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The BBC was asking itself (i.e., its viewers, including any Americans watching its World Service) whether Trump was going to pull out then, to avoid the unprecedented thrashing he was about to receive at the polls (which none of the polls, even the more rabidly anti-Trump polls, then predicted). Wacky leftist filmmaker Michael Moore, with the unshakeable confidence in mind-reading that seems never to desert such people, announced that Trump would quit because he never wanted or expected to be nominated, and it was all a joke that had got out of hand.
These were not unrepresentative opinions. Trump was attacking the entire political establishment, the whole Washington sleaze factory, all factions of both parties, all the Bushes, Clintons, and Obama, the national media, the lobbyists, Wall Street, Hollywood, and the limousine Left from the Hamptons to Silicon Valley. Of course the Trump campaign was insane and impossible, and was doomed to be a ludicrous fiasco, a gigantic, comical clown act that misfired horribly.
"Give us the man, we will make the case": Civil forfeiture, RussiaGate and the American police state
© WikiCommonsUncle Joe meets Uncle Sam: We have met the enemy and it is us.
When do we realize we're already living in a police state?
Maybe one clue is when our betters make a point of assuring us that we aren't. Here's Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein testifying before a House Judiciary Committee inquiry into political bias in the Robert Mueller "Russia-gate" investigation:
"Department of Justice employees are united by a shared understanding that our mission is to pursue justice, protect public safety, preserve government property, defend civil rights, and promote the rule of law."Rosenstein's contempt for his interlocutors' intelligence was unconcealed. These aren't the droids you're looking for.
Rod's on the job! Americans can certainly sleep peacefully tonight.
Or maybe not. Besides cracking down on states' playing fast and loose with federal marijuana laws, one of the first enforcement actions ordered by Attorney General Jeff Sessions (R-Recused) was to step up use of civil forfeiture, which is a fancy way of saying "taking the property of people who have not been convicted of anything, or even accused of anything, with little recourse."
Saif al-Islam - Once sentenced to death, now freed (though wanted by the ICC) and running for President of Libya.
But Libya is not yet near the stability it needs to make a political solution take hold.
You may have noticed the furor last month over 'black slaves being sold in Libya', which prompted 'screaming at the sky' from liberal classes everywhere. It turns out that the source of that hysteria was none other than... CNN, which published the bombshell 'discovery' following an undercover investigation inside Libya, made sometime during the summer, and which produced thoroughly dodgy mobile phone recordings as 'evidence' for the report's extraordinary claims. [Warning: link leads to Fake News. Viewer discretion advised].
No prizes for guessing then that CNN's report remains completely unverified. Certainly, cash is changing hands in Libya for the transportation of black Africans, but there is a very plausible reason for that which doesn't involve needlessly hystericizing people: fees being passed to people smugglers by black African migrants and Libyan war refugees seeking a route out of hell to Europe.
© Carlos Barria / Reuters
The content of the speech was hardly shocking, although for anyone hoping against hope that Trump would represent even an iota of change, it's now abundantly clear that neo-con foreign policies remain steadfastly in place, only this time with a Trump brand seal of approval.
What's more pertinent though is that the world now faces two distinct models:
- The US model of "Win-Lose"
- The Eurasian model of "Win-Win"
By contrast, President Xi has promoted the simple and steadfast concept of "win-win" to define how 'Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era' will express itself in terms of foreign policy.
© Fox NewsPeter Strzok and Lisa Page
I am puzzled by this speculation. I don't think there is any mystery at all about this text. There is no doubt it refers to the Russiagate investigation and its meaning is perfectly clear.
Let's look first at the text itself
I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office that there's no way he gets elected - but I'm afraid we can't take that risk. It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40...."Andy" is FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. "He" is Donald Trump. If that was not so someone by now would have said so.
The text shows Strzok and Page took part in a discussion in McCabe's office in which Donald Trump and the election were discussed. Over the course of this discussion Page expressed the view - commonplace in August 2016 - that Donald Trump had no prospect of winning the election. She therefore counselled that the proposed Russiagate investigation was unnecessary. Strzok responded that the FBI had no choice but to proceed with the Russiagate investigation because of the risk of not doing so was too great.
The Russiagate investigation is obviously the "insurance" Strzok is talking about. Nothing else makes sense.
Does the text message tell us anything else? The short answer is it does, and it is important.
© Wikipedia/ Airman 1st Class Jordan Castelan
The Russian Foreign Ministry has called on the United States to withdraw nuclear weapons from European territory.
"Russia returned all its nuclear weapons to its national territory. We believe that the same should have been done by the American side a long time ago," Mikhail Ulyanov, director of the Department for Nonproliferation and Arms Control at the Russian Foreign Ministry, told Sputnik.
© Alison SteelJean Steel was a victim of Dr. Ewen Cameron's CIA-funded brainwashing experiments at Montreal's Allan Memorial Institute
A recent Department of Justice gag order in an out-of-court settlement was designed to avoid responsibility and avert compensation to more victims and their families, said Alan Stein, who has represented numerous survivors who were once patients at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal.
Stein told CBC News that successive federal governments have demanded confidentiality agreements in at least five of the cases he has settled in the last few decades.
"If they hadn't been confidential and the settlements had the publicity that they should have had, a lot of the victims would have come forward and gone to court," he said.
© Sergey Mamontov / SputnikMigrants on the Seine in Paris
"The migration crisis is a time bomb for the European Union and its fuse is quite short," Vladimir Chizhov told RIA Novosti. "The European Union itself has had a hand in making this bomb," the diplomat added.
Chizhov explained that the situation with migrants in Europe was becoming more acute every month, but noted that he personally did not expect the situation to develop into a full-scale collapse of the bloc, or even result in secession of some of its members.
© AFP 2017/ SONNY TUMBELAKA
Australia's newly inaugurated Minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton announced plans December 20 to significantly ramp up domestic cyber-surveillance and counter-espionage activities in the Pacific nation.
Speaking after his swearing in, the new minister claimed the country's counter espionage capabilities had been undermined by the War on Terror, and the activities of the Australian Signals Directorate, which currently cooperates with the military in gathering foreign intelligence, will increasingly turn its attention to domestic surveillance.
Fears over foreign meddling in Australia were recently fanned by the scandal surrounding Labor MP Sam Dastyari who allegedly received financial assistance from a Chinese businessman who he also advised on how to avoid surveillance by the Australian Government. The Chinese government has vigorously denied claims that it has sought to influence Australian domestic politics.
Comment: Even before the WikiLeaks release, never-Trumpers in the FBI (and CIA) were using the Trump dossier as evidence for Russian collusion. When the WikiLeaks "hack" was revealed, it was simple confirmation bias that Russia and Trump were behind it, even though there was and is no evidence to support that conclusion. It all comes back to the dossier. It's quite amazing that all these Russiagate allegations from the past year and a half reach back to that one ridiculous, tabloid-esque piece of trash fiction. If the people like Strzok had any shame, they'd be mightily embarrassed right now.
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