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Senate confirms new FBI director Christopher Wray


RT
Tue, 01 Aug 2017 21:55 UTC
Christopher Wray
© Joshua Roberts / Reuters
Christopher Wray will be the next director of the FBI, as the Senate has confirmed his nomination in a bipartisan vote. President Donald Trump has accused the acting FBI director Andrew McCabe of having close ties to Hillary Clinton.

The Tuesday vote tally was 92 to 5.

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, noted before the Tuesday floor vote that she was encouraged by Wray's testimony against waterboarding, stress positions, forced nudity and mock executions, which he said constituted torture.

Wray's independence and the rule of law, however, "sadly will likely be tested by this administration," Feinstein said, alluding to the Russia investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Wray, 50, was the US assistant attorney general for the criminal division from 2003 to 2005 under former President George W. Bush.
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Eye 2

NATO's "war on terror" in Africa and the Middle East leaves carnage, disease and famine in its wake

Mnar Muhawesh
Mint Press News
Tue, 01 Aug 2017 00:00 UTC
Somali children
© AP/Mark DuncanSomali children run alongside a U.S. Marine M-1 Abrams tank during an armored patrol in north Mogadishu, Somalia, Jan. 26, 1993.
Resource exploitation, military occupation and so-called "anti-terror" efforts led by Western countries are destabilizing several countries in Africa, leading to widespread starvation and sickness for millions of people. Famine has become a daily fact of life for many in Somalia, South Sudan and elsewhere in Africa.

Most of us living in the West have never known hunger. In America, food shelves are easily accessed by the most vulnerable of society.

Despite living in a time where there is a global surplus of food, millions of people around the world are still suffering from famine. If you follow mainstream media coverage about these humanitarian disasters, they're most likely presented through the lens of climate change, high food prices and taxes.

But in places like Yemen, South Sudan, the Lake Chad basin of West Africa and Somalia, where images of skeletal children have become commonplace several countries in Africa and the Middle East, it is perhaps no coincidence that the epidemic of famine is directly linked to modern-day colonialism and imperialism led by the U.S.

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Star of David

Head of American Jewish Committee is Israel's 'Foreign Minister,' claims Netanyahu minister

Philip Weiss
Mondoweiss
Tue, 01 Aug 2017 21:27 UTC
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, and AJCongress Executive Director David Harris in Jerusalem
© Olivier FitoussiPrime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, and AJCongress Executive Director David Harris in Jerusalem, January 2013.
Last week South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham suggested that the Israel lobby group AIPAC might need to register as a foreign agent because it speaks up for Israel and has many contacts in that country. Such registration would be a blow to AIPAC. Its rationale to US politicians is that it is an American group that speaks for American interests - even though its goal is to make sure there is "no daylight" between the U.S. government and the Israeli government.

Here is further evidence of the confusion of interests between the United States and Israel represented by American Zionist organizations. Yuval Steinitz, a minister in the Netanyahu government of Israel, two years ago heaped praise on David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, at an AJC global forum.
Actually you know currently we don't have a foreign minister in Israel, but the Jewish people have a foreign minister, an accident foreign minister and this is David Harris, and I am confident David, that although you are the foreign minister of the American Jewish Committee and actually of the Jewish people, you are also serving a little bit as the foreign minister of the Jewish state. Jewish people, Jewish state- some linkage.
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Pirates

Israeli officer admits ISIS holds 20% of Golan border - yet Israel does nothing about it


Sputnik
Tue, 01 Aug 2017 21:25 UTC
isis flag
Israeli allies.
Islamic State (Daesh) terrorists keep control over 20 percent of Israel-Syria border, where they commit vile atrocities, an Israeli military officer said Tuesday.

"Islamic State has 20 percent of the [Israel-Syria] border. We can see them very close to our territory, You can see how they behead people on the town squares through the scopes. In other words, we can see here [with our own eyes] what they show on TV," an Israeli officer said during a briefing for foreign journalists in one of the units' base on the Golan Heights.

According to Israeli military's estimate, another 65 percent of the 80-kilometer long (slightly less than 50 miles) separation line in the Golan Heights is controlled by some 20 Syrian opposition groups, ranging from the al-Nusra Front (outlawed in Russia) terrorists to rural self-defense forces. The remaining 15 percent are in the hands of the Syrian government forces and their allies.

Since Daesh fighters came to this area, they have tried to engage in a fight with Israeli forces just once. In November 2016, the terrorists attacked an Israeli secret outpost near the border line, but the air force killed all four jihadists in a counterattack.


Comment: Perhaps this was the time ISIS apologized, and Israel graciously accepted said apology: Former Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon confirms Israel's collaboration with ISIS in Syria

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Airplane

Tillerson says U.S.-Russia relations "under stress", will meet with Lavrov this weekend


RT
Tue, 01 Aug 2017 20:52 UTC
tillerson
Not obedient enough to the Israel lobby.
Relations between the US and Russia are "under considerable stress" but Washington and Moscow are trying to work together to fight ISIS and create conditions for peace in Syria, said US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

"After last week, the question is if they are getting worse," Tillerson said, alluding to Moscow's decision to retaliate for US measures from December 2016 by locking down two properties and cutting US diplomatic mission by 755 members.

"I think the American people want the two most powerful nuclear powers in the world to have a better relationship," Tillerson said, answering questions from reporters at the State Department on Tuesday.


Comment: Guess that excludes the American establishment. See: Kindergarten on LSD: Sanctions, smoke and mirrors in Washington


He noted that Moscow reserved the right to react when the Obama administration expelled 35 Russian diplomats and seized two Russian properties in the US, and that President Vladimir Putin made the call to retaliate after the US Congress overwhelmingly voted to impose more sanctions on Russia, overriding the White House.

"Does it make our life more difficult? Of course it makes our life more difficult," Tillerson said. "Neither the president nor I are very happy" about how Congress went about the sanctions bill, he added, but "we can't let it take us off-track in trying to restore the relationship."
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Bizarro Earth

The witch hunt for Trump surpasses the Salem Witch Trials of 1692-93

Paul Craig Roberts
Institute for Political Economy
Mon, 31 Jul 2017 20:45 UTC
A hanging scene at the Salem Witchcraft Museum in Massachusetts
© ALAMY
We should be scared to death that Sally Q. Yates served as a prosecutor in the Justice (sic) Department for 27 years. In the New York Times Sally takes high umbrage to Trump's criticism of his attorney general, Sessions, and blows Trump's disappointment with Sessions into an attack by Trump on the rule of law.

Sally has it backwards. The rule of law is being attacked by the appointment of a special prosecutor to find something on Trump in the absence of any evidence of a crime.

In 1940 US attorney general Robert Jackson warned federal prosecutors against "picking the man and then putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him. It is in this realm-in which the prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense - that the greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting power lies. It is here that law enforcement becomes personal, and the real crime becomes that of being unpopular with the predominant or governing group, being attached to the wrong political views or being personally obnoxious to, or in the way of, the prosecutor himself."
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Propaganda

Bloomberg says Trump and Fox "concocted" Seth Rich/DNC murder story - investigator suing Fox for allegedly misquoting him

Erik Larson, Bob Van Voris, Andrew M. Harris
Bloomberg
Tue, 01 Aug 2017 20:12 UTC
Seth Rich
© NewsweekSeth Rich
President Donald Trump collaborated with Fox News to concoct a story claiming a Democratic National Committee staffer was killed in retaliation for leaking Hillary Clinton's emails to Wikileaks, according to a lawsuit by a private investigator for the slain man's family.

Trump, who allegedly reviewed the Fox story before it was published on May 16, intended for the article to divert attention from the widening probe into ties between his campaign and Russia, according to the suit filed Tuesday by Rod Wheeler, the investigator, a former Washington police detective and occasional Fox News contributor.

He claims Fox attributed fabricated quotes attributed to him in the story to back up the network's false thesis. Wheeler said the fake quotes amount to defamation. Fox later retracted the story.

The alleged motive behind the report, overseen by Fox investigative journalist Malia Zimmerman, was "to shift the blame from Russia and help put to bed speculation that President Trump colluded with Russia in an attempt to influence the outcome of the Presidential election," Wheeler said in the complaint filed in Manhattan federal court.


Comment: Fox (with or without Trump) didn't concoct the DNC/Seth Rich. They merely revived it. There's a difference. But the possibility that Trump was involved in the Fox story is interesting. We commented on the impeccable timing of it at the time.

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Jet5

Oops: NATO jets violate Finland airspace while intercepting Russian planes


RT
Tue, 01 Aug 2017 20:32 UTC
Spanish Air Force F/A-18 fighter jet
© Jon Nazca / Reuters
Two NATO jets which were intercepting Russian planes over neutral waters near Estonia briefly violated Finnish airspace, the alliance said.

Two Spanish F-18 jets were scrambled on Tuesday from Estonia's Amari Airbase to intercept Russian aircraft, identified as two MiG-31 jets and one Antonov AN-26 cargo plane, according to the military bloc.

As they were escorting the Russian planes, the NATO jets violated the airspace of Finland, which is not a member of the alliance.

"In handing over the intercept to the Finnish jets, the Spanish jets accidentally entered Finnish airspace," NATO spokesman Dylan P. White said.

"NATO's Air Command has explained the incident to the Finnish Air Operations Center to improve future coordination," White added.
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Bad Guys

Best of the Web: Kindergarten on LSD: Sanctions, smoke and mirrors in Washington

The Saker
The Saker
Mon, 31 Jul 2017 17:33 UTC
congress asylum
The latest US sanctions and the Russian retaliatory response have resulted in a torrent of speculations in the official media and the blogosphere - everybody is trying to make sense of a situation which appears to make no sense at all. Why in the world would the US Senate adopt new sanctions against Russia when Russia has done absolutely nothing to provoke such a vote? Except for Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders, every single US Senator voted in favor of these sanctions. Why?! This is even more baffling when you consider that the single biggest effect of these sanctions will be to trigger a rift, and possibly even counter-sanctions, between the US and the EU. What is absolutely clear is that these sanctions will have exactly zero effect on Russia and I don't think anybody is seriously expecting the Russians to change anything at all in their policies. And yet, every Senator except Paul and Sanders voted for this. Does that make any sense to you?

Let's try to figure out what is going on here.

First, a simple reminder: like all US politicians, from the county level to the US Congress, Senators have only one consideration when they vote - "what's in it for me?". The very last thing which any US Senator really cares about are the real life consequences of his/her vote. This means that to achieve the kind of quasi unanimity (98%) for a totally stupid vote there was some kind of very influential lobby which used some very forceful "arguments" to achieve such a vote. Keep in mind that the Republicans in the Senate knew that they were voting against the wishes of their President. And yet every single one except for Rand Paul voted for these sanctions, that should tell you something about the power of the lobby which pushed for them. So who would have such power?
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Info

Report suggests Scaramucci had one purpose - get rid of Priebus - before being escorted out of the White House

Sarah Taylor
The Blaze
Mon, 31 Jul 2017 17:21 UTC
scaramucci
The New York Times on Monday reported - along with several other outlets - that former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci was hired for one reason and one reason alone: to get rid of former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus.

Scaramucci was removed from his position of communications director on Monday after being appointed just a week prior.

The New York Times reported that President Donald Trump's daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner, encouraged the president to hire Scaramucci as a ploy to force Priebus out of his position as chief of staff.

"Ivanka Trump, the president's daughter, and Jared Kushner, her husband, had pushed the president to hire Mr. Scaramucci, seeing him as a way to force out Mr. Priebus, the former national Republican committee chairman, and his allies in the West Wing," the New York Times reported on Monday after Scaramucci's White House departure.

Additionally, Axios claimed that "Jared and Ivanka were instrumental in bringing in Scaramucci, primarily to take out Reince Priebus."

Comment: Scaramucci was reportedly escorted off the premises of the White House, which CNN's Brooke Baldwin says isn't necessarily unusual.
Zeleny also intimated that Scaramucci was removed from his position by new Chief of Staff John Kelly, who was displeased over Scaramucci's "lack of discipline."
...
The New York Times reported that the decision to remove Scaramucci as communications director came at Kelly's request. President Donald Trump was reported to have given Kelly "full authority" upon him assuming the reins of day-to-day operations at the White House.
According to press secretary Sarah Huckabee, "the president certainly felt that Anthony's comments were inappropriate for a person in that position."

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