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US State Department propaganda team in disarray


RT
Thu, 14 Sep 2017 14:31 UTC
US Department of State building
© Joshua Roberts / Reuters
Three members of the US government's messaging arm, which was set up at the State Department to "counter narratives" from ISIS and Russia, quit last week, leaving the year-old operation in limbo.

The Global Engagement Center's chief technology officer, along with two other members of its analytics team, resigned without providing reasons, Defense One reported Tuesday.

The outlet has obtained former tech chief Nash Borges's farewell email, in which he makes general suggestions about better management.

Former President Barack Obama established the GEC in March 2016, directing it to "counter the messaging and diminish the influence of international terrorist organizations," including Islamic State, Al-Qaeda "and other violent extremists abroad."

By the year's end, the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act had broadened the GEC's mandate to include advancing "fact-based narratives that support United States allies and interests" and countering what Congress called "Russian disinformation."

It's not immediately clear how many analysts remain at the center. Defense One cited a former senior official describing the three team members who quit as "the whole enchilada," adding that "things are bad."
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Radar

N. Korea vows to sink Japan for 'dancing to US tune' and reduce US to 'ashes and darkness'


RT
Thu, 14 Sep 2017 14:27 UTC
Kim Jong Un
© KCNA / Reuters
Pyongyang says it is the time to "annihilate" the US and turn it into "ashes" for initiating the latest round of sanctions. The North has also threatened Washington's allies in the region, vowing to "sink" Japan and "wipe out" South Korea.

North Korea made yet another threat to the US and its allies in the region, Japan and South Korea, on Wednesday, KCNA reported. The North accused the US of "cooking up" the latest restrictive measures against it and demanded that the US be beaten "to death as a stick is fit for a rabid dog."

The 15-member United Nations Security Council (UNSC) unanimously approved a new round of sanctions on Monday, targeting North Korea's textile exports and oil imports following Pyongyang's sixth nuclear test.

"There's limit to patience," the North's state-run KCNA state news agency cited the spokesperson of the Korea Asia-Pacific Peace Committee as saying on Thursday. He accused the whole UN body of being a "tool of evil" serving Washington interests.

"Now is the time to annihilate the US imperialist aggressors. Let's reduce the US mainland into ashes and darkness," the communist outlet reported, also vowing to resort to "all retaliation means which have been prepared till now."
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Dollars

Venezuela ditches the dollar for oil payments to dodge US penalties


RT
Thu, 14 Sep 2017 14:23 UTC
sculpted currency
© Marco Bello / Reuters
Caracas has ordered oil traders to convert crude oil contracts into euro and not to pay or be paid in US dollars anymore, according to sources close to the matter as quoted by WSJ. The measure is aimed at bypassing US sanctions against the country.

Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA reportedly asked joint venture partners to open euro accounts and to convert existing holdings into the European currency, the sources said.

Last month, the White House sanctioned Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and other senior Venezuelan officials after the election of a new legislative body to rewrite the country's constitution.

The measure bans both US businesses and citizens from buying Venezuelan debt as well as from making any deals with PDVSA.

Caracas claimed the step as an attempt to embargo Venezuela, which is currently in the middle of an economic crisis.

"To fight against the economic blockade there will be a basket of currencies to liberate us from the dollar," said the country's Vice President Tareck El Aissami, as quoted by the media.
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Map

Syrian Army takes control of oilfields and gas refinery near Deir ez-Zor


RT
Thu, 14 Sep 2017 14:18 UTC
tank in the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor
© SputnikA tank in the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor where the Syrian army continues fighting the Islamic State September 12, 2017.
Oilfields and a natural gas-processing plant southeast of the Deir-ez-Zor airbase have come under the control of the Syrian Army, RIA Novosti reports.

It was also reported, that advance detachments of the Syrian Army have taken control of the strategically-important hills near the Karrum Mountain ridge to the southeast of the Deir ez-Zor air force base. An RT contributor on scene confirmed the information.

The terrorists are resisting fiercely, bombarding the advanced detachments of the Syrian Army with mortars, heavy machine guns and sniper rifles, RIA Novosti reports.

The artillery of the Syrian Army is destroying the firing positions of Islamic State (IS, former ISIS/ISIL), supporting the advancement of the army and allied forces to Deir ez-Zor.

Comment: More on the Syrian situation from South Front:



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USA

North Korea wants dialogue with US - Washington is the obstacle: Russian Foreign Ministry

Adam Garrie
The Duran
Wed, 13 Sep 2017 13:50 UTC
north korea
A day after North Korea's Ambassador to Russia expressed his country's condemnation of the latest UN sanctions resolution whose unacceptable content he blamed squarely on the United States, Russia has confirmed that North Korea still seeks direct dialogue with the United States.

The double-freeze peace deal proposed jointly by Russia and China, incorporates an urgent request for the facilitation of dialogue between Pyongyang and Washington.
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Bomb

John Pilger - North Korea solution depends on 'containment of the US'

John Pilger
RT
Thu, 14 Sep 2017 12:44 UTC
South Korean and U.S. Marines
© Kim Hong-Ji / ReutersSouth Korean and U.S. Marines take positions as amphibious assault vehicles of the South Korean Marine Corps fire smoke bombs during a U.S.-South Korea joint landing operation drill in Pohang, South Korea
No one wants nuclear war, yet that is the trajectory the US and NATO are on with not just North Korea, but potentially China and Russia too, journalist John Pilger fears. In fact, he says the crisis over North Korea is just "a sideshow to the main game."

On Tuesday, investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker John Pilger spoke with RT America's Natasha Sweatte about the seemingly escalating nuclear situation on the Korean peninsula.

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Dollars

State Dept. demanding Israel hand back millions in U.S. military aid

Adam Kredo
The Washington Free Beacon
Mon, 11 Sep 2017 12:30 UTC
Rex Tillerson
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has been pushing the Trump White House to demand that Israel give back to the United States millions of dollars in military aid, prompting pushback in the West Wing and further fueling ongoing tensions between Foggy Bottom and the White House over a range of key diplomatic issues, according to multiple sources briefed on the situation.

The Washington Free Beacon first reported on Friday that the State Department has been lobbying the White House to call for Israel to hand back some $75 million in U.S. military aid that was awarded to the Jewish state above the Obama administration's financial request in 2016.

The former administration came under fire from congressional leaders and the pro-Israel community for conditioning U.S. military aid-a cornerstone of the U.S.-Israel alliance-on a provision that bars Israel from lobbying Congress for increased aid as a range of conflicts in the Middle East develop.
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Heart - Black

WHO: Israel's bureaucracy used as a weapon, Palestinians die as a result

Ramona Wadi
Middle East Monitor
Wed, 13 Sep 2017 10:00 UTC
palestinians health
© middleeastmonitor.comPalestinian families await medical treatment approvals.
The World Health Organisation's latest report - Health Access for referral patients from the Gaza Strip - provides details of the hardships experienced by Palestinians living in Gaza and in need of medical treatment outside the enclave. With Israel creating labyrinthine exit procedures due to its alleged "security" concerns, Palestinians with chronic and terminal illnesses are fast learning that there is unlikely to be any treatment or respite.

Statistically, the violations are obvious. The WHO report states that "two in every five Gaza patients [were] delayed or denied access to health care outside Gaza." Such restrictions have a major impact on patients and their families. For the former, the delays can mean death or, at the very least, a further deterioration of their health. Relatives, on the other hand, are also subjected to inhumane, bureaucratic impediments which place additional stress upon everyone concerned.

More precisely, the WHO established that 42.6 per cent of patients in Gaza had their permits to travel for medical reasons denied or delayed. More than half of the individuals accompanying patients also experienced refusals or delays; applications were "still pending by the time of the patient's hospital appointment date."

Comment: Death by purposefully delayed permits for healthcare...such are the subtleties of Israeli policy that allows it to get away with murder.

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Radar

The catastrophic echoes of Iraq: 'Weapons of mass destruction' fraud in Syria

Robert Parry
ConsortiumNews.com
Sun, 10 Sep 2017 00:00 UTC
shock and awe
At the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, President George W. Bush ordered the U.S. military to conduct a devastating aerial assault on Baghdad, known as “shock and awe.”
Just as the West ignored signs in 2002-03 that anti-government Iraqis were fabricating WMD claims, evidence is being brushed aside that Syrian jihadists have ginned up chemical attacks, reports Robert Parry.

The New York Times and other Western media have learned few lessons from the Iraq War, including how the combination of a demonized foreign leader and well-funded "activists" committed to flooding the process with fake data can lead to dangerously false conclusions that perpetuate war.

What we have seen in Syria over the past six years parallels what occurred in Iraq in the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion in 2002-03. In both cases, there was evidence that the "system" was being gamed - by the Iraqi National Congress (INC) in pushing for the Iraq War and by pro-rebel "activists" promoting "regime change" in Syria - but those warnings were ignored. Instead, the flood of propagandistic claims overwhelmed what little skepticism there was in the West.

Regarding Iraq, the INC generated a surge of "defectors" who claimed to know where Saddam Hussein was concealing his WMD stockpiles and where his nuclear program was hidden. In Syria, we have seen something similar with dubious claims about chemical weapons attacks.
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Arrow Down

New defense bill draws objections from the White House

Charles S. Clark
Government Executive
Tue, 12 Sep 2017 00:00 UTC
JMCCain
© rt.comArmed Services Committee Chairman John McCain
The multi-layered $700 billion fiscal 2018 National Defense Authorization bill now on the Senate floor has drawn a series of objections from the Trump administration, ranging from its initial rejection of a new round of base closures to a narrowing of presidential authority to set alternative pay rates for warfighters.

The current bipartisan bill (S. 1519) that unanimously cleared the Armed Services Committee in July (the House passed its version the same month) is loaded with detailed weapons and management policy changes. After 277 committee amendments, it includes "important efforts to reorganize the Department of Defense, spur innovation in defense technology, and improve defense acquisition and business operations," said Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., as he launched debate. "The NDAA seeks to strengthen accountability and streamline the process of getting our warfighters what they need to succeed. At the same time, it prioritizes accountability from the department and demands the best use of every taxpayer dollar."

Comment: The US war machine's exponential growth and complexity would benefit from streamlining and a reshuffle. Putting this responsibility in the hands of a dysfunctional and biased Congress, however, may not actualize the best solutions. Trump's objections duly noted.

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