Puppet MastersS


Eye 2

Videos shot in Mosul allegedly show Iraqi forces beating and executing detainees


RFE/RL
Thu, 13 Jul 2017 17:53 UTC
mosul civilians
Videos allegedly shot in the Mosul area appear to show Iraqi forces executing a detainee and brutally beating others, a rights watchdog says.

The videos "appear to show Iraqi soldiers and federal police beating and extrajudicially killing detainees," Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on July 13 in a statement that included links to the clips, which were posted on Facebook.

Iraq declared victory over the Islamic State extremist group in Mosul earlier this week after a nearly nine-month battle that left large areas of the city in ruins, killed thousands of civilians and troops, and displaced more than 920,000 people.

In one video, men in Iraqi Army uniforms beat a bearded man, drag him to the edge of a cliff, throw him off, and shoot him and another body at the bottom.

Comment: Update (July 15): ISIS militants are thrown to their deaths and shot where they lie in video allegedly showing Iraqi troops carrying out executions. The Iraqi government is investigating the video and promised to bring justice if it is verified. It shows a terrified man, thought to be an ISIS fighter, being hurled off high edge. He lands on the body of another man and is then shot several times with a rifle. GRAPHIC CONTENT



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Magic Wand

The New Silk Road will go through Syria

Pepe Escobar
Asia Times
Thu, 13 Jul 2017 00:00 UTC
China and Syria have already begun discussing post-war infrastructure investment, with a 'Matchmaking Fair for Syria Reconstruction' held in Beijing
Road to Aleppo
© Reuters/Omar Sanadiki.Road to Aleppo: The Chinese don't forget that Syria controlled overland access to both Europe and Africa in ancient Silk Road times. Syrian forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad monitor traffic on the road to Aleppo in Syria on July 10, 2017.
Amid the proverbial doom and gloom pervading all things Syria, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune sometimes yield, well, good fortune.

Take what happened this past Sunday in Beijing. The China-Arab Exchange Association and the Syrian Embassy organized a Syria Day Expo crammed with hundreds of Chinese specialists in infrastructure investment. It was a sort of mini-gathering of the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), billed as "The First Project Matchmaking Fair for Syria Reconstruction".
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MIB

Remember Curveball when assessing 'Intelligence Community Consensus' on Russia

Scott Ritter
The American Conservative
Wed, 12 Jul 2017 22:36 UTC
John Brennan
© Official White House photo/Pete SouzaJohn Brennan briefs President Obama
Definitive assessment was not what it proclaimed to be.

A January intelligence product has served as the basis for a series of Congressional hearings into the issue of Russian meddling into American elections—and has taken on a near canonical quality that precludes any critical questioning of either the authors or their findings. There is one major problem, however: the supposedly definitive assessment was not that which it proclaimed to be.

On January 6, the Office of the Director for National Intelligence (DNI) released a National Intelligence Assessment (NIA), Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections. Billed as a "declassified version of a highly classified assessment" whose "conclusions are identical to those in the highly classified assessment," the report purported to be "an analytic assessment drafted and coordinated among The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and The National Security Agency (NSA), which draws on intelligence information collected and disseminated by those three agencies."
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Bullseye

Leaked documents show Democrats plotting to manufacture false evidence of Russian hacking

Christina Laila
The Gateway Pundit
Thu, 13 Jul 2017 15:40 UTC
Podesta and Hillary
© Via Twitter/RT
As TGP reported earlier, the pro-Russian hacker site "Cyber Berkut" published links between the Ukrainian government and the Hillary Clinton Campaign Thursday.

According to Cyber Berkut the Ukrainian foundation transferred 10 to 25 million dollars to the Clinton Foundation.

A whistleblower provided a very damaging email showing that the Democrats were plotting to 'manufacture false evidence of the Russian security services' involvement in cyber attacks during the U.S. presidential elections 2016′.

Wikileaks sent out a tweet saying, "Pro-Russia hacker site (or front) "Cyber Berkut" publishes alleged links between Ukraine and Clinton." and linked to 'Cyber Berkut'.

Comment: Trump and Russia dominates headlines, but there's more evidence of collusion between Democrats and Ukraine

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Attention

Russian Prosecutor General's office denies involvement in Trump Jr.'s meeting with Russian lawyer


RT
Fri, 14 Jul 2017 19:35 UTC
trump jr.
© Global Look Press
The Russian Prosecutor General's Office had nothing to do with the meeting of private Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya with Donald Trump Jr., its official representative told RT, calling allegations of any involvement "insane."

There have been allegations of the possible involvement of the Russian Prosecutor General's Office in brokering the meeting. Denis Grunis, who heads the international cooperation department of the Prosecutor General's Office, however, strongly denies the claims.

Based on international agreements, any information sharing between the Russian Office of the Prosecutor General and its foreign colleagues only happens through official channels and formal queries, Grunis told RT on Friday.

Comment:

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Newspaper

Trump and Russia dominates headlines, but there's more evidence of collusion between Democrats and Ukraine

Bryan MacDonald
RT
Fri, 14 Jul 2017 21:14 UTC
Trump Jr. and Trump Sr.
© Jewel Samad / AFP
Ukrainian cooperation with the Democratic Party appears to have been far deeper than any equivalent Trump-Russia collusion. Both pale in comparison to Washington's meddling in the former USSR. But the US media focuses on the most illusory of the situations.

It's pretty obvious Donald Trump Jr. isn't the brightest light in the firmament. The lethargic, spoiled and languid persona he projects doesn't help either. Nevertheless, the current hysteria surrounding his meeting a small-time Russian lawyer is beyond any bounds of reason.

Especially coming from journalists who have surely met a dodgy source or two in their time, in the hope of a scoop.
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Attention

Lavrov gives quick history lesson to lazy journalist who suggests Russia has violated NATO's trust


Russia Insider
Fri, 14 Jul 2017 20:58 UTC
Sergey Lavrov
Russia's Foreign Minister gives misinformed journalist an earful.

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov regularly crosses swords with journalists, television pundits and other parasites. It's never a fair fight - but is that really Lavrov's fault? Nein.

What we find so endearing about Sergey is that he's not your typical diplomat who mutters something incoherent and then pulls the fire alarm when confronted with an obnoxious question. Lavrov knows how to throw down. And the results are always devastating and highly educational.

This was certainly the case yesterday in Berlin, where Lavrov answered media questions about Russia's relationship with Europe.
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Document

Looking for targets: Kushner and Bannon in hot water over disclosure forms


RT
Fri, 14 Jul 2017 20:49 UTC
Bannon and Kushner
© Kevin Lamarque / Reuters
Senior White House adviser Jared Kushner's meeting with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 presidential campaign brought him closer to losing his security clearance. Also under scrutiny is top aide Steve Bannon's failure to detail his $2 million debt.

Congressional Democrats voted Thursday to seek to revoke the security clearance of President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner over his meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya in June last year ‒ which Kushner only recently disclosed. However, House Republicans defeated the effort.

The president's son, Donald Trump Jr., set up the meeting. He was told by a British publicist ‒ an acquaintance of Trump's ‒ that the lawyer had information that would "incriminate" Hillary Clinton and help his father in the presidential race, emails released by Donald Jr. show. In the messages, publicist Rob Goldstone wrote that the information is "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump."


Comment: For more on this 'nothing burger': Russia 'collusion' smoking gun or water pistol joke?


Kushner and Trump's then-campaign manager Paul Manafort were copied in on the emails, and both men also attended the meeting.
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Info

Russia 'collusion' smoking gun or water pistol joke?

Finian Cunningham
Sputnik
Thu, 13 Jul 2017 20:37 UTC
Kremlin tower
© Sputnik/ Vladimir Astapkovich
Political opponents and US media are calling the uncovered past meeting between Donald Trump's son and a Russian lawyer a "smoking gun".

This is the proof, we are told, that the Trump election team did indeed collude with the Russian government in order to win the US election at the end of last year.

Since the New York Times broke the story last weekend of the meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and the Russian lawyer there has been a frenzy among the anti-Trump political camp that the so-called "Russia-gate" affair has reached a critical moment.

Demands for impeachment have grown because, it is asserted, a member of the Trump campaign team met with a "Kremlin-connected lawyer who had information to damage Clinton".
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Attention

Russia envoy points to absence of 'White Helmets' video in OPCW report on sarin gas attack


Sputnik
Fri, 14 Jul 2017 20:31 UTC
White Helmets group
© AFP 2017/ AMER ALMOHIBANY
The fact that the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) did not include video footage by the "White Helmets" NGO into the report on April's chemical incident in the Syrian province of Idlib suggests that the US decision to carry out a missile strike on a Syrian airbase was based on "insignificant information," Russia's Permanent Representative to the OPCW Alexander Shulgin said on Thursday.

The video footage of the "White Helmets" group featured the bodies of children who allegedly fell victims to a sarin gas attack.
"As for the video of children dying presumably from the exposure to sarin, the FFM leaders explained that the experts did not even analyze it as they did not consider it to be primary evidence... But excuse me, photos of whom US Permanent Representative [to the United Nations] Nikki Haley was demonstrating at a meeting in New York? Were they not of these children?... On April 6, at an official meeting of the OPCW delegation with the [US] State Department officials, we were told that US President [Donald] Trump got 'extremely angry' when he saw the footage of dying children," Shulgin said at a 85th OPCW executive council meeting.
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