Puppet MastersS


Sherlock

Forced confession expert called in after wife of Orlando nightclub gunman said she knew of attack during 18-hour interview with FBI


RT
Sun, 07 Jan 2018 11:44 UTC
Forced confession expert called to court after gunman's wife said she knew of Pulse attack plan Investigators work the scene following a mass shooting at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando Florida, U.S. June 12, 2016. Carlo Allegri / Reuters
© Carlo Allegri / ReutersForced confession expert called to court after gunman's wife said she knew of Pulse attack plan
Investigators work the scene following a mass shooting at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando Florida, U.S. June 12, 2016.
The wife of the Pulse nightclub shooter, on trial for aiding and abetting a terrorist, says she knew the attack was going to happen but failed to warn authorities beforehand, according to newly released statements.

"I knew when he left the house he was going to Orlando to attack the Pulse Night Club," Noor Salman said during her 18-hour interview with the FBI. "I knew on Saturday, when Omar left the house about 5 pm that this was the time that he was going to do something bad. I knew this because of the way he left and took the gun and backpack with ammunition," Salman said according to a signed statement which was recently released to the public.

Comment: Also See:

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Bad Guys

Mental scars couldn't be healed while Israel deliberately kills protesters in Gaza

Hamza Abu Eltarabesh
The Electronic Intifada
Wed, 03 Jan 2018 10:03 UTC
Mahmoud al-Masri, killed the previous day in confrontations with Israeli troops
© Mohammed Dahman APA imagesMahmoud al-Masri, killed the previous day in confrontations with Israeli troops, is mourned during his funeral in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, on 9 December
Sometimes you have to put horrific images at the back of your mind.

During Israel's 51-day attack on Gaza in the summer of 2014, I saw tens of dead bodies. The worst thing I witnessed was the targeting of a car about 10 meters from where I was standing. I could see its driver take his last breath before he died.

At that moment, my whole body went cold. For several days, I could not think of anything but that appalling scene. I was unable to sleep for about a week.

Events moved fast that summer. I tried my best to forget about the incident and to get on with my life.
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Eye 2

Latvian president endorses law equating Red Army veterans with SS storm troopers


TASS
Sun, 07 Jan 2018 09:46 UTC
Latvian President Raimonds Vejonis
© AP Photo/Mindaugas KulbisLatvian President Raimonds Vejonis
Under the bill, status of WWII 'participant' can be granted only to those who were Latvian citizens as of June 17, 1940

Latvian President Raimonds Vejonis has endorsed the law passed by the national parliament that grants the status of WWII 'participant' to all those who fought on Latvian soil during that war, both in the Soviet Army and in Nazi units, the Latvijas Vestnesis said on Thursday.

The law grants the status of WWII 'participant' to all who fought in the republic's territory during World War II, both in the Soviet army and for the Third Reich. Under the bill, such status can be granted only to those who were Latvian citizens as of June 17, 1940, the date considered by Riga as the beginning of the "period of occupation." It means that this status cannot be granted to Latvia's mostly Russian-speaking non-citizens and naturalized non-citizens, i.e. those who received Latvian citizenship after passing a specialized official exam on the Latvian language and knowledge of the country's history.
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Star of David

'The Holy Land is not for sale or lease': Greek Patriarch attacked by Palestinians amid protests against church selling off land


RT
Sun, 07 Jan 2018 08:34 UTC
Palestinian security forces push away demonstrators
© Mussa Qawasma / ReutersPalestinian security forces push away demonstrators from the convoy of Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem Theophilos III during a protest against his visit, in the West Bank city of Bethlehem January 6, 2018
A convoy of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch has been attacked by Palestinians during his visit to the West Bank. The protesters accuse the Patriarch of treason for allegedly selling land to Jewish investors.

Hundreds of Palestinians were out on the streets to protest the visit of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilos III of Jerusalem to the West Bank Saturday. The Patriarch was in Bethlehem to attend an Orthodox Christmas mass at the Church of Nativity.

The demonstrators carried banners reading, "The Holy Land is not for sale or lease" while chanting "traitor, traitor," as the Patriarchs convoy approached. The protest action was prompted by the controversial decision of the Greek Orthodox church - a major landowner in the Holy Land - to sell off some of its assets to private investors.

Comment: See also: Israeli court hands ownership of Greek Orthodox church property in Jerusalem to illegal settlers

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Bad Guys

Wait, what? FBI sez Deep Stater McCabe had no conflict of interest in Killary email investigation

Cristina Laila
The Gateway Pundit
Sat, 06 Jan 2018 03:59 UTC
hillary clinton McCabe
Killary and McCabe
The FBI said Deep State Andrew McCabe had no conflicts of interest in the Hillary Clinton email investigation in documents posted to the bureau's website Friday.

The documents state that McCabe's wife, Jill McCabe announced her run for the Virginia Senate seat in March of 2015 and since Andrew McCabe's role as Deputy Director didn't start until 3 months after she lost her electoral bid, there was no conflict of interest.

According to the documents, Andrew McCabe consulted with ethics officers in advance if his wife's campaign would be a conflict of interest. At the time, McCabe was an assistant director at the FBI's DC field office.

Comment: McCabe has many sketchy motives for acting as he has in the course of the investigation

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War Whore

Trump certainly isn't another Hitler - but he may in fact be another Obama

Caitlin Johnstone
Medium
Fri, 05 Jan 2018 00:00 UTC
Trump Obama
Not a lot of people remember this, but George W Bush actually campaigned in 2000 against the interventionist foreign policy that the United States had been increasingly espousing. Far from advocating the full-scale regime change ground invasions that his administration is now infamous for, Bush frequently used the word "humble" when discussing the type of foreign policy he favored, condemning nation-building, an over-extended military, and the notion that America should be the world's police force.

Eight years later, after hundreds of thousands of human lives had been snuffed out in Iraq and Afghanistan and an entire region horrifically destabilized, Obama campaigned against Bush's interventionist foreign policy, edging out Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries partly because she had supported the Iraq invasion while he had condemned it. The Democrats, decrying the warmongering tendencies of the Republicans, elected a President of the United States who would see Bush's Afghanistan and Iraq and raise him Libya, Syria, Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia, along with a tenfold increase in drone strikes. Libya collapsed into a failed state where a slave trade now runs rampant, and half a million people died in the Syrian war that Obama and US allies exponentially escalated.


Comment: Incidentally: "Libyan slave trade" story is fake news


Comment: Dan Sanchez got it right; From March of 2016: Great moments in Idiocracy: Watch Trump make his peace with the war party

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Dominoes

Tick tock for the Clinton Crime Foundation

Daniel John Sobieski
Flopping Aces
Fri, 05 Jan 2018 19:41 UTC
hillary
Whether it is merely the FBI trying to restore its shattered credibility or justice finally being done, the news that the pay-for-play activities of the Clinton Foundation are going to get renewed and serious attention is welcome. The Clintons have made a career of ignoring, breaking and skirting the law. Up to this point for the Clintons crime has paid off handsomely, but now they may find themselves caught between Little Rock and a hard place:
The Justice Department has launched a new inquiry into whether the Clinton Foundation engaged in any pay-to-play politics or other illegal activities while Hillary Clinton served as secretary of State, law enforcement officials and a witness tells The Hill.

FBI agents from Little Rock, Ark., where the foundation was started, have taken the lead in the investigation and have interviewed at least one witness in the last month, and law enforcement officials said additional activities are expected in the coming weeks.

The officials, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said the probe is examining whether the Clintons promised or performed any policy favors in return for largesse to their charitable efforts or whether donors made commitments of donations in hopes of securing government outcomes.
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Arrow Down

Iran next in the Empire's crosshair for regime change

Finian Cunningham
Sputnik News
Sat, 06 Jan 2018 18:03 UTC
Irianian Protesters
© AFP 2017/Hamed Malekpour/TASNIM NewsIranians chant slogans as they march in support of the government near the Imam Khomeini grand mosque in the capital Tehran on December 30, 2017.
There seems little doubt that the surge in New Year protests across Iran was, at least in part, following a regime-change agenda set by the United States.

Public statements issued by US President Donald Trump and his senior officials all made strident calls in support of protesters while denigrating the Iranian government as a "brutal oppressor." Arguably, that amounts to audacious incitement of sedition in a foreign state, and such American misconduct should be legally sanctioned.

What's remarkable too is just how close the recent turmoil in Iran seemed to follow a well-worn US formula for regime change, including political statements of condemnation; biased media coverage to undermine the legitimacy of the target government; and the apparent hijacking of peaceful protests by violent provocateurs.

Such a formula has been used by Washington and its allies in dozens of countries over the decades, including more recently in Syria during the 2011 unrest that led to an all-out war.

What is acutely resonant is the historical background. Iran was probably the first nation to have been subjected to American regime-change operations in the post-Second World War period, with the CIA-led coup carried out in 1953.

But first, let's look at the flagrant attempts by the US to destabilize the Iranian government through highly pejorative and misleading public statements.
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War Whore

Best of the Web: Mapping a World From Hell: 76 Countries Are Now Involved in America's Never-Ending 'War on Terror'

Tom Engelhardt
TomDispatch
Sat, 06 Jan 2018 22:48 UTC
Western Creation - Osama bin Laden
© Unknown
He left Air Force Two behind and, unannounced, "shrouded in secrecy," flew on an unmarked C-17 transport plane into Bagram Air Base, the largest American garrison in Afghanistan. All news of his visit was embargoed until an hour before he was to depart the country.

More than 16 years after an American invasion "liberated" Afghanistan, he was there to offer some good news to a U.S. troop contingent once again on the rise. Before a 40-foot American flag, addressing 500 American troops, Vice President Mike Pence praised them as "the world's greatest force for good," boasted that American air strikes had recently been "dramatically increased," swore that their country was "here to stay," and insisted that "victory is closer than ever before." As an observer noted, however, the response of his audience was "subdued." ("Several troops stood with their arms crossed or their hands folded behind their backs and listened, but did not applaud.")

Comment: For more on this check out the SOTT Radio show Behind the Headlines: Afghanistan: Where Empires Go To Die

And this SOTT Focus article: The Big Lie - NATO's Killing Fields In Afghanistan and Afghanistan and the CIA heroin ratline

It is 'grim' picture indeed.

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Propaganda

James Risen: Is this the end of 'free' press? NYT caved to Bush, Obama, held NSA bombshell for one year


RT
Fri, 05 Jan 2018 18:04 UTC
mediahandmanip
© unknown
The New York Times was "quite willing" to quash stories at the behest of the government, writes Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter James Risen. He warns that America's press has been muzzled by "hyped threats" to national security.

In an in-depth retelling of his experience as a national security reporter for the New York Times (NYT), published in The Intercept, Risen explains how, on more than one occasion, the NYT yielded to government demands to withhold or kill his stories - including a bombshell report about the NSA's secret surveillance program under President George W. Bush.

Jaded by previous experiences of US government interference in his work, Risen writes that his NSA story set him on a "collision course" with his editors, "who were still quite willing to cooperate with the government." His editors at the Times had been convinced by top US officials that revealing the illegal surveillance program would endanger American lives, Risen said.

Bill Keller, the then executive editor of Times, said the newspaper's decision to shelve the explosive report, which detailed how the NSA had "monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years," was motivated by the lingering "trauma" of the 9/11 terror attacks, and the sobering reality that the "world was a dangerous place."

Comment: Judgements and courses of action are only as good as the objectivity gained from accurate information and evaluation. Deep state wants calculated control, predictable outcomes and uninformed citizens none the wiser.

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