If the US indeed feels that Pakistan has only deceived it over the years, it should have taken action against Islamabad at least a decade and half ago, just in the wake of the 9/11. But its own policy failure in Afghanistan had kept it engaged with Pakistan despite the latter's double games.

Just as Washington had taken Islamabad's help to keep the erstwhile Soviets at bay in Afghanistan in the late 1970s and 1980s, it tried something similar to fight the extremist elements in Afghanistan post 9/11. But the US overlooked the fact that Pakistan had a far bigger stake in Afghanistan this time and it only grew more complex as India's role in Afghanistan grew.

Comment: Pakistan has already sent a firm response, backed up by actions: Pakistan 'suspends military & intel ties' with US after Trump's aid cuts. In fact, one reason for Trump's reversal may be those new friends Pakistan has picked up over the years: Pakistan and Afghanistan - Epicenters of Geopolitical Intrigue:
Now we come to the real reason behind the latest US-Pakistan feud: Pakistan's rapid move into China's orbit. Under CPEC - China-Pakistan Economic Corridor - China plans to spend $60 billion on various infrastructure projects in Pakistan. It has already built power plants and many highways; and an airport and a seaport in the city of Gwadar are under construction to transform the sleeping town into a vibrant trade hub. Pakistan also recently agreed to use Chinese Yuan instead of the U.S. dollar in bilateral trade.

Western 'globalists' find all these facts to be unsavory, but what crosses the red line is Pakistan providing China access to the Indian Ocean. You see, America planned to contain China by controlling South China Sea and the chokepoint - Malacca Straits - through which most Chinese imports and exports travel. In the case of a US-China conflict, the US can easily disrupt China's economy by blocking the sea route. In fact, just a few years ago, the US and Australia conducted military exercises that simulated blocking those straits.


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Arrow Down

Disgraced Fusion GPS not done embarrassing themselves, still looking for those elusive Russia-Trump connections

Sam Shwarz
Newsweek
Tue, 09 Jan 2018 17:38 UTC
fusionGPS
© YouTube
Fusion GPS, the firm behind the controversial dossier connecting President Donald Trump and Russia, is apparently not done looking into potential ties between the president and the nation accused of meddling in the 2016 elections.

The news comes from a report in The New York Times Monday, which purports that the barrage of attacks facing the firm, founded by former Wall Street Journal reporter Glenn Simpson, and dossier author Christopher Steele has not stopped Fusion GPS from continuing its investigations.

Based on multiple people briefed on the research, TheTimes reports that Fusion is still looking into links between Trump and Russia. The specific line of inquiry, however, remains under wraps.


Comment: Yawn. In Newsweeks next issue we'll be hearing about how George Bush will be renewing calls to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

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Bizarro Earth

Russia defeated ISIS in Syria so what was the US doing?

David William Pear
Op Ed News
Sun, 31 Dec 2017 21:55 UTC
Russia army military
Who defeated the Islamic State In Syria?

With a $1 trillion annual military budget why did it take the US six years to 'beat' a ragtag militia?

Before answering that question. What is the ISIS? Can the public overcome its chronic amnesia and think back to the sudden appearance of ISIS dressed in brand new black uniforms, gleaming white NIKE's and driving Toyota trucks? They seemed to appear out of nowhere in 2014. ISIS looked as if it were a mirage when it appeared, or more likely a CIA staged scene from Hollywood.
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2 + 2 = 4

NYT slowly coming around: The decline of anti-Trumpism into fairy tales and lowbrow hysteria

David Brooks
New York Times
Mon, 08 Jan 2018 18:42 UTC
trump thumb
Let me start with three inconvenient observations, based on dozens of conversations around Washington over the past year:

First, people who go into the White House to have a meeting with President Trump usually leave pleasantly surprised. They find that Trump is not the raving madman they expected from his tweetstorms or the media coverage. They generally say that he is affable, if repetitive. He runs a normal, good meeting and seems well-informed enough to get by.

Second, people who work in the Trump administration have wildly divergent views about their boss. Some think he is a deranged child, as Michael Wolff reported. But some think he is merely a distraction they can work around. Some think he is strange, but not impossible. Some genuinely admire Trump. Many filter out his crazy stuff and pretend it doesn't exist.

My impression is that the Trump administration is an unhappy place to work, because there is a lot of infighting and often no direction from the top. But this is not an administration full of people itching to invoke the 25th Amendment.

Third, the White House is getting more professional. Imagine if Trump didn't tweet. The craziness of the past weeks would be out of the way, and we'd see a White House that is briskly pursuing its goals: the shift in our Pakistan policy, the shift in our offshore drilling policy, the fruition of our ISIS policy, the nomination for judgeships and the formation of policies on infrastructure, DACA, North Korea and trade.
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Rocket

Spokesman of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran says Iran may speed up uranium enrichment if Trump re-imposes sanctions


RT
Wed, 10 Jan 2018 19:24 UTC
A display featuring missiles is seen at Baharestan Square in Tehran on September 27, 2017
© Nazanin Tabatabaee Yazdi / TIMA / ReutersA display featuring missiles is seen at Baharestan Square in Tehran on September 27, 2017
Iran has the capability to increase its enrichment of uranium, the country's atomic energy agency has said, noting that Tehran will perform the "necessary actions" if the US re-imposes sanctions on the country's oil exports.

"If the suspension (of sanctions) is not continued it's a violation of the [Iran nuclear deal] and the Islamic Republic of Iran will, of course, take the necessary actions," Atomic Energy Organization of Iran spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi told state TV, as quoted by Reuters.

Kamalvandi declined to elaborate on what those "necessary actions"might be, but said later in the same interview that "the capacity exists within the atomic energy agency to speed up nuclear work in various fields, particularly in the field of enrichment, which can be increased several times more than in the period before the nuclear agreement."
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