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MIB

Pompeo blames media for leaks from intelligence community


RT
Wed, 26 Jul 2017 20:43 UTC
CIA logo on floor
© Larry Downing / Reuters
The media's "insatiable demand" for leaks is prompting the US intelligence community to anonymously disclose government secrets, according to CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who spoke after President Donald Trump blasted intelligence agencies for constant leaks.

"The media's insatiable demand for leaks presents enormous risks to the United States of America," Pompeo told the Washington Free Beacon.

"I am confident that this administration is going to do its level best, once the secrets are out, to identify those who did them," Pompeo added. His comments came on the heels of President Trump saying that he wants leakers to be prosecuted.

Last week, Pompeo blasted The New York Times for publishing the name of the undercover officer in charge of the agency's Iran operations.

"It matters to me personally. We have CIA officers who will get killed as a result of these [leaks]," Pompeo said in the Free Beacon interview.
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No Entry

Attorney General Sessions threatens sanctuary cities with federal grant cuts


RT
Wed, 26 Jul 2017 08:25 UTC
Jeff Sessions
© James Lawler Duggan/Reuters
US Attorney General Jeff Sessions has announced that sanctuary cities must cooperate with federal immigration enforcement or face the wrath of cuts in federal grants. The new policy outlines requirements cities need to follow to receive funding.

On Tuesday afternoon, Sessions released a statement threatening to cut lucrative funding related to the Byrne Justice Assistance Grants for so-called sanctuary cities, where local and state law enforcement are not bound to federal requests on immigration enforcement. Many cities rely on federal funding for law enforcement in their communities.

The requirements set forth by Sessions state that the sanctuary cities need to give Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers access to their jails and can't stop their local police from providing ICE the immigration status of the people they arrest. Moreover, the cities must give ICE a 48-hour notice before releasing people from custody who get arrested, if ICE has a detainer on them.
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Info

Erdogan: Turkey will 'no longer' blindly cave in to pressure from the West


RT
Wed, 26 Jul 2017 20:30 UTC
Recep Tayyip Erdogan
© Wolfgang Rattay / Reuters
Western states should not expect Turkey to blindly follow their instructions anymore, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said ahead of talks between Turkish and EU officials. He also supported the deal on S-400 missile defense systems with Russia.

Erdogan made a speech against western and, in particular, EU countries that he believes are treating Turkey unfairly, while addressing his party's lawmakers in Ankara on Tuesday.

"The West wants Turkey to bring about their demands no questions asked... I am sorry to say that Turkey no longer exists," the Turkish president said, as cited by AP, while his foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu was preparing to meet with the EU top foreign officials in Brussels.
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Sherlock

Report: AG Sessions will soon announce criminal investigations into intelligence leaks

Jake Gibson
Fox News
Wed, 26 Jul 2017 20:24 UTC
session
© AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin
Attorney General Jeff Sessions will soon announce several criminal leak investigations, Fox News has learned.

A U.S. official familiar with the discussions said Tuesday that the planned announcement surrounding stepped-up efforts on leak investigations has "been in the works for some time and will most likely happen sometime in the next week."

The news comes in the wake of days of intense pressure on Sessions, with President Trump lashing out and expressing his "disappointment" with the attorney general, through tweets, interviews and news conferences.

The investigations will look at news reports that publicized sensitive intelligence material, according to officials who have been briefed on the matter.
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Vader

Trump's embarrassing 'Hezbollah moment' with Lebanese PM reveals his lack of understanding of Lebanese politics

Adam Garrie
The Duran
Wed, 26 Jul 2017 20:10 UTC
trump hariri
Yesterday, Donald Trump held a press conference beside Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri. Meeting with any Lebanese Prime Minister ought to be a relief for Trump as Lebanese politics is one of the few places in the world with more divisions than those which currently plague the United States.

Trump however, in his opening remarks stated that Lebanon's coalition government was "fighting Hezbollah". This is true in the sense that Saad Hariri's Future Movement party is fighting Hezbollah at the ballot box in democratic elections, but this is the extent of the fighting.


Comment: See: Trump to Lebanese premier: 'You're on the frontline of fighting ISIS, Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah'


Hezbollah currently has 12 seats in Lebanon's multi-party parliament. As part of the governing coalition, Hezbolalh has two Ministers in the Lebanese government and is part of a bloc of parties which includes the Free Patriotic Movement of Lebanese Christian President Michel Aoun. In Lebanon, the country's sectarian make-up has dictated that the President is a position reserved for a Christian while the Prime Minister is traditionally a Sunni Muslim with the Speaker of Parliament being a position reserved for a Shi'a Muslim. The current speaker is Nabih Berri who leads the Hezbollah allied Amal Movement.
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Magnify

New forensic research suggests that Russiagate began as a Clinton campaign conspiracy

Alexander Mercouris
The Duran
Tue, 25 Jul 2017 00:00 UTC
DNC HQ
Forensic report by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity implies that DNC/Podesta hacks and "Guccifer 2.0' personas were concocted to discredit Wikileaks in advance of publication of the DNC/Podesta emails and to cast suspicion on Russia.

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity ("VIPS"), one of the most formidable commentary groups in the world, which includes such heavyweights as William Binney, the former NSA Technical Director for World Geopolitical & Military Analysis; Co-founder of NSA's Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center, the former top CIA analyst Ray McGovern, and many others, has published another in its highly enlightening series of public memoranda addressed to the President of the United States.

This evidence sets out a forensic examination of the hacking allegations which are at the center of the Russiagate scandal and which allege that it was Russian intelligence which hacked the computers of John Podesta and the DNC and which stole the emails they found there and passed them on to Wikileaks.
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Evil Rays

Why Trump's campaign against AG Sessions is destabilizing his administration

Adam Garrie
The Duran
Wed, 26 Jul 2017 20:02 UTC
trump sessions
Back in May, shortly after President Trump sacked FBI Director Comey, I wrote an article for The Duran in which I said that President Trump's own erratic behaviour is a major reason for his problems.

Since then the President has made some wise decisions - such as getting himself some good lawyers and an accomplished Communications Director - but he persists in undermining them with other bad and extremely unwise ones.

President Trump's ongoing campaign against Jeff Sessions - his own Attorney General - is a case in point.

I am no fan of Jeff Sessions. However he was Donald Trump's choice for Attorney General, a post for which he is professionally speaking well qualified. He was also a loyal supporter of Donald Trump's during the election.
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Clock

Veteran US intel officers send Trump memo with evidence that 'Russian hack' was actually inside job


RT
Wed, 26 Jul 2017 19:57 UTC
DNC HQ
A group of former US intelligence officers are challenging the assessment that Russia hacked the Democrats during the 2016 presidential election. They are also criticizing analysts for not looking at the forensic evidence.

The Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) sent their first memo to President Donald Trump on Monday, challenging the claim that Russia "hacked" Democratic National Committee (DNC) computers during the 2016 presidential election.

The group focused on a new analysis from an individual known as the Forensicator, who uncovered evidence that the files stolen from the DNC by the hacker known as "Guccifer 2.0" were most likely leaked, not hacked.

The Forensicator analyzed metadata from the Guccifer 2.0 files, and showed that the files were transferred at a speed of 23 MB/s, making it "unlikely that this initial data transfer could have been done remotely over the Internet." The Forensicator also found that the files were most likely copied to a USB drive by someone on the East Coast of the US, who had physical access to a computer connected to the DNC network.


Comment: Here's the memo, where it's all laid out: evidence that the US intel agencies cooked up the 'Russian collusion' narrative to distract the American people from the fact that the DNC emails were leaked. Which means Trump won fairly. End of story.

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Network

EU expresses willingness to help Qatar solve diplomatic row


Sputnik
Wed, 26 Jul 2017 18:45 UTC
doha
© REUTERS/ Naseem Zeitoon
The European Union's Foreign Affairs head Federica Mogherini has called on the Gulf countries to de-escalate the tensions and enter a direct dialogue amid the ongoing Qatari crisis. Sputnik spoke to an expert on Middle Eastern affairs about this issue.

Speaking after her arrival at the Foreign Affairs Council in Luxembourg on Monday, Federica Mogherini said, "Any difficulty, any tension, can be and must be resolved at a table, discussing, in dialogue, finding common ways, and politically."

An expert on the Persian Gulf at the Arab Research Center in Egypt, Ahmed Talaat, told Sputnik that "the EU has now expressed its willingness to support the negotiation processes related to the crisis around Qatar and help find a solution."

He also said that the Europeans are ready, together with the mediators to resolve the Qatari crisis, in order to conduct a joint struggle against terrorism.
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SOTT Logo Media

SOTT Exclusive: Latest Russian MOD briefing shows dramatic impact of Russian intervention in Syria

Harrison Koehli
Sott.net
Wed, 26 Jul 2017 21:55 UTC
Here is the Russian MOD's map of Syria on September 30, 2015, the day Russia announced its mission in Syria and launched its first airstrikes:
syria sept 30 map
Followed by the situation today, 22 months later:
syria map july 2017
No wonder the U.S. and its allies are backing off the regime change rhetoric while also attempting to downplay Russian success in Syria.
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