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Chess

US forces block Syrian Army advance in preparation for Syria's 'balkanization'

Russia Insider Staff
Russia Insider
Mon, 27 Mar 2017 12:03 UTC
Manbij US army tanks soldiers Syria
© AP
A U.S.-backed operation near Raqqa aims to "block any advance by Syrian government forces from the west". The Balkanization of Syria begins

The road to Raqqa is now blocked by U.S. forces and their allies. The chances that Raqqa (and the surrounding region) will be returned to Syria are now slim to none. Foreign armies and their proxies are sharpening their carving knives.
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People 2

Protests across Moscow & Russia are 'just a political show'

Alexander Mercouris
The Duran
Mon, 27 Mar 2017 12:03 UTC
Russia Moscow Protests
Russians rallied in central Moscow on Saturday
Protests called by liberal opposition activist in Moscow and across Russia attract few supporters.

Some sections of the international media including RT, Russia's publicly funded international TV broadcaster, are reporting today that Moscow and Russia has been hit by a "wave of protests".

Here is a detailed description of the Moscow protest by The Duran's Vladimir Rodzianko, who went to see what was happening for himself (photographs and video provided).

There have indeed been scattered protests in Moscow, St. Petersburg and some other Russian cities. The protests were called by the Russian neoliberal 'non-system' activist and 'anti-corruption' campaigner Alexey Navalny, purportedly in order to protest against the alleged corruption of Russia's Prime Minister and former President Dmitry Medvedev.

Comment: RT reports that some 600 protesters were arrested, but most were released immediately afterward:
An estimated 600 people have been detained in central Moscow during an unsanctioned rally, with opposition figure Aleksey Navalny among them. Similar rallies, some unsanctioned and others permitted by local authorities, took place across Russia. [...]

Police released most of those detained shortly afterward. The usual procedure for such cases of detention (which falls short of an arrest, which has to be sanctioned by a court) is to identify the individuals for potential administrative action and then release them.


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Map

On the verge of collapse? EU provides 'no clear answers' to mistakes it admits


Sputnik
Mon, 27 Mar 2017 08:16 UTC
EU leaders
© REUTERS/ Tony Gentile
Despite the signing of a declaration on post-Brexit priorities at a celebratory EU summit late last week, most experts warn that the supranational organization faces its gravest challenge yet and that its most highly-touted accomplishments of the last several decades are in jeopardy.

On Saturday, a new declaration honoring the 1957 Treaty of Rome, which led to the EU's foundation, was signed by 27 EU member states during a celebratory summit in the Italian capital.

Despite optimistic remarks by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker about the future of the EU, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, for her part, admitted in an interview with the Italian news network Rai that the EU "did not do everything well" in its migration and economic policy and that some relevant issues have yet to be resolved.
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Attention

CIA whistleblower leaks 47 hard drives exposing Obama Administration spying

Aaron Kesel
We Are Change
Fri, 24 Mar 2017 00:00 UTC
CIA whistleblower
The same day House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes gave a press conference stating that Trump and his transition team were under "incidental surveillance," Attorney and founder of Judicial Watch, Larry Klayman, sent a formal letter to the House Committee on Intelligence demanding they investigate the claims and evidence more than 40 hard drives over 600 million pages of information presented under oath at the FBI Field Office In Washington, DC by his client - CIA/NSA Whistleblower Dennis Montgomery.

Klayman claimed in a Newsmax report that Montgomery, "holds the keys to disproving the false claims that there is no evidence that the president and his men were wiretapped," however Montgomery's case was largely ignored.
"When Montgomery came forward as a whistleblower to congressional intelligence committees and various other congressmen and senators, including Senator Charles Grassley, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who, like Comey, once had a reputation for integrity, he was "blown off;" no one wanted to even hear what he had to say," the letter said.
This resulted in Montgomery contacting Attorney Klayman, who then approached the FBI:
"Under grants of immunity, which I obtained through Assistant U.S. Attorney Deborah Curtis, Montgomery produced the hard drives and later was interviewed under oath in a secure room at the FBI Field Office in the District of Columbia. There he laid out how persons like then-businessman Donald Trump were illegally spied upon by Clapper, Brennan, and the spy agencies of the Obama administration.

Montgomery left the NSA and CIA with 47 hard drives and over 600 million pages of information much of which is classified. He sought to come forward legally as a whistleblower to appropriate government entities, including congressional intelligence committees, to expose that the spy agencies were engaged for years in systematic illegal surveillance on prominent Americans, including the chief justice of the Supreme Court, other justices, 156 judges, prominent businessmen such as Donald Trump, and even yours truly. Working side by side with Obama's former Director of National Intelligence (DIA), James Clapper, and Obama's former Director of the CIA, John Brennan, Montgomery witnessed "up close and personal" this "Orwellian Big Brother" intrusion on privacy, likely for potential coercion, blackmail or other nefarious purposes.

He even claimed that these spy agencies had manipulated voting in Florida during the 2008 presidential election, which illegal tampering resulted in helping Obama to win the White House."

Comment: See also:

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Chess

ISIS in Russia: Militants clash with Russian National Guard in Chechnya

Alexander Mercouris
The Duran
Sun, 26 Mar 2017 19:29 UTC
ISIS Al-Qaeda leader Omar Al-Shishani Chechnya
ISIS/Al-Qaeda leader Omar Al-Shishani of Chechnya
Battle in Chechnya between ISIS fighters and Russian National Guard confirms organisation has established a presence in Russia.

What the Russian authorities have always feared and warned against finally happened today when early this morning a group of six ISIS fighters attacked a base of the Russian National Guard ('Rosgvardiya') in Chechnya's Naursky district.

A report of the clash from the official Russian news agency TASS drawing on a report from Russia's National Anti-Terrorism Committee reads as follows
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Star of David

Meet Trump's 'terrifying' ambassador to Israel

Josh Alvarez
Washington Monthly
Sun, 26 Mar 2017 19:29 UTC
David Friedman
© jalvarez/CSPAN screen-grab
In keeping with the logic of the Trump era, Senate Republicans (along with two Democrats) have hired an arsonist to prevent a fire. David Friedman, whom the Senate confirmed today as U.S. ambassador to Israel, spent most of his confirmation hearing either apologizing for or attempting to walk back everything he has ever said about Israel, Judaism, and the conflict with Palestinians.

Friedman was Donald Trump's bankruptcy lawyer during the president's Atlantic City debacles. Apparently, in Trump's mind, that qualified him to serve as campaign advisor on Israel and the Middle East. During the campaign, Friedman contributed commentary to Arutz Sheva, an extreme right-wing publication based in Israel. In an August 2016 post, he called for an "end to the two-state narrative," which he described as the product of a U.S. State Department "with a hundred-year history of anti-Semitism." Friedman will now be collecting a paycheck from that evil institution. He continued, "At this juncture, a Palestinian state is the last thing the [Palestinian] middle class wants—they know better than anyone how corrupt and inept their people are at self-government." According to him, no Palestinians in the West Bank (he prefers to call them "Arabs of Judea and Samaria") are "under any physical threat by the Israeli government." This was news to me. I've traveled repeatedly to Hebron, where I've seen the barbed wire surrounding the Palestinian part of town and the watchtowers with heavily armed Israeli soldiers facing toward the Arabs inside.

Comment: Besides Friedman's twisted vision of human relations, Global Research notes that he may be an Israeli national, thus posing a serious conflict of interest in his position as ambassador:
According to Mat Staver, President of Christians in Defense of Israel: "Friedman loves Israel and he loves America. He is a citizen of both and intimately understands both nations.... "
"While some who oppose him argue that he has divided loyalties because of his Israel and U.S. citizenship, his dual citizenship is actually a plus."
While the reports of his Israeli citizenship are unconfirmed, Ambassador Friedman is in conflict of interest. According to Jonathan Cook, Friedman has "a long history of support not only for the Israeli right but for some of the most extreme elements in Israel's settler movement."

Is this not a contradiction? A de facto Israeli national aligned with the Zionist regime representing Washington. Does it not go against the rules of international diplomacy?

This matter seems to have been overlooked during the US congressional hearings. No questions asked regarding "de facto citizenship". Imagine what would have happened if Trump had appointed a Russian citizen to head the US embassy in Moscow.


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Cell Phone

British Intelligence demands access to encrypted messaging platforms after terror attack

Alexander Mercouris
The Duran
Sun, 26 Mar 2017 22:39 UTC
Whatsapp icon phone
Intelligence agencies using Westminster terror attack as pretext to read all encrypted messages including WhatsApp messages.
The British government is now lobbying hard on behalf of Britain's intelligence agencies, demanding that they be put in a position of being able to read encrypted messaging provided by platforms like WhatsApp.

This demand comes shortly after the terrorist attack on the UK parliament building by Khalid Masood. It has since been revealed that Masood sent several WhatsApp messages before he carried out his attack, and this has been seized on by the British authorities as a reason to give the intelligence agencies "access" to encrypted WhatsApp messages.
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War Whore

Neocon's strategy for global domination is falling apart as war hawk John McCain 'cries out' for US and EU leadership

Eric Maurice
Euobserver
Sun, 26 Mar 2017 21:27 UTC
US senator John McCain
© Taskforce20US senator John McCain
The world "cries out for American and European leadership" through the EU and Nato, US senator John McCain said on Friday (24 March).

In a "new world order under enormous strain" and in "the titanic struggle with forces of radicalism ... we can't stand by and lament, we've got to be involved," said McCain, a former Republican presidential candidate who is now chairman of the armed services committee in the US Senate.

Speaking at the Brussels Forum, a conference organised by the German Marshall Fund, a transatlantic think tank, he said that the EU and the US needed to develop "more cooperation, more connectivity".

"I trust the EU," he said, defending an opposite view from that of US president Donald Trump, who said in January that the UK "was so smart in getting out" of the EU and that Nato was "obsolete".
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Chess

Is Belarus the West's next target for illegal regime change?

Adam Garrie
The Duran
Sun, 26 Mar 2017 20:26 UTC
Belorussian President Alexander Lukashenko talks with putin belarus
They have wanted to destroy Belarus for years. Will President Lukashenko's ego give them their chance?
Every few years Belorussian President Alexander Lukashenko has what seems to be an obligatory dispute with Russia, generally over energy prices. In both the 2004 and 2007 spats, the crisis was amicably solved in short order.

But during each disagreement, Lukashenko tended to purposely exaggerate the nature of the dispute in order to enhance his own personal prestige. It's all a bit childish, as Russia and Belarus form a Union-State, making Russia and Belarus the two closest fraternal states of both the Commonwealth of Independent States and Eurasian Union.
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No Entry

NATO soldiers are perfect gentlemen: Senator dismisses concerns about foreign troops on Estonian soil

Paul Kaiser
Russia Insider
Sun, 26 Mar 2017 19:01 UTC
soldiers
We have no idea what's going on in this photograph.
Foreign soldiers stationed in faraway lands is always a recipe for disaster.

This is not an American phenomenon. Or a NATO phenomenon. It's a human reality that transcends nationalities and allegiances.

So imagine our surprise when a U.S. Senator rebuked Estonians she met who were worried about NATO soldiers being above the law (which they are, in a certain respect).

In the United States, there is constant concern about "rape culture" and "victim blaming".

And yet here is a U.S. Senator who is "shocked" by Estonians concerned about foreign men with guns (who can be shipped home in a heartbeat if they get in trouble with the law) stationed in their country:
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