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Bad Guys

Amnesty International admits Syria's 'torture prison' report fabricated entirely in UK

Tony Cartalucci
Land Destroyer
Thu, 09 Feb 2017 16:13 UTC
Amnesty International
Amnesty International's 48 page report titled, "Syria: Human Slaughterhouse: Mass Hangings and Extermination at Saydnaya Prison, Syria," boasts bold claims, concluding:
...the Syrian authorities' violations at Saydnaya amount to crimes against humanity. Amnesty International urgently calls for an independent and impartial investigation into crimes committed at Saydnaya.
However, even at a cursory glance, before even reading the full body of the report, under a section titled, "Methodology," Amnesty International admits it has no physical evidence whatsoever to substantiate what are admittedly only the testimony of alleged inmates and former workers at the prison, as well as figures within Syria's opposition.

Comment: Further reading: Propaganda alert: Amnesty International's report on Syria's Saydnaya prison executions lacks evidence

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Map

Romania turned into 'NATO outpost,' would pose 'outright threat' to Russia


RT
Thu, 09 Feb 2017 16:18 UTC
The deckhouse of the Aegis Ashore Missile Defense System at Deveselu air base, Romania
© Inquam Photos / Reuters The deckhouse of the Aegis Ashore Missile Defense System (AAMDS) at Deveselu air base, Romania, May 12, 2016.
When Romania agreed to host elements of NATO's anti-ballistic missile system, it turned into a security threat to Russia, a senior Russian diplomat said. Moscow now regards some Romanian policies as 'Russophobic.'

The remarks came from the head of the Fourth European Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko, who said Russia's relations with Romania were problematic.

"The Romanian leadership has turned the country into a [NATO] outpost and that is an outright threat against us. We told so to the Romanian side, including publicly," Botsan-Kharchenko said in an interview with Interfax news agency.

Comment: Also read:

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Cowboy Hat

House of Commons paves the way for Brexit to begin

Alexander Mercouris
The Duran
Thu, 09 Feb 2017 16:13 UTC
Theresa May
© Francois Lenoir / ReutersBritain's Prime Minister Theresa May
Lower house of British Parliament votes overwhelmingly to authorise Theresa May to invoke Article 50, paving the way for the Brexit process to begin.

The House of Commons, the lower house of the British Parliament, has now finally voted through the bill Theresa May's government presented in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's ruling that the British government needs parliamentary approval before it can invoke Article 50, which formally starts the process for Britain to leave the European Union.

The government's margin of victory was a decisive 494 to 122, with all but 59 Labour MPs following the lead given by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn by voting for the bill.
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Fire

'Morally superior' U.S. ruling establishment opts for more wars and crimes against humanity

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
IInstitiute for Political Economy
Wed, 08 Feb 2017 00:00 UTC
O'Reilly Russia is Evil
© SOTT.net
If you want to be an American TV talking head or a Western presstitute, you are required to be braindead and integrity-challenged like Bill O'Reilly, CNN, MSNBC, and the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and all the rest.

In an interview with President Donald Trump, O'Reilly said: "Putin is a killer."

O'Reilly is indifferent to the fact that thermo-nuclear war is a killer of planet Earth. For O'Reilly, President Trump's desire to normalize relations with Russia is an indication that the President of the US is comfortable making deals with killers, as if America's last three presidents have not been mass killers comfortable with their destruction in whole or part of many countries and millions of peoples.

President Trump's response to O'Reilly's was: "We've got a lot of killers. What do you think - our country's so innocent?"

The only thing wrong with President Trump's response is that it implicitly accepts that Putin is no different from Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. Yet there is no evidence that Putin is a "killer." This accusation is an assertion from those who prosper from having a "Russian threat" to keep the money and power flowing to themselves.

As Finian Cunningham shows, Trump should have reprimanded O'Reilly for his unsupported and undiplomatic accusation against the president of a country with which President Trump hopes to restore normal relations.

Comment: Iran war rhetoric and the 'Trump-ordered' dawn raid in Yemen: WWIII isn't 'coming' - It's happening NOW

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Info

'There is no one else to ask': Italy seeks Russia's help in resolving Libyan crisis


Sputnik
Thu, 09 Feb 2017 16:05 UTC
destruction of Sirte, Libya
© Manu Brabo/Associated PressSirte, Libya
Russia is being urged to play a key role in stabilizing Libya, an article in the Times read. According to the newspaper, Italy is turning to Russia for help is resolving the migrant crisis in Europe stemming from an influx of Libyan refugees.

"Italy has always had close ties with Russia, and now that we want a peaceful, unified Libya, we will be happy if Russia wants it too," Italian Deputy Foreign Minister Mario Giro was quoted as saying by the Times.

The article warned that such an initiative is very risky since it could give Moscow a "new foothold in North Africa and control of a migrant flow that Europe is seeking to halt."

The European Union has been struggling to manage a massive refugee crisis which escalated in 2015 with hundreds of thousands of people form the Middle East and North Africa seeking asylum in the EU member states.

According to official data, in 2016, 181,000 migrants from North Africa have arrived in Italy, with over 4,500 dead in the Mediterranean Sea on their way to the European coast.

Comment: More analysis:

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Attention

Daesh claims responsibility for firing rockets from Egypt to Israel's Eilat resort town


Sputnik
Thu, 09 Feb 2017 16:00 UTC
Eilat, Israel
© Pixabay
The Daesh terrorist group has claimed on Thursday responsibility for firing rockets from the territory of Egypt to the southern resort town of Eilat on the Red Sea, local media reported.

According to The Jerusalem Post newspaper, Daesh claimed responsibility for firing six rockets, though only four reached the Israeli territory, with three being intercepted by Israel and one hitting an area outside the city.

Following the attack, the local authorities increased the threat level in the town, though lowered it on Thursday morning.
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Attention

A warning to Trump? Russia floats return to Iran's Hamadan air base

Alexander Mercouris
The Duran
Wed, 08 Feb 2017 15:51 UTC
Russian jets in Hamadan air base
In a further sign of Russia's backing for Iran, Russian ambassador to Tehran floats possibility of Russian air force deployments to Iran and Russian sales of SU27 fighters to Iran.

Levan Dzhagaryan, Russia's ambassador to Iran, has today suddenly floated what looks like the possibility of the Russian air force once again using Shahid Nojed airbase near Hamadan in Iran.

The Russian air force briefly used this air base to launch strikes against ISIS in eastern Syria back in August. Following complaints in the Iranian parliament the Russians abruptly pulled out, either because they chose to go or because the Iranians asked them to.
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Stormtrooper

German intel official says Islamists, neo-Nazi terrorists 'nationwide problems'


RT
Thu, 09 Feb 2017 15:50 UTC
far right demostrator germany
© Wolfgang Rattay / ReutersA far-right demonstrator in Cologne, Germany
Radical Islamist cells are spreading all across eastern German states while terrorism-related tip-offs emerge on daily, says the head of Thuringia's domestic intelligence agency, adding that the right extremist underground is becoming "a nationwide problem."

Islamist extremists were advancing "with impunity" in rural areas of eastern Germany even before the ongoing influx of refugees into the country, Stephan Kramer, head of Thuringia's regional Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) told Mitteldeutsche Zeitung, as cited by Die Welt.

Nowadays, the security environment in the east has deteriorated even more, Kramer maintains.

"We are getting tip-offs leading to terrorist suspects every day," he said, adding however that it is equally crucial to distinguish between actual suspects and false alarms.

He then mentioned Jaber al-Bakr, a Syrian refugee who was detained in October last year on suspicion of plotting to bomb an airport in Berlin. When police raided his flat in the eastern town of Chemnitz, some 1.5kg of home-made explosives, like those used in the fatal jihadist attacks in Paris in November 2015 and in Brussels last March, were found.
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Black Cat

Trump administration besieged by leaks

Niall Stanage
The Hill
Thu, 09 Feb 2017 15:33 UTC
Trump meeting
© Kevin Lamarque / Reuters
Donald Trump's White House has sprung a remarkable number of leaks since his inauguration.

The question is where they're coming from.

Barely a day goes by without some unusual tale emerging from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Recent examples in a single New York Times story included the assertion that White House aides have held meetings in the dark because they can't figure out how the lights work and that the president is fond of watching television alone in his bathrobe.

Trump took to Twitter to assert that the Times "writes total fiction" about him, while White House press secretary Sean Spicer insisted that the president does not even own a bathrobe.

More serious matters have been leaked as well, such as descriptions of Trump's call with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Trump apparently said a U.S.-Australia deal on refugees, agreed to by President Obama, was "the worst deal ever," and told Turnbull their conversation was "the worst call by far" among several he had held with world leaders that day.

The leakiness of the Trump White House has been a boon to the press corps, who find themselves feasting on the juicy insider details that were hard to come by during the "No Drama Obama" years.

But to those rooting for a successful Trump presidency, the picture looks very different.
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Jet3

Pentagon: Bin Laden-linked al-Qaeda leader, Abu Hani al-Masri, killed in Idlib airstrike


RT
Thu, 09 Feb 2017 02:21 UTC
Rubble from airstrike
© AFPSearching the rubble, Idlib airstrike, February 7, 2017.
Eleven militants with links to Al-Qaeda, including a senior operative, were killed in two US sorties in Syria's Idlib province, the Pentagon has said. It comes after the opposition on the ground blamed mass loss of civilian life on recent airstrikes in the area.

US warplanes hit "an al-Qaida meeting place" on February 3, killing "10 terrorists" who were inside the building at the time, Pentagon spokesman, Capt. Jeff Davis said in a statement released Wednesday.

Abu Hani al-Masri
© Long War JournalAbu Hani al-Masri
Another raid on February 4 targeted a high-profile Al-Qaeda operative Abu Hani al-Masri, believed to be behind multiple terror attacks, including a foiled plot to bomb the US Embassy in Albania in 1998. Al-Masri is said to have belonged to a narrow circle of Al-Qaeda's top commanders and have had ties to Osama bin Laden as well as the terrorist group's current leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

As one of Al-Qaeda senior leaders, al-Masri had a lengthy record of terrorism-related crimes, going back to the 80s. He "oversaw the creation and operation of many Al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan in the 1980s and '90s, where he recruited, indoctrinated and equipped thousands of terrorists," the statement reads.

Pentagon says al-Masri has become the fourth Al-Qaeda leader it killed since the start of the year.

Comment: There seems to be two kinds of precision military operations: Precision and Sort-of Precision, similar to News and Fake News. With Trump, as Commander-in-Chief, one would hope the US military cleans up its act and saves a few more civilians in the process. But, how would we know? Fake news will publish whatever it wants the public to hear - even the death of al-Masri has to be suspect. Case-in-point: "We got Bin Laden."

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