• Russian UN rep in Geneva: 'Truth about White Helmets is gradually emerging'
• Ominous casting call: Russian MOD says White Helmets hiring locals for staged chemical attacks, paying in food
• Russian UN envoy: White Helmets working on a new false-flag chemical attack in Idlib province, Syria
• The White Helmets, alleged organ traders & child kidnappers who should be condemned, instead receive praise from mainstream media
• Russian military: White Helmets have shot at least nine chemical weapons videos & are staging rehearsals of alleged chemical attack
• Syrian Foreign Minister warns White Helmets kidnapped 44 children to stage chemical attack in Idlib
• Showing their true colors: Remaining Syrian White Helmets want evacuation to Al-Qaeda-held Idlib province
• Ben Swann's Reality Check: Who's funding the White Helmets?

"How is it possible for you to be so easily tricked by something so simple as a story, because you are tricked? Well, it all comes down to one core thing and that is emotional investment. The more emotionally invested you are in anything in your life, the less critical and the less objectively observant you become."

- David JP Phillips, We Don't Have Time board of directors, "The Magical Science of Storytelling

On August 20, 2018 a tweet featuring a photo of "a Swedish girl" sitting on a sidewalk was released by the tech company, We Don't Have Time, founded by its CEO Ingmar Rentzhog:

"One 15 year old girl in front of the Swedish parliament is striking from School until Election Day in 3 weeks[.] Imagine how lonely she must feel in this picture. People where [sic] just walking by. Continuing with the business as usual thing. But the truth is. We can't and she knows it!"

Rentzhog's tweet, via the We Don't Have Time twitter account, would be the very first exposure of Thunberg's now famous school strike.
[...]
Mårten Thorslund, chief marketing and sustainability officer of We Don't Have Time took many of the very first photos of Thunberg following the launch of her school strike on August 20, 2018. In the following instance, photos taken by Thorslund accompany the article written by David Olsson, chief operating officer of We Don't Have Time, This 15-year-old Girl Breaks Swedish Law for the Climate, published August 23, 2018:

"Greta became a climate champion and tried to influence those closest to her. Her father now writes articles and gives lectures on the climate crisis, whereas her mother, a famous Swedish opera singer, has stopped flying. All thanks to Greta.

And clearly, she has stepped up her game, influencing the national conversation on the climate crisis-two weeks before the election. We Don't Have Time reported on Greta's strike on its first day and in less than 24 hours our Facebook posts and tweets received over twenty thousand likes, shares and comments. It didn't take long for national media to catch on. As of the first week of the strike, at least six major daily newspapers, as well as Swedish and Danish national TV, [1] have interviewed Greta. Two Swedish party leaders have stopped by to talk to her as well." [Emphasis added]

The article continues:

"Is there something big going on here? This one kid immediately got twenty supporters who now sit next to her. This one kid created numerous news stories in national newspapers and on TV. This one kid has received thousands of messages of love and support on social media.... Movements by young people, such as Jaime Margolin's #ThisIsZeroHour that #WeDontHaveTime interviewed earlier, speaks with a much needed urgency that grown-ups should pay attention to..." [Emphasis in original]

Yes - there was, and still is, something going on.

It's called marketing and branding.

"Yesterday I sat completely by myself, today there is one other here too. There are none [that] I know." - Greta Thunberg, August 21, 2018, Nyheter newspaper, Sweden [Translation via Google]

The "one kid immediately got twenty supporters" - from a Swedish network for sustainable business. What is going on - is the launch of a global campaign to usher in a required consensus for the Paris Agreement, the New Green Deal and all climate related policies and legislation written by the power elite - for the power elite. This is necessary in order to unlock the trillions of dollars in funding by way of massive public demand.

Read the rest here.

• Springtime in Russia as told by an American: Economy growing, focus on family values, people feel safer, life expectancy is up
• Doing it right: Numbers of young couples marrying surges in Russia - family values on the rise
• Russia, not America, is building a compassionate civilization and as a nation has retained her humanity

• 'Our leaders are mercenaries': Tucker Carlson on the disintegration of traditional American culture
• "We've had enough": France's Yellow Vests describe deteriorating quality of life
• America's dirty little secret - Sex with children has become big business
• UK in crisis: Children in poverty surges by 100,000 in a year - totalling a staggering 4.1 million
• London crime wave: Theft, burglary, rape, violent crime and homicide skyrocket

Citing a source, the agency said that it was Ilham Ahmed Ibrahim, the younger of the two brothers, who detonated a bomb, taking his own life as well as those of his children and his alleged spouse.

The blast occurred on empty land behind the magistrate court in the town of Pugoda, 40km east of Colombo. Police say the explosion was not controlled like several blasts in recent days, when police blew up suspicious objects.

Officials also temporarily closed the road to Colombo international airport and canceled outgoing flights after a suspicious vehicle was stopped at the entrance to the airport car park on Thursday morning. Services, however, quickly returned to normal as the concern proved to be a false alarm.

Local reports say police were responding to a tip-off when they found the 26-year-old carrying several parliamentary passes and a rough map marking out the road route to the parliament. They also found a vehicle which was possibly modified to carry a bomb, although no explosives have been found.

A canine unit was deployed to search for explosives but found nothing. Police recovered a tablet device, three mobile phones, a dozen SIM cards, T-56 assault rifle ammunition, and several credit cards during the raid.
...
The as yet unnamed 26-year-old suspect is due in court Thursday. Overall, the number of people arrested in connection with the attacks has risen to over 100, and eight of the nine suicide bombers have been named so far.

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena asked his defense minister and chief of police to resign Wednesday.

Sri Lankan police arrested a further three people, seizing 21 grenades and six swords during a raid in Colombo, though authorities did not specify whether the raids were directly related to the Easter Sunday bombing investigation.

Police forces from at least six countries are assisting Sri Lankan authorities with their investigations, including Scotland Yard, the FBI, the New Zealand Police, the Australian Federal Police, Danish and Dutch police, and Interpol.

It has also emerged that one of the suicide bombers, Ilham Ahmed Ibrahim, the son of a billionaire spice tycoon, was previously arrested and subsequently released by police.

"It was the suicide bomber of the Cinnamon Grand bomb attack who was released earlier," Sri Lankan government spokesman Sudarshana Gunawardana said. Ibrahim's father, Mohamed Yusuf Ibrahim, has been arrested on suspicion of aiding and abetting his sons.

The first alert was on April 4, and it came from investigations by Indian agencies that followed after the National Investigation Agency (NIA), in December 2018, stumbled upon the videos of National Thowheed Jama'at (NTJ) leader Maulvi Zahran Bin Hashim while probing the Islamic State (IS) Coimbatore module.

In the first alert, the agencies told Sri Lanka that, apart from churches, the Indian High Commission in Colombo could be a target. The second alert was sent a day before the attack and was even more specific than the first one in that it mentioned the possible targets, the officials said.

The last alert was sent hours before the suicide bombers attacked the three churches and four hotels.

"The information about the attacks were a result of detailed analysis of information gathered through technical means and human sources," one of the officials said. Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe acknowledged that alerts had been sent by India.

"India gave us the intelligence but there has been a lapse on how we acted on that... intelligence was not conveyed down the line," Wickremesinghe told NDTV in an exclusive interview.

HT spoke to multiple officials in the central intelligence agencies who confirmed that the videos of Hashim, in which he exhorted Muslim youth from Sri Lanka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala to establish an Islamic rule in the region, were analysed in detail and investigated further by India's external spy agency R&AW (Research and Analysis Wing). The videos were stored in the pen drives, memory cards, mobile phones and CDs/DVDs, recovered by NIA on December 19, 2018 during raids at Kuniyamuthur, Ukkadam, Otteri in Chennai, Tindivanam near Villupuram, and Variety Hall Road in Coimbatore, from the premises of six ISIS suspects, Mohammed Ashiq A, Ismail S, Samsudeen, Mohammed Salauddin S, Jafar Shadik Ali and Shahul Hameed.

The six IS members were arrested on September 1, 2018 for planning to attack Hindu leaders/activists in Coimbatore.

The Coimbatore module members, a second intelligence official said, also regularly listened to Hashim's speeches. All six have already been charged by NIA.

"Hashim's video, which appeared to be the latest, showed he was aggressive and he repeatedly assured the cadres that something big would happen soon to teach a lesson [to the members of communities which do not follow the Sharia]," said the officer quoted above.

Further investigation also revealed that some of the Coimbatore module members were in touch with some Sri Lankans, who also followed Hashim.

"Bin Hashim had a major role in radicalising these youngsters on both sides [India and Sri Lanka] to be part of Islamic State," said the second official who added that the Coimbatore module had no idea of what was being planned in Sri Lanka.

Indian agencies subsequently discovered Hashim's mobile numbers as well and found that Hashim was in touch with some IS functionaries in neighbouring Bangladesh. A senior government official who did not wish to be named said that Bangladesh too needs to be on the alert.

Based on the analysis by NIA and further information gathered done by the Intelligence Bureau and R&AW, a communication was sent to Sri Lanka about the possible attacks.

The Sri Lankan authorities evidently took the information lightly, and, in turn, sent out a nationwide alert only on April 11.

Preliminary investigations have revealed that Hashim blew himself up at Shangri-La hotel in Colombo on Sunday.

• Leader of Sri Lankan parliament accuses senior officials: 'Withheld intel on terrorist attacks'
• Sri Lanka church bomber caught on CCTV
• Going by recent events, shadowy forces want to spark a 'clash of civilizations'
• Sri Lankan authorities might have fallen into a trap set by a foreign power
• Denmark's richest man loses three children in Sri Lanka bombings - UPDATES
• Analyst: Sri Lankan officials 'unprepared' for Easter Sunday attacks
• Israel recently helped Sri Lanka prepare for 'mega-terror attacks'
• 3 police killed in raid, several suspects in custody in Sri Lanka bombing crackdown