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Eiffel Tower

Best of the Web: A new French Revolution in the offing? Not so fast

Neil Clark
RT
Wed, 26 Apr 2017 19:28 UTC
demonstration france elections 2017
© Philippe Wojazer / Reuters
Most of the media were quick to hail a 'New French Revolution' following the results of the first round of voting in France's 2017 Presidential election. Well, at a quick glance, the claim appears to have some substance.

After all, it's the first time since the founding of the Fifth Republic in 1958 that France's two main parties haven't made it through to the final round. Instead, we've got a run off between Emmanuel Macron, a 39-year old novice who hardly anyone had heard of a year ago, and who leads a party only formed in 2016, and Marine Le Pen.

But before we start getting all 1789, and heading off to smoke our clay pipes at the Club des Cordeliers, let's look a little closer.
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Vader

Debunking Trump's casus belli against Syria

Philip Giraldi
American Conservative
Mon, 24 Apr 2017 19:11 UTC
US drone
US drone
Intelligence community insiders are getting restless for a whistleblower to step forward.

Wars and rumors of wars have been dominating news cycles of late. No one should be surprised that there is a "former intelligence officer" subculture that is particularly noticeable in the Washington, DC, area. We stay in touch, communicate regularly, have lunches to discuss the "old days," and sometimes organize to raise objections to some of the foreign follies pursued by the U.S. government. Though we often try to stay under the radar, making personal but discreet contact with sympathetic congressmen and journalists, we sometimes work together to get letters to the editor or articles placed in national publications. More rarely we appear on television or radio to discuss our own perspectives on current events.

There is an additional element that helps shape our perceptions—namely, that many of us are in contact with friends who are still in harness with the Intelligence Community or who are working as post-retirement contractors. Though current employees generally are highly cautious about what they are doing, and we are acutely aware that it is not a good idea to ask anything specific, frustration over specific governmental policies and actions is occasionally vented.
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Propaganda

Quelle surprise: French 'proof' of Assad's chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun turns out to be total BS


Russia Insider
Wed, 26 Apr 2017 17:37 UTC
Syria chemical attack false flag Idlib
It's based on circular logic. If anything, what little has been supposedly established actually points in the other direction
For over a week now France has claimed it has irrefutable evidence that Syrian military used gas against civilians earlier this month and would present it shortly.

It has now done so. It says it has determined that sarin used in the 2017 Khan Sheikhoun attack came from the same stock used in an earlier 2013 attack.

This is it. This is the extent of its super-duper evidence.

Because Paris "knows" the Syrian army used sarin in 2013, which Syria denies and was never proven, France now "knows" Syria also used sarin in 2017.

Comment: For more information, see the articles below:

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Vader

Trump's child care tax break benefits rich and gives average American family less than $20

Christina Cauterucci
Slate
Tue, 25 Apr 2017 18:17 UTC
day care
© ThinkstockWhen day care costs as much as rent, $20 won’t go far.
According to Donald Trump, Donald Trump loves and respects women more than anybody in the world. That's why he and daughter Ivanka have put forth a plan for affordable child care, an essential building block in the foundation of gender equality at home and in the workplace.

But Trump's child-care proposal, which Ivanka is currently trying to sell to Congress, would function more as a handout to wealthy families than as necessary support for families already struggling to afford child-care services. Parents would get the subsidy as a bracket-based tax deduction, meaning people with higher incomes would get more money back. When I wrote about the proposal in February, I surmised that the minimum-wage workers who pour Ivanka's coffee and do her dry-cleaning would get less money toward their child-care expenses than Ivanka and her husband, who are multi-millionaires, would receive.

A new analysis from the Center for American Progress puts exact numbers to that likely outcome. Using the median income in Trump swing counties—counties that saw a 15 percent or more shift to the Republican candidate from 2012 to 2016—CAP estimated what the typical family in those counties would stand to gain from the president's child-care proposal. Analysts found that a four-person family with two young children in these counties (located in Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia) would get a tax deduction more than 1,000 times smaller than the deduction a similar family in Trump's old Upper East Side neighborhood would get.
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Eye 1

Assange: CIA chief Pompeo is waging a war against free speech

Julian Assange
Washington Post
Wed, 26 Apr 2017 17:48 UTC
assange
© Neil Hall / Reuters
Mike Pompeo, in his first speech as director of the CIA, chose to declare war on free speech rather than on the United States' actual adversaries. He went after WikiLeaks, where I serve as editor, as a "non-state hostile intelligence service." In Pompeo's worldview, telling the truth about the administration can be a crime — as Attorney General Jeff Sessions quickly underscored when he described my arrest as a "priority." News organizations reported that federal prosecutors are weighing whether to bring charges against members of WikiLeaks, possibly including conspiracy, theft of government property and violating the Espionage Act.

All this speech to stifle speech comes in reaction to the first publication in the start of WikiLeaks' "Vault 7" series. Vault 7 has begun publishing evidence of remarkable CIA incompetence and other shortcomings. This includes the agency's creation, at a cost of billions of taxpayer dollars, of an entire arsenal of cyber viruses and hacking programs — over which it promptly lost control and then tried to cover up the loss. These publications also revealed the CIA's efforts to infect the public's ubiquitous consumer products and automobiles with computer viruses.

When the director of the CIA, an unelected public servant, publicly demonizes a publisher such as WikiLeaks as a "fraud," "coward" and "enemy," it puts all journalists on notice, or should. Pompeo's next talking point, unsupported by fact, that WikiLeaks is a "non-state hostile intelligence service," is a dagger aimed at Americans' constitutional right to receive honest information about their government. This accusation mirrors attempts throughout history by bureaucrats seeking, and failing, to criminalize speech that reveals their own failings.
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Star of David

Hypocrisy at its finest: Israel accuses Assad while admitting to stockpiling (and using) its own chemical weapons

Whitney Webb
Mint Press News
Tue, 25 Apr 2017 17:15 UTC
chemical weapons Israel
In this Jan. 11, 2009, photo. Palestinian Akram Abu Roka is treated for burns at Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza Strip. Human Rights Watch issued a report March 25 2009 that contained evidence Israel fired white phosphorous shells indiscriminately over the densely populated Gaza Strip.
While Israel has been quick to condemn Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad's alleged use of chemical weapons, the apartheid country has consistently refused to ratify the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention, despite having the largest stockpile of WMDs in the Middle East

During a visit to Israel, Secretary of Defense James Mattis declared at a press conference that the United States is confident that the Syrian government continues to hold stockpiles of chemical weapons, telling reporters on Friday: "I can say authoritatively they [the Syrian government] have retained some [chemical weapons]. It's a violation of the United Nations Security Council resolutions and it's going to have to be taken up diplomatically."

Mattis declined to elaborate on the approximate quantities of chemical weapons he accused the Syrian government of possessing, arguing that doing so could compromise sources of intelligence.

Israeli officials claimed earlier this week that the Syrian government, led by President Bashar al-Assad, still possesses up to three tons of chemical weapons - the first specific intelligence claim regarding Syria's chemical weapon stockpiles following the controversial chemical weapons attack that occurred in Syria's Idlib Province earlier this month.
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Gold Coins

British MPs demand fraud be revealed in foreign aid budgets


RT
Wed, 26 Apr 2017 17:34 UTC
British Royal Air Force
© Robert Birsel / Reuters A British Royal Air Force Chinook helicopter lifts aid supplies for Pakistani earthquake victims
Ministers have been told to admit the true extent of fraud in the foreign aid budget after MPs published a damning report questioning the credibility of official figures. The Commons Public Accounts Committee claimed the "remarkably low" official figures are not "credible given the risks they face overseas."

Figures reveal that Britain gave £1.3 billion ($1.6 billion) to the world's 20 most corrupt nations in 2015. Official statistics claim, however, that just 3 pence in every £100 ($128) spent on foreign aid is lost to fraud. While setting out the report, the committee highlighted a study by the University of Portsmouth which argues overseas aid is lost to fraudsters at a 3 percent rate, rather than the official claim of 0.3 percent. The Times calculated the equivalent amounts to £300 million ($385 million) a year.

"Reported levels of fraud do not seem credible given the risks (the departments) face overseas," the report stated. The committee claims the official figures on spending by the Department for International Development DfiD, the Foreign Office and British Council may not be accurate as they fail to account for the considerable levels of undetected fraud.
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Pistol

Busted: Investigation finds that Bulgaria routinely ships weapons to Syrian militants

Inessa Sinchougova
Fort Russ
Wed, 26 Apr 2017 17:23 UTC
Isis toyota trucks
According to the news agency "Tass", another batch of Bulgarian arms to Syria was delivered April 4, 2017 from the port of Burgas (Bulgaria) to the port of "Jeddah" (Saudi Arabia) on the vessel "Marianne Danica", en route under the flag of Denmark.

It is known that over the last month, the Bulgarian ship has made two trips to Saudi Arabia and returned to Bulgaria for the next "batch". Saudi Arabia can not realistically be the recipient of the weapons, as the country's army is equipped with exclusively Western weapons already.

Reporters of the newspaper "Trud", who published the original result of the investigation, also found that the Bulgarian weapons manufacturer "VMZ-Sopot" signed contracts on arms supplies with the US; two companies "Chemring", in the amount of $47m, (Dec 2016) and Orbital ATK, to the amount of $50m in January of this year.

Comment:

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Bad Guys

Russian military expert Viktor Baranets: The arrival of US military instructors in Donbass indicates Washington's 'direct interference' in the Ukrainian conflict


Sputnik
Wed, 26 Apr 2017 19:05 UTC
US special forces instructor
© AP Photo/ Aleksandr ShulmanUS special forces instructor, left, trains Ukrainian soldiers at the military training ground in Ukraine's Khmelnitsk region
In an interview with Sputnik, Russian military expert Viktor Baranets described the arrival of US military instructors in Donbass as direct White House interference in the Ukrainian conflict.

Earlier, the Defense Ministry of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) reported the arrival of American military instructors in the conflict zone in Donbass.

"The arrival of military instructors from the United States in the area of the so-called anti-terrorist operation [in Donbass] has been tracked, ATO has been established," DPR Deputy Defense Minister Eduard Basurin said, adding that "one of the goals of the arrival of US instructors was to check the readiness of Ukrainian Armed Forces for combat operations."

Speaking to Sputnik, Viktor Baranets pointed to the fact that the American instructors had worked in Ukraine in previous months and that they are currently being rotated in.

"American instructors were in place there from the very beginning, and they were endorsed by the Security Service of Ukraine. What's more, the US instructors trained servicemen from the Ukrainian Armed Forces who were deployed to the Donetsk front line," Baranets said.

Comment: NATO is intensifying intelligence activities near the Russian borders, the Russian General Staff's chief Gen. Valery Gerasimov said on Wednesday.
"The Alliance is intensifying reconnaissance and intelligence activities along the Russian border. Over the past two years, the number of operational and combat training activities of the joint NATO armed forces has almost doubled in the Eastern European region. The implementation of expansion plans undermines the balance of forces in the region and increases the risk of military incidents. All these actions by NATO are destructive and provocative," he said.

Moscow has expressed concerns over NATO's expansion to the east some time ago, stressing that it should be immediately stopped. Since 2014, after Crimea rejoined Russia, NATO has been increasing its military presence in Eastern Europe, using the countries' vulnerability to alleged Russian aggression as a pretext.
Gerasimov said that the global defense system's Aegis Ashore land-based component in Romania stations "universal launchers capable of launching not only interceptor missiles but also 'Tomahawk' cruise missiles."
"The same installations are planned to be deployed in Poland. As a result, all strategic sites located in European Russia will be in the crosshairs of cruise missiles," he stressed at the VI Moscow Conference on International Security.

On February 21, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said NATO had intensified its intelligence activity near Russian borders over the past 10 years and added that the alliance continued to eschew any forms of cooperation with Russia.
Russia-NATO relations at lowest point since Cold War era
Relations between Russia and NATO are currently at the lowest point since the end of the Cold War, Gerasimov said.

"Today they are at the lowest point since the end of the Cold War. The decisions of NATO's summits in the UK and Poland state that Russia is the main source of military threats," he said.

According to Gerasimov, the framework where Russia and NATO could discuss the situation, that is, the NATO-Russia Council has stalled. "There is no military-to-military dialogue there. Today virtually all contacts have been curtailed," he said, adding that this contributes to further deterioration of relations between Russia and the alliance.

Cyberattacks against NATO may serve as a pretext

Cyberattacks against NATO countries may serve as a pretext for naming those guilty without any proof and the alliance's military strikes on them, according to Gerasimov.

Gerasimov noted that NATO has started looking into how to implement Article 5 (collective defense) of the Washington Treaty in case of cyberattacks on technical means of systems of state and military administration belonging to NATO member-states.

"But in modern conditions it is almost impossible to identify true sources of these attacks. Therefore, a possibility emerges to name those guilty absolutely without any proof and exert influence on them by military means," Gerasimov said.


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Chess

Russian meeting with Saudi Arabia highlights clash on Syria but prepares agreement on other fronts

Alexander Mercouris
The Duran
Wed, 26 Apr 2017 16:06 UTC
Lavrov Adel bin Ahmed
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, left, and Saudi Arabia Foreign Minister Adel bin Ahmed
Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has had a meeting in Moscow with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir, during which they have publicly clashed on the way forward in the Syrian crisis.

Al-Jubeir predictably demanded that President Assad leave power in Syria, and said that Iran and Hezbollah - Syria's allies - had no role in that country.

Lavrov responded that Hezbollah and Iran - like Russia - were present in Syria at the invitation of the legitimate Syrian government.

On the subject of President Assad, the Russian position was again set out today by Dmitry Peskov, President Putin's spokesman, who is reported to have said that President Putin's attitude to President Assad is unchanged: he is not President Assad's advocate but he insists that the future of any country - including the question of its President - must be decided by the people of that country, and not by other countries or parties.

Comment: Russia has to work with many unsavory types in the world of politics. Russia still seeks to work with the United States, even after all the garbage the US has thrown at them. It's a matter of practical state-craft, and it is this stance that sets Russia apart from the many myopic and short-sighted nations of the West. Some on the inter-webs try to portray this as 'evidence' of Russian complicity in some grand statist maneuver over the people. It's not. It's sensible diplomacy that seeks to find the best possible outcomes in an imperfect and deeply damaged world.

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