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Iran threatens increased missile range, alleges Daesh is a 'US, Israeli creation'


Sputnik
Sun, 26 Nov 2017 21:25 UTC
Iran military parade
© REUTERS/ Nazanin Tabatabaee Yazdi/TIMA/File Phot
Speaking during a televised program, a senior commander from the Iranian Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) has claimed that Daesh was created with help from foreign powers and threatened to increase the range of Iran's missiles if Tehran sees a threat from Europe.

"Intelligence services of the US, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and certain other countries, the naming of which is not in our interest for now, created Daesh to overthrow the Syrian administration," Brigadier General Hossein Salami said on Saturday, according to PressTV.

The commander said that Tehran has "information" that in 2013-2014, "hundreds" of American cargo flights transported ammunition for militant Islamic groups in neighboring countries.
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Treasure Chest

Golden handshake: Mugabe family reportedly offered $10mn payoff and legal immunity


RT
Sun, 26 Nov 2017 21:17 UTC
Zimbabwe money
© Howard Burditt / Reuters
Cash-strapped Zimbabwe has reportedly offered a $10 million payout to deposed President Robert Mugabe, while his wife will receive a generous pension after his death, and his children's businesses won't be touched by the incoming administration.

"The government will give him a $5 million lump sum and then the remainder to be paid out in installments," a source told the Zimbabwe Independent, whose report has since been confirmed by other media outlets. "Mugabe will also enjoy full medical coverage as well as his full monthly salary. In the event of his death, his wife will be given half [his monthly salary]."

Mugabe, 93, currently receives a $150,000 annual pension, which will be partly inherited by his 52-year-old second wife Grace Mugabe, who is pejoratively known as "Gucci Grace" among some Zimbabweans. The two are expected to stay in the Blue Roof mansion in Harare, with the state still paying all travel, security and staff expenses for the couple.
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Pistol

Call it what it is - Operation: 'Shoot Yourself in the Foot'

David Hearst
Middle East Eye
Sat, 25 Nov 2017 13:39 UTC
Sudanese troops
© YemempressSudanese troops in Yemen
Remember the name the Saudis gave their operation in Yemen when they launched it on 25 March 2015? Operation: Decisive Storm.

By 21 April, the storm was officially declared over. The air strikes continued, of course, but the strikes on hospitals, schools and, in one notorious incident, a wedding party in Sanaa, were now part of an operation renamed Operation: Restoring Hope.

Two and a half years later, the collective misery endured by Yemenis of all tribes continues, but the coalition of ground forces that the Saudis assembled is showing signs of crumbling.

Splits are emerging among the Yemeni and foreign ground forces fighting the Houthis in the country which could threaten the future of the Saudi-led coalition.

Sudan

Sudanese forces, which constitute the bulk of the 10,000 foreign fighters in the Saudi-led coalition, are suffering high casualty rates. A senior source close to the presidency in Khartoum told Middle East Eye that over 500 of their troops had now been killed in Yemen.

Comment: And then there are the thousands of children dying of malnutrition and Cholera, people slaughtered by barrel bombs and drone strikes. This atrocity is growing exponentially perpetrated by genocidal maniacs. Operation: Shoot yourself in foot and aim high.

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Snakes in Suits

Former AG Holder warns Trump's Justice Department could lead to 'resignations, investigations, public outcries'

Chris Riotta
Newsweek
Sat, 25 Nov 2017 12:30 UTC
HolderSessions
© Time Magazine/thedailysheeple.comFormer AG Eric Holder • AG Jeff Sessions
Former Attorney General Eric Holder had a clear warning for Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions on Friday: "resignations, investigations, public outcries" could all soon occur if the wall separating the White House and the Justice Department continues to be lowered.

Holder said he was troubled by the president's "berating" of the current attorney general in an interview with MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow, suggesting the infighting "portrays a lack of understanding on the part of the president about what the role of the attorney general has to be."

Comment: Holder? Obama? Clinton? Such stellar examples of justice's blind spots. Just maybe Eric Holder is not such an independent and accurate judge of what is right and wrong. (BTW: As Holder suggested to Trump, did Obama 'just suck it up?' )

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Padlock

Flynn legal team goes mum on Mueller investigation, cuts WH out of loop


CBS New York/CBS News
Sat, 25 Nov 2017 11:14 UTC
Flynnmueller
© mundoaguaysaneamiento.net/SalonMichael Flynn and Robert Mueller
There's a new turning point in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's attorneys have cut ties with the White House.

CBS News has confirmed via sources familiar with the situation that Flynn's attorney, Robert Kelner, called Trump lawyer John Dowd on Wednesday night to inform him they could no longer communicate about Flynn, a possible sign that Flynn is ready to cooperate with the investigation.

Comment: See also:

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Propaganda

Imperial apologist Thomas Friedman's fawning article on Saudi crown prince


Sputnik
Sat, 25 Nov 2017 03:46 UTC
Friedman/BinSalman
© Saudi Gazette/Indianna GazetteThomas Friedman • Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
Radio Sputnik's Brian Becker and John Kiriakou discussed how journalist Thomas Friedman managed to write a fawning article about Mohammed bin Salman while almost completely ignoring any of the controversy (starving the country of Yemen, for example) swirling around the Gulf giant of which Salman is crown prince.

Thomas Friedman, a writer at the New York Times, has published an article entitled Saudi Arabia's Arab Spring, at Last. It starts with the following:
"I never thought I'd live long enough to write this sentence: The most significant reform process underway anywhere in the Middle East today is in Saudi Arabia. Yes, you read that right. Though I came here at the start of Saudi winter, I found the country going through its own Arab Spring, Saudi style."
The story then continues with a one-sided view of what Saudi Arabia's crown prince supposedly envisions for his country. There's a lot of talk about how Saudi Arabia is going to reform from within, both in terms of economy and society, but the Loud & Clear hosts remained quite skeptical about the story. They invited Alexander Mercouris, editor-in-chief of the news website The Duran, to discuss the article's contents - and what it's missing.

Comment: Good example of conveying only what you want to see while ignoring reality left and right. Friedman has a blind audience who trusts his ability to curve the truth to the contours of the comfort zone in which they reside. The less they really know, the better.

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Info

White House Comms Director Hope Hicks "loves Trump like a father"

Naomi Lim
Washington Examiner
Thu, 23 Nov 2017 21:00 UTC
hope hicks
© Andrew Harnik/AP Photo
White House communications director Hope Hicks loves President Trump "like a father," according to former Trump campaign digital director Brad Parscale.

"She has a great 'Trump radar' [in] understanding how he thinks. ... She loves him like a father in some ways and I think that is an important loyalty to the family," Parscale told Newsweek in a interview published Thursday.

"I think she truly believes in Mr. Trump and his mission and his agenda, and I think she loves the [Trump] family," Parscale continued. "Being family and being treated like family allows you to deal with a lot more things you wouldn't do for just a job or money."

Hicks, 29, was named the youngest ever White House communications director in September, a role she had filled on an interim basis after Anthony Scaramucci's abrupt departure from the Trump administration in July.

Comment: See: Mueller probe to interview White House comms director Hope Hicks in coming weeks - signals investigation nearing its end. Basically, Hicks has been around Trump for all the important events of the past months. If there were any truth to the Russiagate allegations, her testimony would support it. But given that it's all horse hockey, Hicks probably has the opportunity to clear the air and put several claims to rest. With any luck, the monumental waste of time and money otherwise known as the Russiagate investigation will die a quick death soon after.

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Arrow Up

Congress hands Trump an historic presidential victory

Jake Novak
CNBC
Fri, 24 Nov 2017 10:26 UTC
Trump gavel
© Outside the Beltway
President Donald Trump should give special thanks to two U.S. Senators this Thanksgiving weekend. One is still serving in the Senate, the other recently retired. One is a Republican. The other a Democrat. And what should President Trump be thanking them for? Quite simply they have handed him one of the biggest victories any president could claim in the past 45 years.

Yes, this has happened even as one of the most widely covered stories of the past year has been President Trump's difficulties in working with Congress. The growing rift between him and Republican Senators John McCain, Jeff Flake, and Bob Corker alone has made headlines for months. For a U.S. president to have this many public feuds with senators from his own party this early in his presidency is really unprecedented and makes for hot news copy.

But that story ignores a bigger and longer-lasting development in the federal judiciary. That brings us first to naming the Republican gift giver: Senator Chuck Grassley from Iowa. The longtime member of Congress has big time clout as the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. And Grassley has just used that clout to eliminate one of the final hurdles in the already furious pace of Trump administration judicial appointments to the federal bench.
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Attention

Outrageous! The Tillerson State Dept. gives $700K to Hungarian media to defeat Victor Orban

Jim Hoft
Gateway Pundit
Sat, 25 Nov 2017 00:00 UTC
Orban
© the Irish TimesVictor Orban
Hungary's Victor Orban is one of the few conservative Western leaders speaking out against open borders, globalism and George Soros. Orban recently told an EU audience that George Soros and his allies are using mass immigration to destroy Europe's "cultural and ethnic identity."

Deep state operatives in the State Department despise Orban for his pro-democracy, anti-immigrant positions. It was announced this week that the Tillerson State Department is spending over $700,000 to defeat Orban in Hungary. This is outrageous.

Breitbart.com reported:
The U.S. State Department has courted controversy by announcing it will plough $700,000 into Hungarian media, angering the country's anti-globalist, conservative government.

The funding was announced by U.S. Chargé d'Affaires David Kostelancik, who has previously appeared to openly criticise the Trump administration by alluding to "apparent inconsistencies in [U.S.] foreign policy" and remarking that "not every criticism of the government is 'fake news'."

Breitbart London spoke to a State Department official who confirmed it supports what it calls "democracy and human rights programming" in many countries, and that its intentions in Hungary - a NATO ally - are to "support media outlets operating outside the capital ... to produce fact-based reporting and increase their audience and economic sustainability".

The State Department also echoed Kostelancik's claim that too many Hungarian news outlets are sympathetic to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's popular conservative government - which has earned powerful enemies by opposing the European Union on mass migration, building a highly effective border wall, and exposing the network of European politicians deemed "reliable allies" by billionaire open borders campaigner George Soros.

Comment: Uh...something about meddling in another country's election? Has this lesson gone unheeded? Yes, this is outrageous.

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Chess

How Saudi efforts to provoke war were thwarted, Hezbollah's role and the unity of Lebanon

Joyce Chediac
Global Research
Wed, 22 Nov 2017 00:00 UTC
PM Hariri
© Guardian NigeriaPrime Minister Saad Hariri
The following article is based on an interview with Jana Nakhal, a leader in the Lebanese Communist Party.

Just last week, Saad Hariri's shocking, Saudi-prompted resignation as Lebanon's prime minister and verbal assault on Hezbollah and Iran set the stage for internal strife, and gave Israel a pretext to attack.

This week, all of Lebanon has united to defend Lebanese sovereignty, see Hariri as held captive by a foreign power, and are demanding his return from Saudi Arabia.

What changed, and why?

Jana Nakhal, independent researcher and Lebanese Communist Party Central Committee member, walked this reporter through these developments on Nov. 16.
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