Puppet Masters
Writing in Haaretz on Sunday, in a piece entitled: "Today, I Am Ashamed to Be an Israeli," Barenboim said the law, passed on Thursday, "confirms the Arab population as second-class citizens".
The law passed by a vote of 62-55 and two abstentions in the 120-member Knesset, the country's parliament, after months of political argument. Following the vote, Palestinian members of the Knesset shouted and tore up papers.
The law gives Jews supremacy over all non-Jewish Israeli citizens, which critics and members of the state's Palestinian minority called racist.
The package, as expected, will consist of direct payments, food purchases and trade development - under a program already authorized under the Commodity Credit Corp act, which means Congressional approval is not required. Further details on the program will come by Labor Day, according to USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue and top officials.
Earlier in the day, Trump told a Veteran's group: "This country is doing better than it's ever done before, economically...It's all working out. Just remember: what you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening."
Former CIA directors John Brennan and Michael Hayden, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former FBI Director James Comey are among the names considered, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Monday. Security clearances of former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe and Susan Rice, former national security adviser to President Barack Obama, are also under consideration.
Comment: Tricky road ahead to stem the onslaught of animosity and fervor to unseat the president. Every forward thrust of rhetoric and baseless innuendo seems to give way to new thresholds of vehemence and false accusations.
It was clearly a bad-luck day for Strzok, when on Friday the 13th this month Page gave her explanation of the text to the House Judiciary and Oversight/Government Reform Committees and in effect threw her lover, Strzok, under the bus.
Strzok's apparent admission to Page about there being "no big there there" was reported on Friday by John Solomon in the Opinion section of The Hill based on multiple sources who he said were present during Page's closed door interview.
Strzok's text did not come out of the blue. For the previous ten months he and his FBI subordinates had been trying every-which-way to ferret out some "there" - preferably a big "there" - but had failed miserably. If Solomon's sources are accurate, it is appearing more and more likely that there was nothing left for them to do but to make it up out of whole cloth, with the baton then passed to special counsel Robert Mueller.
Comment: See also:
- Lisa Page answered many questions Peter Strzok refused to: 'A credible witness and cooperating' - GOP lawmakers
- Lisa Page testimony rats out top FBI officials: Bureau bosses covered up evidence CHINA hacked Hillary's top secret emails
- Democrats panic: Page may seek immunity deal for a 'tell all' on Strzok, McCabe and Comey
- Ray McGovern: Peter Strzok hoisted on his own petard
The right asserted as supposedly told to him by an FBI attorney is that he could not comment on an ongoing investigation. This is one of the two rights the FBI throws around when they do not want to comment on the work that Congress is reviewing as part of its oversight authority. The other right the FBI likes to conjure up is that select testimony cannot be provided because of national security concerns. Congress should decide whether any of these items are relevant to those two areas, not the Bureau.
Ted Lieu (D-CA) stated while questioning Strzok during hearings that the Republicans could not show that there was any bias demonstrated by Strzok in his official capacity during the investigations. How could we know and how could Congress know when both Strzok and FBI Director Christopher Wray stonewalled us about the investigation or providing documents from the FBI?
The IG report stated they did not find evidence of bias in "decision making"; considering the massive amount of biased texts and the identification by the IG of bias, there is a serious question of whether there was bias in the decision-making by Strzok. We may never know because no one outside the FBI or Justice Department will ever evaluate the information because it is part of a "continuing investigation" that may last until the next century or until America has long forgotten this issue.
Neither of these rights exist. They never have.
Comment: Say something enough times, no one questions it.
We are told that Syrian forces backed by Russian airpower are brutalizing the remnants of "rebels" in southern Syria near the Jordanian border and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Surely now more than ever do the people of southern Syria need the "bravest of the brave" - as UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt described them on social media.
Yet instead of rushing to where the cannons sound loudest, the White Helmets slunk across Syria's borders with the aid of the Israeli Defense Forces, onward to Jordan, where the UN is working to relocate them - allegedly to Europe and North America.
It is a final act laying to rest once and for all a monumental lie - that the White Helmets were anything more than an extension of the foreign-funded proxy war aimed at overthrowing Damascus. And now that overthrowing Damascus is no longer a possibility, the White Helmets are being evacuated to lie another day.
Comment: Another day, another war -- 'White Helmets', the sequel.
See also:
- DISTURBING IMAGES: 'White Helmets' caught faking rescues and doctoring dead children in PR stunt to portray Assad as 'butcher'
- Assad: Oscar-feted White Helmets are part of Al-QaedaRussian
- FM Zakharova: White Helmets part of large scale defamation campaign against Syrian government
"We are projecting a surge in inflation to 1,000,000 percent by end-2018 to signal that the situation in Venezuela is similar to that in Germany in 1923 or Zimbabwe in the late 2000s," said Alejandro Werner, head of the IMF's Western Hemisphere Department.
He also pointed to "economic distortions," including printing money to finance the government. "We expect the government to continue to run wide fiscal deficits financed entirely by an expansion in base money, which will continue to fuel an acceleration of inflation as money demand continues to collapse," said Werner.
One million Venezuelan bolivar is today worth just over $8.
Comment: Hyperinflation is a runaway freight train going downhill in value, while uphill in difficulty to correct.
Sessions was delivering remarks promoting free speech and conservative values at Turning Point USA's High School Leadership Summit at George Washington University.
During his speech, he criticized universities for "coddling" young people and said he could tell that the students in front of him were able to handle political debate and political attacks. "I like this bunch, I gotta tell you. You're not going to be backing down. Go get 'em. Go get 'em," he said.
At that moment, chants of "Lock her up" began. Sessions, the top law enforcement official in the country, briefly joined in, laughing, before saying: "I heard that a long time over the last campaign," and then continuing on with his speech.
Comment: If Sessions was going to make a move on Killary, there would be indications. So far...?
"We can't rely on the superpower of the United States," Merkel told a news conference in Berlin.As AntiWar's Jason Ditz notes, Merkel did not elaborate on exactly what this "order" meant, but it comes in the context of recent polls showing German voters resistant to her desire to increase military spending. This suggests Merkel is trying to sell increased armament as a way to intervene regionally.
Merkel also said she intends to continue to work on improving Germany's relationship with the United States. This appears to be an uphill battle, with the two nations at odds over a number of issues, but she insisted ties are "crucial."

Hillary Clinton speaking at OZY Festival, wearing a low-hanging 'button necklace'
Clinton was appearing at OZY Festival, a weekend event of music, food, political discussion and liberal 'comedy' in New York's Central Park. As well as rocking a Homer Simpson-style Hawaiian muumuu, the former Secretary of State wore a dull beige button on a necklace.
Eagle-eyed Twitter sleuths immediately came up with a theory: Clinton was wearing a 'Life Alert' panic button, used by pensioners to call the emergency services when they fall and can't get up.














Comment: Moving the boundaries, stretching the limits...oh, right, Israel doesn't have any of these.