Sic Semper Tyrannis

Harper on the 28 pages.

On Friday, July 15, the Obama White House released a redacted copy of the missing 28 page chapter from the original December 2002 Joint Congressional Joint Inquiry report on 9/11.  The timing of the release was calculated to minimize the blowback from the long-overdue release of the chapter.  Congress went into summer recess until after Labor Day, just hours before the 28 pages were made public through the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.  The attention of most Americans was immediately focused on the Republican and the Democratic National Conventions. 

However, anyone carefully reading the 28 pages would realize that the Congressional investigators working for the Joint Inquiry had gathered a significant number of leads on Saudi officials and members of the Saudi Royal Family, who had either had direct contact with the 9/11 hijackers while they were in the United States preparing for the terrorist extravaganza, or had been implicated in financial and other support for Al Qaeda.  The Joint Inquiry was restricted by its limited legislative mandate, the lack of time and financial resources.  They were really only able to review existing files from the CIA, the FBI and other agencies, and interview some agents who had investigated Al Qaeda prior to 9/11.  And they did not always find the agencies cooperative.  The Saudis attempted to block the investigation and provided virtually no answers to the questions the inquiry's investigators posed to them. 

This limit on the Joint Inquiry probe was reflected in a 2003 memorandum by the two 9/11 Commission staffers who had written the forbidden chapter.  Document 17, as it was described by the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP), the highest executive branch authority on document declassification, was a 47-page memo by Dana Lesseman and Michael Jacobson, spelling out all of the leads on Saudi support for the 9/11 hijackers that the Joint Inquiry had been unable to pursue. According to John Lehman, former Secretary of the Navy to Ronald Reagan and a member of the 9/11 Commission, the Commission itself had been unable to complete their mandate, and had been unable to pursue all of the Saudi leads before their deadline expired.  Furthermore, the Commission's staff director, Philip Zelikow, was a plant, informing the George W. Bush White House and his former boss, Secretary of State Condi Rice, about everything unearthed by his staff.  Ultimately, Zelikow fired Lesseman for her persistence in pursuing the Saudi file.

The bottom line:  There is more work to be done.  Sept. 11, 2016 is the fifteenth anniversary of the attacks, and there will be significant public attention.  When Congress returns to Washington after Labor Day, just before the 9/11 anniversary, the House is expected to pass the Justice Against Supporters of Terrorism Act (JASTA), a bill that would allow the survivors and family members of the 2,977 people killed in the 9/11 attacks to sue the Saudi Kingdom, by lifting sovereign immunity in specific cases where regimes support terrorist attacks on US soil.  Members of Congress are also contemplating the next step in pursuing the Saudi file, including potential legislation to launch a de novo inquiry. 

Timing is everything, and the timing of George Bush's decision to classify the 28 page chapter is a perfect case in point.  In December 2002, when the President banned the publication of the chapter, the Administration was in the final phases of planning the invasion of Iraq.  The two "reasons" given for the plan to overthrow Saddam Hussein were:  He was amassing weapons of mass destruction, and he had been behind 9/11. 

Had the chapter been published, it would have been near impossible for Bush and Tony Blair to get away with the Iraq invasion.  It would have been like FDR announcing he was declaring war against China, not Japan after Pearl Harbor. 

The issues behind the evidence of Saudi involvement in 9/11--whether at the very top of the regime and the Monarchy, as former Joint Inquiry co-chairman Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) insists, or at some mid-level where Al Qaeda sympathizers had resources to pour into the 9/11 plot--are still with us, and will not be laid to rest by the release of the 28 pages.  Harper

" ... Turkey’s Post-Coup Attempt Military Purge" ISW

"Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ongoing military purge is not merely a response to a coup, but an aggressive restructure, rebranding, and reorientation of the Turkish military. Erdogan began to purge the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) after elements of it launched an unsuccessful coup attempt on July 15, 2016. Turkish security forces detained nearly 10,000 service members including 143 general officers and admirals in the first week, totaling over 1/3 of the officer corps. Erdogan justified his crackdown on a counterterrorism basis, claiming to remove members of exiled cleric Fetullah Gulen’s movement, which Turkish authorities have designated as the “Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO).” He has also dismissed, and in some cases arrested, tens of thousands of judges, civil society members, and academics, and he closed down dozens of newspapers. The extent of Erdogan’s purge and his use of a counterterrorism justification demonstrate his intent to use the coup attempt as an excuse to transform the Turkish military into a source of personal power and eliminate sources of dissent in Turkey.

The current military purge is part of an ongoing campaign by Erdogan to eliminate threats to his Islamist regime. The Turkish military historically has a secular culture and views itself as a protector of the post-Ataturk democratic society. Erdogan thus views the military as a threat to his vision of an Islamist autocracy and has taken steps to eliminate it since 2007. He dismissed 400 Turkish officers including 37 generals and admirals in response to alleged coup conspiracies between 2007 and 2010, prompting the resignation of the Chief of the General Staff and the Commanders of the Turkish Navy, Land Force, and Air Force. About half of the Brigadier Generals and Rear Admirals removed this month were promoted to their rank after the initial purges. Erdogan’s aggressive measures after the recent failed coup attempt indicates that he likely seeks to finish his long-time campaign through this final purge."  ISW

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I was once the USASSG detachment commander in NATOs ALFSEE (Allied Land Forces Southeast Europe) headquarters in Izmir, Turkey where I came to have a high regard for the Turkish Army and the Turks in general. 

The Turkish Republic was created by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's army of national liberation and unification after Turkey's defeat in WW1 and subsequent effective partition by the victorious powers and the Greeks.   Subsequently the Turkish Army was the seemingly perpetual guardian of Ataturk's legacy of secularism, Europeanization and equal rights for women. 

That seems to be finished as Erdogan destroys opposition in the military to his evident goal of resuming what he imagines to be Turkey's rightful place as the center of the Umma. 

I see in the news today that his forces have once again surrounded Incirlik AFB with its contingent of Americans and British airmen as well as its stored US nuclear weapons.   Are these forces there to protect the base from Islamist mobs?  Who knows?  pl  

http://iswresearch.blogspot.com/2016/07/partial-assessment-of-turkeys-post-coup.html?utm_source=+Partial+Assessment+of+Turkey%27s+Post-Coup+Attempt+Military+Purge&utm_campaign=+Partial+Assessment+of+Turkey%27s+Post-Coup+Attempt+Military+Purge&utm_medium=email

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_War_of_Independence

Syria - 30 July 2016

 

"Despite several rebel attempts at re-opening their last Aleppo supply road and repelling government forces, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) was able to capture the entire Bani Zaid district after a string of recent advances near the Castello road.

Just hours later, the SAA also took control of the Ashrafiyah district, marking a total collapse of rebel groups in northern Aleppo.

Meanwhile, the YPG attacked insurgents at the Bani Zaid district from its western flank as well as taking control of the Youth Housing Project, a site formerly used by Islamist rebels to shell the Kurdish neighbourhood of Sheikh Maqsoud.

With the SAA and YPG teaming up on the jihadists in Aleppo, it now seems almost impossible for rebel forces to avoid a full-blown defeat in the battle for Syria’s largest city, often dubbed ‘the mother of all battles’.

Next, government troops will likely try to secure the Castello road and provide civilians a safe way to exit rebel-held districts in East Aleppo."  Al Masdar News

https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/southfront-aleppo-victory-within-sight-syrian-army-ypg-keep-advancing/

*****

"Jaish al-Fatah is withdrawing much of its fighting force from the Latakia governorate in a last-ditch effort to turn the tables on the Syrian Arab Army in Aleppo, the Al-Masdar Al-‘Arabi information website reported on Friday. Al-Masdar Al-‘Arabi claim that these reports are ‘very credible’.

Islamist reinforcements were observed arriving in both western and southern Aleppo. Jaish al-Fatah is going to launch at least one major offensive on government positions in the province in the very near future, and hopes not only to relieve distressed and besieged rebels in Aleppo, but also to cut off the Syrian Arab Army’s supply lines to the governorate’s provincial capital.

On the other hand, the redeployment of the rebels significantly weakens their Latakia frontline, endangering Idlib from its western flank.

At the same time, if the Syrian Arab Army takes control of the city of Aleppo, the Idlib province will be its next target. The Jaish al-Fatah leadership is well aware of this threat of the existential survival of the Islamist coalition."  South Front 

https://southfront.org/hundreds-of-islamist-rebels-leave-latakia-frontline-for-new-aleppo-offensive/

*****

"At least 75 families have been transferred from the besieged neighborhoods of east Aleppo to the government controlled districts in the west, a local military source told Al-Masdar on Saturday.

The rescued families will be provided shelter and necessities by the government and Russian forces, while the latter continue to transfer people from east Aleppo.

Most of these civilians were living under the Free Syrian Army’s (FSA) rule near the Bani Za’id District before the aforementioned area was captured by the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) on Wednesday."  Al Masdar News

https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/least-75-families-rescued-east-aleppo/

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For those of you who are interested in such things I offer the following observations concerning today's Syrian situation.

The R+6 encirclement of East Aleppo grows ever more solid.  All counter-attacks intended to break the cordon have failed.   South Front thinks that the next SAA move will be to try to take Kafr Hamra just outside the encirclement to the NW.  Evidently the rebels have been using this place for firing positions for indirect harassing fire into the government and YPG south of Kafr Hamra.    It is easy to see why they would want to do that but they should expect this effort to be a focal point for more counter-attacks.  There will be other counter-attacks intended to break through to East Aleppo but Kafr Hamra is likely to be a main effort for the rebels.  In other reporting cited above it is noted that the rebels are pulling a lot of their men off the western Latakia front where they have been very engaged with R+6.  These are among the forces that will undoubtedly be thrown into counter-attacks at Aleppo City.  The decision on the part of the rebels to strip their western Latakia front is IMO indicative of rebel and/or Turkish belief that the outcome at Aleppo will be politically decisive in the outcome of the war especially in the context of the desperate internal situation now faced by Turkey. 

Surrenders of non-jihadi rebels now in the city are being facilitated by the government.  That is likely to remove many fighter from the contest.

The civilian population flow out of East Aleppo has begun and will probably grow larger and larger.  pl 

Most American Don't Care About U.S. Foreign Policy

And don't know much about it.  Alas!

Most Americans will vote for the candidate who not merely promises, but seems likely to deliver on domestic policies that will address local problems, that will benefit the issues that roil American communities (e.g., schools, pre-school, police, homelessness), that will actually fund sorely needed infrastructure construction and repair, that will provide jobs, and etc.

The Post-Convention Thread-2016 below that invited "foreigners" to jump in (and they did) suggests that somehow Americans follow the ups and downs of our foreign adventures, and are susceptible to voting on that score. They don't. So.... as I said above, "alas."

The anti-Clinton theme on that thread may reflect real knowledge of her politics and policies (or the suspected ones should she be elected). When Americans sober up after the conventions, we are very likely to see that whatever Trump may promise, most will come to understand that he doesn't have the foggiest idea of how to deliver on domestic issues, even if he wants to. Whereas Hillary Clinton will deliver on some of them.

Just a sober word  for Trump enthusiasts around the world. 

Margaret Steinfels

 

 

Sanders delegate's video of DNC "shaping" the audience last night

According to this woman from Los Angeles the DNC sought to exclude Bernie delegates from the convention last night by filling the hall with hired actors and excluding Sanders delegates.  pl

https://vid.me/4tYB

Post Convention Thread - 2016

"CLINTON'S CLAIM: "If you believe that we should say 'no' to unfair trade deals ... then join us."

THE FACTS: Clinton now says that she opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade agreement, but she championed it when serving as President Obama's secretary of state, even calling the agreement the "gold standard" in trade deals. "This TPP sets the gold standard in trade agreements to open free, transparent, fair trade, the kind of environment that has the rule of law and a level playing field. And when negotiated, this agreement will cover 40 percent of the world's total trade and build in strong protections for workers and the environment," she said in Nov. 2012."  NBC News 

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/2016-conventions/fact-checking-hillary-clinton-s-speech-n619481

*****

"Donald Trump captured his second lead this year in the polls in the days following the Republican National Convention, where he officially nabbed the GOP’s presidential nomination. Trump edged out Democrat Hillary Clinton on July 24 and has grown his lead to about 1 percent as of July 26, according to polling averages from RealClearPolitics.

While 1 percent might not sound like much, it’s worth noting that Trump’s previous headline-grabbing lead in May held steady for three days at 0.2 percent. As the InsideGov visualization shows, Trump’s current trajectory seems to continue on its upswing rather than staying level.' 

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/07/28/trump-nabs-largest-lead-so-far-over-clinton/

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Well, the Dems definitely won the grand production prize for the conventions.  What is your opinion over-all of where we are?  Foreigners feel free to join in.  Your interests are at stake as well.  pl

End game in Aleppo

 

"The Syrian army is advancing inside the Handarat Refugee Camp south of the Mallah Farms area near Aleppo city.

The operation followed the liberation of the Bani Zeid neighborhood of Aleppo city that allowed the Syrian army and the Kurdish YPG to unite the front against jihadi groups in Syria."  South Front

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Rebel held Aleppo is approaching its end.   the government has announced three paths out of the rebel held area for the movement of civilians into government controlled territory where the government says it will "accommodate" them temporarily.  The government has also announced a three month amnesty for rebels.  I presume there will be some triage of those surrendering.  pl 

https://southfront.org/syrian-army-advancing-inside-handarat-refugee-camp-near-aleppo-city/

https://southfront.org/syrian-war-report-july-28-2016-major-gains-of-pro-government-forces-in-aleppo/

Is Russia our enemy?

The Democratic Party convention and the media are full of the assumption that Russia is the enemy of the United States.  What is the basis for that assumption?

• Russian support for the Russian ethnic minority in eastern Ukraine?  How does that threaten the United States?
• Russian annexation of the Crimea?  Khrushchev arbitrarily transferred that part of Russia to Ukraine during his time as head of the USSR.  Khrushchev was a Ukrainian.  Russia never accepted the arbitrary  transfer of a territory that had been theirs since the 18th Century.  How does this annexation threaten the United States?
• Russia does not want to see Syria crushed by the jihadis and acts accordingly?  How does that threaten the United States?
• Russia threatens the NATO states in eastern Europe?  Tell me how they actually do that.  Is it by stationing their forces on their side of the border with these countries?  Have the Russians made threatening statements about the NATO states?
• Russia has made threatening and hostile statements directed at the United States?  When and where was that?
• Russia does not accept the principle of state sovereignty?  Really?  The United States is on shaky ground citing that principle.  Remember Iraq?
• Russian intelligence may have intercepted and collected the DNC's communications (hacked) as well as HC's stash of illegal e-mails?  Possibly true but every country on earth that has the capability does the same kind of thing every single day.  That would include the United States.

The Obama Administration is apparently committed to a pre-emptive assertion that Russia is a world class committed enemy of the United States.  The Borgist media fully support that.

We should all sober up.  pl

"Black power in Baltimore" LA Times - Re-published 27 July 2016

"The mayor is black. The council is almost two-thirds black. The school superintendent is black. The police chief is black, and a majority of his officers are black.

Race riots inevitably end in contention over what social woes led to the trigger point, with one overarching element: a white power structure ruling a black populace.

Baltimore left behind that vestige of segregation long ago, yet the city nonetheless has been perched on the edge of chaos for much of this week, as African American protesters took to the streets to express grievances over police abuse and urban neglect.

“We ain't talking about color,” said John Baptist Watkins III, 53, sitting on the steps of a boarded-up brick row house on North Avenue, as men nearby peddled drugs — one of the few ways to earn money in this part of town.

Even the city's African American elected officials, Watkins said, “have no clue what is going on in the city.”"  LA Times

-----------------

If the cops in Baltimore broke Grey's neck they should be prosecuted for homicide.

Nevertheless, it should be remembered that, as I wrote earlier today, the list above should include the state prosecutor who is black and Major General Singh, the Adjutant General of Maryland, a politically appointed state officer, who is also black and a woman.

IMO the root cause of this catastrophe in the life of the City of Baltimore is a lack of available jobs that are accessible to entry level men who are not well qualified for jobs that require education and self discipline in a changing economy.

The reason for this scarcity of jobs is the loss of industrial enterprise in the Baltimore area.  This is a historic phenomenon that results from changes in the world economy.  US government has been complicit in this change.  Can the US government help reverse the loss of industry in Baltimore, probably not.  pl

----------

Well, pilgrims, the cops who have been acquitted should sue all those involved including the City of Baltimore.  pl   27 July, 2016

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-black-power-20150429-story.html#page=1

What did Sanders actually get?

" ... a formal set of principal goals which are supported by a political party or individual candidate, in order to appeal to the general public, for the ultimate purpose of garnering the general public's support and votes about complicated topics or issues. "Plank" is the term often given to the components of the political platform – the opinions and viewpoints about individual topics, as held by a party, person, or organization. The word "plank" depicts a component of an overall political platform, as a metaphorical reference to a basic stage made out of boards or planks of wood. The metaphor can return to its literal origin when public speaking or debates are actually held upon a physical platform."  wiki on party platforms

-----------

The Sanderian Revolution has acknowledged with what grace it could manage its defeat at the hands of the Clinton machine and the DNC.

This grave disappointment has been accepted with the solace provided by the adoption of several Democratic Party platform planks dear to the hearts of the mutineers;  TPP rejection (maybe), Glass-Stiegel resurrection, etc.

There is only one problem with this.  She doesn't have to do any of this after Inauguration Day.  And, pilgrims, since the GOP is very likely to retain control of the House of Representatives, she would have the built-in excuse of "the Republicans wouldn't let me do it."

So, in effect, the Sanders people got nothing.  pl

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_platform

" ... an excuse to snuff out secular democracy" Quartz

 "In the immediate aftermath of the Turkish military’s attempted coup on July 15, the international community responded with relief. While many people within Turkey and outside of it are no fans of president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s authoritarian regime, the bloodshed and chaos that would have resulted from a government overthrow seemed like the worse of two options. 

But a little more than a week after the failed coup, it’s clear that the Turkish president is taking advantage of it in an attempt to gain absolute power in Turkey, enacting draconian measures and targeting any person or institution who might act as a voice of dissent. As Turkey moves toward dictatorial rule, here’s what the international community needs to know. 

Turkey has so far used its newly declared state of emergency to force the closure of 2,341 institutions, including universities, charities, hospitals, and labor unions. What does this have to do with the coup attempt?   Quartz

----------------

Whether or not you agree with me that Sultan Tayyip I was in control of the "coup," it seems clear that he intends to destroy Turkish secular republicanism. His persecution of the supposed Gulenist "threat" is IMO just a squabble between two factions of the Islamist movement in Turkey.  The real target for Erdogan is Ataturk's legacy.  pl  

http://qz.com/741835/turkeys-president-is-using-the-failed-coup-as-an-excuse-to-snuff-out-secular-democracy/

"Bernie Sanders Has Lost Control ... " Time

"It was supposed to be the night the Democratic Party finally exorcised its demons. Instead, on a sultry, hot day in Philadelphia, the long-simmering disillusionment of Bernie Sanders supporters erupted into anger. And not even the Senator himself could calm them.

A day of protests, booing and open dissent on Monday at the Democratic convention threatened to derail the party’s moment in the spotlight, exposing the fault lines that have divided the Democrats throughout the contentious primary between Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Inside the DNC convention hall, Sanders’ delegates shouted “Bernie! Bernie!” booed Clinton surrogates and even briefly broke into the “Lock Her Up!” chant favored by Donald Trump supporters.

One thing became clear: Sanders, who has spent the past 15 months condemning a “rigged system” and lambasting Clinton’s Establishment credentials, has conjured a spirit of resentment that he can’t dispel. He succeeded in creating a political revolution, but like many revolutionaries, he may have lost control of it."  Time

--------------

The Democratic party chairman was forced out yesterday.  In the morning she went to a meeting of her home state's delegation and in Andrea Mitchell's words was "booed off the stage."  The situation in the room became so bad that security people had to escort Wasserman-Schultz out.

"The Mornin' Joe"  crew is busily at work for the purpose of boosting the idea that the Sanders revolution is over and that all will be well in the process of moving Hillary forward toward her coronation.  Last night the "comedienne" Sarah Silverman told her former comrades in the Bernie crusade that they were being "ridiculous" in not accepting Hillary as national mother.  Well, pilgrims, my enduring memory of Sara S. is not the cleaned up look of last night.  No, it is the spectacle of her licking her little dog's butt on TV.  She suffers from clinical depression and still wets the bed.  It seems to me that many Berners will not take her exhortation seriously.

I am keen to learn if Time magazine is right in believing that the Sanders Revolution has outgrown him.  The next few nights will tell us if that is so.  pl  

http://time.com/4423362/democratic-convention-bernie-sanders-revolution/

Climate Change

Comment on this topic using this as an anchor post.  pl

Health Care

Comment using on this topic using this as an anchor.  pl

Ghosts in the System - TTG

I was as surprised as most when FBI Director Comey recommended no charges for Clinton over her email server shenanigans. I thought there would be more comments about the way she had the email server sterilized before it was handed over to the FBI. Smells like obstruction of justice to me. To make matters worse, the sterilization sabotaged efforts to investigate the massive 2014 breach of the State Department email system. This 19 Feb 2015  article from the Wall Street Journal touches on the extent of that breach.

******************************

Three months after the State Department confirmed hackers breached its unclassified email system, the government still hasn’t been able to evict them from the department’s network, according to three people familiar with the investigation. Government officials, assisted by outside contractors and the National Security Agency, have repeatedly scanned the network and taken some systems offline. But investigators still see signs of the hackers on State Department computers, the people familiar with the matter said. Each time investigators find a hacker tool and block it, these people said, the intruders tweak it slightly to attempt to sneak past defenses.

Investigators believe that hackers first snuck into State Department computers last fall after an employee clicked on a bogus link in an email referring to administrative matters, a type of attack known as a “phish.” That loaded malicious software onto the computer—a common hacker trick that has worked in countless corporate and government breaches.

From there, the hackers spread through the State Department’s sprawling network that includes machines in thousands of offices across the U.S., embassies and other outposts. It isn’t clear why the hackers were able to gain such wide access and whether the State Department routinely cordons off portions of its network to limit such maneuvers. (WSJ)

******************************

Could Clinton’s basement email server have been the key that allowed the wider DOS system hack? Unfortunately, the answer to that depends on your political position. We’ll never know for sure since that server was sterilized before it could be analyzed. The open source articles of a year ago attribute the hack to a DOS employee who opened a phishing email enclosure. Could be, but I doubt that’s the end of the story. Why were the DOS and NSA still having trouble eradicating the hostile code in the system months after discovering the breach? Well it’s my not so humble (in this case) opinion that the NSA and DOS are fools if they believe this phishing attack is the only source of malicious code in this system. Prior to Clinton even becoming Secretary of State, I knew hackers were infesting the DOS system and many other government systems. Most of these were kids, although some had government connections. They were in the routers and switches. I bet they’re still there. That’s far more insidious than hacking email servers. 

Who would the Russian "hackers" have been?

" The GRU gathers human intelligence through military attaches and foreign agents. It also maintains significant signals intelligence (SIGINT) and imagery reconnaissance (IMINT) and satellite imagery capabilities."^[7] GRU Space Intelligence Directorate has put more than 130 SIGINT satellites into orbit. GRU and KGB SIGINT network employed about 350,000 specialists."  GRU wiki

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Let us assume for the sake of argument that the Mookster preppie fellow had it right and that the Rooshans collected (hacked if you wish) their way into the DNC to scoop up the correspondence that has "done in" Debbie W-S.  I would expect that this "lovely" stuff (from the intelligence perspective) would have been passed to WikiLeaks after laundry service had been done on it through several cut-outs.  It is unlikely that there was a pleasant luncheon "pass" at Tatiana's Tea Room in Kensington.  It is quite possible that Assange has never been forced to acknowledge the original source, even to himself.  Cool!

What is the chance that Assange has in his paws a lot more goodies like the DNC e-mails?  I would estimate the chance to be around 150% and they are probably not the sum total of the SIGINT products possessed by the collector. 

When can we expect to see more of the "take?"  Well, pilgrims, I would expect the "hammer" to drop unpredictably but effectively after HC is nominated.  The Democrats will by then be fully committed to HC's candidacy and a roll-out of various interesting bits of news would devastate her effort.

Is "Trump is a Russian Agent!" likely to be an effective defense?  I doubt it.   Such a Mookian meme contains the awful defect of the absence of a credible denial of the veracity of the e-mails.   One could claim some are false, but which ones?   Comey has told us under oath that her handling of classified information was "extremely careless."

Sooo, if the Russians did it, (and there are many other possible collectors) who in particular did it?  I vote for the GRU.  I used to know them well.  They could do this "without breaking a sweat."  This kind of thing is one of their core missions.  pl  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Intelligence_Directorate

"Russia Is Reportedly Set To Release Clinton's Intercepted Emails" oilprice.com - Republished

(Re-published in honor of Debbi and company)

"Reliable intelligence sources in the West have indicated that warnings had been received that the Russian Government could in the near future release the text of email messages intercepted from U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server from the time she was U.S. Secretary of State. The release would, the messaging indicated, prove that Secretary Clinton had, in fact, laid open U.S. secrets to foreign interception by putting highly-classified Government reports onto a private server in violation of U.S. law, and that, as suspected, the server had been targeted and hacked by foreign intelligence services.

The reports indicated that the decision as to whether to reveal the intercepts would be made by Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin, and it was possible that the release would, if made, be through a third party, such as Wikileaks. The apparent message from Moscow, through the intelligence community, seemed to indicate frustration with the pace of the official U.S. Department of Justice investigation into the so-called server scandal, which seemed to offer prima facie evidence that U.S. law had been violated by Mrs Clinton’s decision to use a private server through which to conduct official and often highly-secret communications during her time as Secretary of State. U.S. sources indicated that the extensive Deptartment of Justice probe was more focused on the possibility that the private server was used to protect messaging in which Secretary Clinton allegedly discussed quid pro quo transactions with private donors to the Clinton Foundation in exchange for influence on U.S. policy."  oilprice.com

******** 

"For good measure, Clinton stated for the umpteenth time, “nothing I sent or received at the time was marked classified.” This dodge has been employed for a year as cover by Team Clinton to explain how so much classified information, including at least two dozen emails classified top secret or higher, among them enormously sensitive special access programs from both CIA and NSA, wound up in Clinton’s “unclassified” private email.

Any inquiring mind will want to know how Hillary Clinton is so certain she cannot be indicted over EmailGate, since the FBI’s investigation remains open. Similarly, it deserves to be asked why Obama felt it appropriate to endorse Clinton to succeed him in the White House while the FBI continues to investigate her, since any Bureau referral in the matter will wind up on the desk of the attorney general, Loretta Lynch—who works for President Obama. The White House insists this is no way taints the case. However, since Obama is a constitutional lawyer by background, he cannot fail to see how this creates a serious conflict of interest.

On top of that, Clinton’s evasions aren’t working. A new survey indicates that 60 percent of voters think she’s lying about her emails, versus 27 percent who believe her."   Observer.com

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 Hmmm.  Putin made a statement the other day that he thinks Trump  would be a good president for US/Russia relations.   Hmmm.  pl 

24 July - Just the beginning, pilgrims, just the beginning.  someone out there has a further large stash of Hilly's "extremely careless" e-mail traffic.  It could be the Russians.  Why not?  She seems hell bent on further overseas adventures.  Why would they not try to defeat her?  Why not?  The e-mail pirates could be anyone.  Hilly's unsecured servers and commo circuits could easily be penetrated by just about anyone with a modicum of knowledge.  China, North Korea, "Anonymous,"  anyone.

I suspect that these e-mails will be fed to WikiLeaks in tranches (slices) by the perpetrators.  Compromised SAP codeword material, the money laundry supposedly at work in Clinton World, embarrassing personal material? Who knows!  The sky is the limit.  pl 

http://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Russia-Is-Reportedly-Set-To-Release-Intercepted-Messages-From-Clintons-Private.html

http://observer.com/2016/06/the-coming-constitutional-crisis-over-hillary-clintons-emailgate/

 

Trump is a nationalist, not an internationalist.

 

"What Trump Said: He explicitly raised new questions about his commitment to automatically defend NATO allies if they are attacked, saying he would first look at their contributions to the alliance, the Times reported.

What Elites Think: What a disaster! Does Trump not know that 20th-century alliances have prevented a third World War? Russia would take advantage of a weakened NATO to expand its control. President Trump would make the nation weaker, less relevant, and more exposed to threats abroad.

What Populists Think: If these countries want our help, they’ve got to pay their bills. We’re not asking for the world—only what they promised to pay under a treaty that obliges the United States to defend them. Fair is fair. What makes us weak is defending and extending one-way alliances. As for the post-World War II order that Trump threatens to upend, this is now a post-9/11 world; it can’t hurt to pressure-test the old institutions."  Fournier in The Atlantic

--------------

Trump thinks all deals are subject to re-negotiation.   Treaties are deals.  These deals are ratified by the US Senate.  In Trumps mind we have the US Senate as the equivalent of a stockholder's meeting.  Therefore, he thinks, treaty deals are subject to re-negotiation.  This is a typical entrepreneurial business attitude. 

Is there some reason why we should think that treaties are not re-negotiable? In fact the French withdrew their forces from the control of Allied Command Europe (ACE) while not leaving the alliance.  Was this not a de facto re-negotiation of the treaty?

Borgists like Ron Fournier automatically shrink from Trump's desire to return America to an attitude regarding "foreign entanglements" that prevailed before WW2.  This was an attitude that strictly put narrowly defined US interests first and regarded all else as "to be determined."  Trump does not accept the internationalist view that the world is one and that the US should be its guardian.  This spirit of guardianship seem to me to originate in the notion that the rest of the world is a very imperfect place that the God of the New England Puritans gave unto the protection and regulation of the "city on the hill."  This is amusing since so many of the Borgians are now godless heathen.

I watched again the recent re-make of "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy."  This is the version in which the splendid actor Gary Oldman plays George Smiley.  In the film, the Circus holds a Christmas party sometime at the height of the Cold War.  In the midst of the sad revelry, Father Christmas enters stage right with his bag of goodies and wearing a Joe Stalin mask.  the crowd stands and he leads the British spooks in a spirited rendition of the Soviet national anthem.  I saw much the same thing happen after the fall of the USSR when American military spooks specialized in the USSR sang "I'm dreaming of a red Christmas, just like the ones I used to know."  They knew their rice bowl was broken and they would all be fired or repurposed soon.  The same was true of Iran specialists at the State Department after the Shah was gone. 

Pitt the Younger said that the map of Europe should be rolled up for twenty years when Bonaparte's power was at its zenith.  For the Borg (foreign policy establishment) world-wide, Trump World would be the end of them as a cadre.  Cui bono?  pl 

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/how-will-trumps-supporters-understand-his-foreign-policy-interview/492386/

Open Thread - 22 July 2016

pl

More than 60.000 people ...

 

More than 50,000 people have been fired or suspended over the attempt to overthrow the government, including police, generals and admirals, teachers, judges and civil servants among others.  The country will need a major restructuring of its security forces, having gutted the leadership of its military, with at least 118 generals and admirals detained, stripping the general-rank command of the Turkish military by a third, according to Turkish state broadcaster TRT.  Authorities have also suspended 8,777 Ministry of Interior personnel, mostly police, as well as 100 Turkish intelligence service personnel.  CNN.com

 

********

"Turkey's education ministry has revoked the licenses of 21,000 teachers working in private institutions, an official at the ministry told Reuters on Tuesday, part of an expanding government crackdown following a failed coup attempt.

The announcement came shortly after a report that the High Education Board had ordered the resignation of 1,577 deans at all universities across Turkey."  Reuters

----------

 Does anyone wish to argue that Tayyip Sultan is not attempting to create a totalitarian state?  pl  

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/21/europe/turkey-coup-emergency/

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-security-teachers-idUSKCN0ZZ22F?il=0

"How Turkey Could Become the Next Pakistan" ISW. Nuclear Safety at Incirlik - New Yorker

"The failed coup attempt by elements of the Turkish Armed Forces on July 15 will enable President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to establish himself as an authoritarian ruler in Turkey. His priorities in the next few months will be to solidify the loyalty of the Turkish military establishment and complete the constitutional reform necessary to replace Turkey’s parliamentary democracy with an executive presidency, his longstanding goal. A post-coup Erdogan is much less likely to submit to American pressure without major returns. Erdogan immediately demanded the extradition of political rival Fethullah Gulen from the U.S., accusing Gulen of plotting the coup and condemning the U.S. for harboring him. Erdogan will likely deprioritize the fight against ISIS, undermining the counter-ISIS mission in Syria, as he focuses on consolidating power. He may even revoke past concessions to the U.S., including permission to use Turkey’s Incirlik airbase for counter-ISIS operations."  ISW

*******

"With a few hours and the right tools and training, you could open one of NATO’s nuclear-weapons storage vaults, remove a weapon, and bypass the PAL inside it. Within seconds, you could place an explosive device on top of a storage vault, destroy the weapon, and release a lethal radioactive cloud. NATO’s hydrogen bombs are still guarded by the troops of their host countries. "  New Yorker

---------

These are very interesting pieces of work exploring the prospects for developments in Erdogan's Turkey. 

IMO the Turkish military will soon  be reduced to a quivering mass of fearful people looking over their shoulders while waiting for dismissal or worse.  This will produce a security vacuum in the country that is bound to be filled by Islamists.

Jennifer Cafarella raises the possibility that Erdogan will turn to AQ seeking an ally against his internal and external adversaries.  If this occurs then the safety of American assets in Turkey will be severely compromised. 

I will say once again that the US nuclear weapons at Incirlik air base should be removed while we still have the ability to do so without having to fight to remove them.

Think of the potential for blackmail inherent in the possession of one or more of these weapons in the hands of our enemies.

They couldn't arm it?  Do you really want to bet on that?  pl  

http://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/how-turkey-could-become-next-pakistan

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-h-bombs-in-turkey

All in the Morning Paper - TTG

SUZANNE CARR ROSSI / THE FREE LANCE-STAR

Chris Cameron was all set for a dinner engagement with some friends Friday evening when he stopped by the basketball courts in Olde Forge subdivision. After several impromptu games with some neighborhood kids and other members of the Stafford Sheriff’s Office, the sweaty detective decided he’d better clean up before continuing on to dinner.

Cameron, who earned the nickname “Officer Swish” from the kids after sinking a few baskets, was one of about a dozen members of the Sheriff’s Office who showed up in Olde Forge for a gathering arranged by subdivision resident Kathleen Wright. “When the community reaches out, the least we can do is to extend our hand back,” Cameron said. “Besides, I had a lot of fun today.”

Wright, 29, who has lived in Olde Forge for two years, said she came up with the idea for the gathering in response to the recent nationally publicized police-involved shootings, which continued over the weekend with the killings of three officers in Baton Rouge, La. She decided it would be a good thing to encourage more deputies and residents to get to know each other on a personal basis. (Keith Epps/Free Lance-Star)

*****************************

This is why I like reading my local paper. There is plenty of good news, as well as thought provoking news, to balance the ever present bad news. And stories like this certainly increase this old New England Yankee’s pride in his Virginia home. The only sour note was when someone from the HOA showed up to complain about the lack of prior HOA permission to hold the ice cream social. These HOA types can be such dicks. 

I have always been impressed by our Stafford County Sheriffs. They look sharp. They act professionally and courteously. SWMBO and I have always noticed that they invariably catch the bad guys who pass through our county. I’m convinced this is primarily due to the character and efforts of our recently retired, long time Sheriff Charles Jett. He’s a life long Stafford resident who aggressively sought to bring his department closer to the community it served. His predecessors were no slacks either. This is a home grown sheriff’s department... the best kind of law enforcement.

*****************************

In other news, today’s Free Lance-Star included an AP story about the Nice attacker being recruited by an Algerian IS member only two weeks ago. So, if this guy’s uncle is to be believed, it wasn’t self-radicalization and it wasn’t an angry, depressed loser acting out. It was a damned effective IS “case officer” who spotted, assessed, recruited, trained and tasked his agent. All this in a few weeks. Stopping these people is going to be tough. Certainly doable, but tough.

TTG

Our hydrogen bombs or Erdogan's?

 

"Erdogan to announce tomorrow major policy change after the National Security Council (MGK). Could be something drastic, like leaving NATO, or giving up the EU membership application. Or even maybe declaring himself president for life, effectively taking over the entire state apparatus. Or even disbanding the parliament, and calling for a new referendum and election."  A Turk

*********** 

"As of 2005^[update], 180 tactical B61 nuclear bombs of the 480 U.S. nuclear weapons believed to be deployed in Europe fall under the nuclear sharing arrangement.^[7] The weapons are stored within a vault in hardened aircraft shelters, using the USAF WS3 Weapon Storage and Security System. The delivery warplanes used are F-16s and Panavia Tornados"  wiki on Nuclear Sharing

*********

"The WS3 system consists of a Weapons Storage Vault (WSV) and electronic monitoring and control systems. One vault can hold up to four nuclear weapons and in the lowered position provides ballistic protection through its hardened lid and reinforced sidewalls.^[1] The WS3 system allowed storage directly underneath the aircraft intended to carry the bombs. The location inside the aircraft shelter increased the weapon survivability in case of any kind of attack and prevent monitoring of preparations to use the weapons. The electronic systems include various classified sensors, electronic data-transmission and security equipment such as video, motion detectors, closed circuit TV coupled with thermal imaging devices. These facilities enabled remote controlled weapon safety and made the large security forces obsolete."  wiki on weapons storage  and security system

-------------

"A Turk," whose words are quoted above is a long term commentator on SST.  I consider him to be a good source.

There are between 50 and 90 B-61 variable yield thermonuclear weapons  (hydrogen bombs) stored at Incirlik Air base in SE Turkey.  This base was built by the US starting in 1951 but it has always been a TURKISH base with US tenants.   Some of the weapons are earmarked for US use and some for Turkish use against US/NATO agreed on targets if they are ever released by the US National Command Authority.  The weapons are stored there in a semi-automatic system in vaults under the delivery aircraft.  Small point - There are no US delivery suitable aircraft now stationed at Incirlik.  They would have to brought in from somewhere else to mate them with the bombs.  At the same time, the Turkish Air Force no longer has nuclear weapons certified pilots.

Questions:

1.  What are the targets for which these weapons would possibly be used?   Are there any?  Really?

2.  How firmly are the American airmen at the base in control of these weapons, weapons situated on a foreign base?

3.  Can the weapons be disabled, perhaps remotely?

Let us say, for the sake of argument, that Erdogan controlled forces make a move to seize control of the hydrogen bombs on THEIR BASE.  What could the US do about it?

IMO the US should remove the weapons or disable them as soon as possible.  pl

"A Very Predictable Coup?" by Philip Geraldi

 

"The coup plotters probably erred in their assumption that there was wide support at senior levels in the Turkish military for a coup. The generals, who once would have been natural opponents of Erdogan’s ambitions, had been severely punished in their first encounter with the then prime minister in 2010-11. A series of show trials claiming that the senior officers were involved in plotting against the government based on very flimsy evidence removed many upper ranks, replacing them gradually with Erdogan loyalists. Many of the officers so convicted have only recently been released from prison but, having been out of power for years, they have not retained any ability to take action against the government.

The coup plotters may have approached one or more of the new Erdogan-appointed generals, without whose support a coup could not succeed, expecting a sympathetic hearing. In all likelihood, they were received cordially but the senior officer immediately reported their overture to the president, setting the stage for a trap."  The American Conservative

---------------

In the interest of full disclosure I am one of the people who have discussed this matter with Philip Geraldi.   IMO the scenario he suggests fits exactly with my conception of the "coup" as a false flag operation.  pl  

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/a-very-predictable-coup/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag

Baton Rouge - 17 July 2016

The ambush.  pl

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2016/jul/17/baton-rouge-police-officers-shooting-louisiana

"Exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen accused Recep Erdogan of staging the coup" Daily Mail

 

Speaking from his home, Gulen claimed democracy in Turkey could not be achieved through military action. 

He condemned the plot, although authorities in Ankara are not convinced.

He said: 'There is a slight chance, there is a possibility that it could be a staged coup. It could be meant for court accusations and associations.' 

He added: 'It appears that they have no tolerance for any movement, any group, any organisation that is not under their total control.'

 

"President Erdogan told a crowd chanting for the death penalty on Saturday that such demands may be discussed in parliament after a coup attempt by a faction in the military killed at least 161 people. 

Looking relaxed and smiling, giving an occasional thumbs up to his supporters in Istanbul, Erdogan said the coup attempt had been carried out by a minority in the army.

He said: 'The army is ours, not that of the parallel structure. I am chief commander.'

Earlier Erdogan urged the US to extradite Gulen claiming Turkey never turned down an extradition request from Washington for 'terrorists'."  Daily Mail

------------

Basically, Sultan Tayyip I demands that Obama hand over this man, a former ally of his and a perceived present rival.  If Obama comes to heel and delivers the man he should understand that he is submitting to an oriental potentate.  He has bowed to various foreign persons in the past.  Perhaps he should visit Turkey to repeat the act.  In olden times the sultan/caliph of the Ottoman Empire routinely had his younger brothers drowned in the Bosporus to consolidate his rule.  Tayyip seems to be bent on Ottomanization of the dying secular Turkish Republic.  Why would we think he would deal with a captive Gulen on a compassionate basis?

IMO we should begin to think of the ultimate limits of Tayyip's ambitions.  Thus far he has successfully bullied and blackmailed the EU into paying him 6 BILLION Euros to stop sending migrants across the Aegean Sea.  He has embarked on a campaign of suppression of civic liberties in Turkey.  He has actively supported ALL the jihadi movements in Syria.  Only recently has he desisted from supporting IS but he continues to be the biggest supporter of the non-IS jihadi groups.  The only reason he abandoned IS was that they began to threaten him.  Without his Turkey's help the Nusra Front and the rest of the menagerie of jihadi groups would be carrion by now.  What are the limits of his ambition?

pl

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3693729/Did-Erdogan-STAGE-coup-based-Turkish-cleric-facing-extradition-botched-rebellion-claims-president-orchestrated-plot-justify-clampdown-civil-rights.html

The "coup" was a fraud?"

"Turkish prosecutors have issued arrest warrants for 140 Constitutional Court members and 48 members of the Council of State in the wake of Friday night’s attempted coup. Ten arrests have already been made, local media reported.

TrendsCoup attempt in Turkey

The ten jurists detained were all members of the Council of State, which is Turkey’s top administrative court, NTV broadcaster reported.

The arrests followed media reports that judges at other courts had been detained, as the government’s crackdown on the judiciary in the wake of the coup attempt widens.

Constitutional Court member, Alparslan Altan, has become the most senior judicial official to be arrested after the coup, CNN Turk broadcaster reported.

RT'S LIVE UPDATES on the attempted military coup in Turkey

Earlier on Saturday, Turkish authorities relieved 2,745 judges of duty.

The decision to sack the judges was made at an extraordinary meeting of Turkey’s High Council of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK), NTV broadcaster reported."  RT

--------------

From what  I am hearing from sources in Turkey, this may have been a pre-emptive "false flag" operation in which a group of members of the armed forces were sent into the fraudulent "coup" by Erdogan loyalists among senior officers.  He has appointed many.  IOW the people in the "coup" may have been deliberately sacrificed as "props" so that Erdogan could whip up his followers and consolidate power before he changes the constitution to make himself an absolute ruler.  pl  

https://www.rt.com/news/351602-turkey-supreme-court-arrested/

"The Latest Craze" By Richard Sale

The main stream media is making a big deal of Pokémon Go, and the spreading degree of its fame is stupefying.

It appears to me that the chief feature of culture today is the drive to be superficial. We are like schools of minnows, swerving this way and then that, with no settled direction or steadfast purpose except to keep ourselves distracted at all costs. Is that the true fate of ,mankind? To idolatrize gadgets and fiddle ourselves into inanity?

Is knowledge no longer valued for its own sake? What use is it? Why ponder over a thing, when you can turn on the TV. Do you think any TV listener could pass a quiz on what they just saw? Could they form a sound conjecture about its importance? Don’t things of real intellectual or moral worth require our focused attention? Popularity today is incessantly confused with the superior. Most of our TV programs end up being popularity contests where the less worthy opinions are listened to the most.

Why should we apply ourselves to the study of art or history? Why does history matter? The TV news incessantly mentions Islam. People’s reaction is to cringe. But what do people know about it? There is much more historical fact that corroborates Mohammed’s career than that of Jesus. The first gospels were written almost a century later after he died. But to many of the American public, Islam is a synonym for something distasteful that makes them afraid. Such a reaction is merely ignorant. Daniel Defoe once said that there were hundreds of warriors who vowed to end Popery without knowing if Popery was a man or a horse. That sums up the prejudice of most Americans about Islam.

Mohammed was a great man, but he was also a man of his time and place. The religion of the Arabs before him was a primitive one. Their holy of holies was the Kaaba, the black stone of Mecca. The black stone was the one to which the Amazons used to pray, according to Apollonius. Before Mohammad, the Arabs worshipped various goddesses. Allah himself was ancient. A thousand years before Mohammed, the Persians wrote,” Allah is exalted,” but he was only one of many deities.

Mohammed was not a man of the desert. He was a man of Mecca, a prosperous city on a major caravan route which largely controlled the trade between India and the Mediterranean. The prophet soon encountered the differences between the rich and the poor and took note of them. Aside from the Kaaba, he revered another accomplishment of the Arabs -- their poetry. Because most Arabs were illiterate, they developed a prodigious capacity for memorization, and that talent preserved the Koran. In Mecca, there were colonies of Jews and Christians, and Mohammed knew a bit of the Jewish scriptures, once observing that the Jews worshipped Ezra as the son of God. (This was not true, however.) But he denied the divinity of Jesus and thought the Crucifixion was a Jewish falsehood. But for some explained reason Mohammad accepted the Virgin birth. (There were paintings of Jesus and Mary on the walls of the Kaaba.) He identified Allah with the Jewish and Christian God. He borrowed the idea of the Last Judgment and the resurrection of the flesh. ( I had always been suspicious of the Resurrection since one of my teachers at Columbia College told me of how Zoroaster, the Persian prophet, was torn to pieces by his followers but had risen after three days.)

After forty years of leading an obscure live of a successful businessman, Mohammad married a rich widow, and it was then that he was visited by the Angel Gabriel who dictated to him the revelation of Islam. It was a moment very much like that of St. Paul on the road to Damascus. From the beginning, Mohammed was opposed by the powerful and respectable at Mecca who thought him quite mad, and he fled to Medina. After he became a political and spiritual leadrs of his community, He waged war against the Meccans, intiating hostilities by raiding their caravans in the holy month of of the pilgrimmace when war was forbidden. He justified his aggression by preaching war against idolators as a sacred duty (jihad.) With a force of three hundred he routed a thousand Meccans in the battle of Badr and proved his generalship by holding off numerous counterattacks.

He may have preached an other worldly message, but he himself was a worldly man. He had a shrewd grasp of economic and political topics. He had eleven wives and enjoyed the company of concubines. He was addicted to war, but at that time who was not? Europe was going through the Dark Ages. If Mohammed could be ruthless he could also be kind, generous and magnanimous, He was an attractive person, shy, fond of jokes and fun, and was unfailingly courteous. He loved honey. He humbly shared his household chores with his wife, and was very indulgent of people’s failures. He died quietly and fearlessly.

Coup attempt in Turkey

SST correspondents report that there is an ongoing Turkish Army coup all over the country to include small towns.  The two Bosporus bridges are blocked by the army as would be the case if the cup is centered in Anatolia and the putschists do not want interference from Turkish 1st Army who are based in Thrace.  pl

http://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2016/07/turkey-government/491579/

HARPER: RELEASE OF 28 PAGES BEGS DE NOVO INVESTIGATION

After a nearly 14 year delay, the House and Senate Intelligence Committees have released a White House-redacted copy of the 28 page chapter from the original Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11.  The 28 page chapter was blocked from publication by then-President George W. Bush, under strong pressure from both Saudi Arabia and the FBI.  It took a decade-long battle, led by former Senator Bob Graham and current Members of Congress Walter Jones (R-NC), Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) and Thomas Massie (R-Kty.), and a persistent public lobbying fight by 9/11 survivors and family members to box President Obama in.  On July 6, Reps. Jones, Lynch and Massie held a Capitol Hill press conference, in which they made clear that if President Obama continued to stonewall on releasing the 28 pages, they would lead Congressional action to declassify the chapter, bypassing the Executive Branch altogether.  Ultimately, they threatened to pull a "Pentagon Papers," a reference to Sen. Mike Gravel's courageous decision to put the full text of the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record.  The Supreme Court subsequently ruled that Gravel's actions were legal under the public interest disclosure clause of the US Constitution.

 

It is important to carefully read the 28 pages, which were released July 15, with some redactions.  The next step should be clear:  A new investigation must be launched, with adequate funding, staffing, and with no artificial deadline.  A careful reading of the 28 pages should make clear that there were opportunities to crack down on the Saudi backing of Sunni jihadist terrorism 14 years ago--long before terms like "Islamic State," "Nusra Front," "Boko Haram" became household words, associated with bloody terrorist atrocities.  The Sept. 11, 2001 attacks are the first subject to be thoroughly revisited, but the full scope of the Saudi role in nurturing a global terrorist infrastructure must be explored, carrying right up to the present moment.

 

Rep. Massie, upon reading the 28 pages, told a Capitol Hill press conference more than a year ago that it changed his view of the history of the past 15 years.  He was right.  The coming weeks' distractions, with both parties holding their nominating conventions and then the serious launching of the presidential election campaign, cannot be a distraction from a serious response to the evidence now available, for the first time, to the American people and to the world at large.

 

 http://intelligence.house.gov/sites/intelligence.house.gov/files/documents/declasspart4.pdf

"Religion and Arab Culture" WP Lang

 

My lecture notes from long ago for the benefit of those who have discovered water shortages as a source of ME culture.  pl

Download Islamic Religion and Arab Culture

We grieve for Nice ...

"Lafayette, nous voici!"  pl

Bastille Day 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu3eSNi__4w

 

"Allons enfants de la Patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé!
Contre nous de la tyrannie,
L'étendard sanglant est levé, (bis)
Entendez-vous dans les campagnes
Mugir ces féroces soldats?
Ils viennent jusque dans vos bras
Égorger vos fils, vos compagnes!

Aux armes, citoyens,
Formez vos bataillons,
Marchons, marchons!
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons!

Que veut cette horde d'esclaves,
De traîtres, de rois conjurés?
Pour qui ces ignobles entraves,
Ces fers dès longtemps préparés? (bis)
Français, pour nous, ah! quel outrage
Quels transports il doit exciter!
C'est nous qu'on ose méditer
De rendre à l'antique esclavage!

Aux armes, citoyens...

Quoi! des cohortes étrangères
Feraient la loi dans nos foyers!
Quoi! Ces phalanges mercenaires
Terrasseraient nos fiers guerriers! (bis)
Grand Dieu! Par des mains enchaînées
Nos fronts sous le joug se ploieraient
De vils despotes deviendraient
Les maîtres de nos destinées!

Aux armes, citoyens..."

The Marseiilaise

 

 

Turkey is going to be Russia's little friend?

"Binali Yildirim said in a televised address Wednesday that Turkey is expanding its circle of friends, adding: “I am sure that we will return (our) ties with Syria to normal. We need it.”

The statement follows the restoration of diplomatic ties with Russia and Israel. Ankara cut ties with Syrian President Bashar Assad after a popular uprising erupted in 2011.

The Turkish government has consistently cast the departure of Assad, who enjoys the backing of Iran and Russia, as necessary for a successful political resolution to the conflict in Syria.

Turkey, which borders Syria, is now is home 2.75 million Syrian refugees. It has served as a base to political representatives of the Syrian opposition and various rebel groups seeking to unseat Assad."  washpost

-------------

 I will have to see it to believe it.  

• Will Turkey seal its borders against the non IS jihadis it has been supporting?
• Will Turkey really offer Turkish citizenship to these jihadis more or less trapped in Turkey by a border closure?  To do so is to sponsor the creation of an internal 5th column.
• Will Turkey take part in combined operations with Russia against its former jihadi allies?
• Would the abased but still strong Turkish Army (the children of Ataturk) not take notice of Erdogan's weakness?

If all this happens the Syrian government will eventually emerge as one of the strongest military powers in the Levant.  The Israelis and the Gulfies would then have reaped the whirlwind. 

Such a future would be the most profound kind of defeat for the Borg and its servants in Washington.  I am particularly thinking of the malevolent creature Ash Carter.

I hope, but need to see more before I will believe.  pl 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/turkey-hints-at-normalization-of-ties-with-syria/2016/07/13/4ac61542-48da-11e6-8dac-0c6e4accc5b1_story.html

"NATO, Back in Business at the Old Stand" By Patrick Armstrong

Spare a thought for the travails of NATO drones over the past couple of decades. About 25 years ago I was in competition for a job on the International Staff at NATO. I've forgotten most of the details but it would have paid about US$100,000. Tax free. Plus benefits. What would have been the equivalent salary, in the real world, to that, do you suppose? In return, NATO started work sometime Monday afternoon and knocked off early on Friday and essentially took meetings the rest of the time. And Brussels is a convenient base for travelling around Europe. But I didn't get the job.

The Warsaw Pact imploded, followed by the USSR and NATO's raison d'être disappeared. A colleague who finally got a position on the Canadian delegation (no big IS salaries for them!) seriously wondered whether NATO would last through his time there.

Well, it did. Expansion (soon officially changed to the more anodyne "enlargement") gave employment. NATO, it piously said, cannot stop people from freely applying to join, can it? Of course, given that most of these countries wanted to be neutral originally – the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine in 1990 has these words: "The Ukrainian SSR solemnly declares its intention of becoming a permanently neutral state that does not participate in military blocs..." – it took time and money to persuade people to "freely" apply. In the case of Ukraine two decades, two colour revolutions and five billion USD and 500 thousand Euros. We see similar efforts today with the campaigns in Sweden and Finland. Nothing spontaneous at all, actually.

Kosovo was a problem for the NATO drones. Not in the initial execution that is; that narrative was smoothly crafted – walking blood banks, rape camps, genocide, the monster Milosevic – the MSM obediently fell into line. No, the problem was the terrifying realisation that it wasn't working and that a land invasion might have to be fumbled together. But Chernomyrdin persuaded Milosevic to give up, the worst did not come to pass and everybody could congratulate themselves on writing a new page of military history: "virtual war", air power alone can win wars and similar certainties that are not so certain today.

Then came 911 and NATO was required in Afghanistan. Expansion and Kosovo had been fun for NATO drones: visiting European centres as honoured guests treated to the best of everything, making speeches about stability and the necessity to make a stand against evil but not much in the way of hard or unpleasant work. Afghanistan, on the other hand, was a nasty dangerous place where the locals all hated you but concealed their hatred until you stopped paying them. Like most of the regime-change wars with which we have grown so familiar, Afghanistan started with a bang and the Taliban government was overthrown in weeks. But the war goes on and on. Obama will leave 8400 US troops there for his successor; he had promised to end it in 2014. John McCain thinks the US needs a "permanent presence" there. Complete, of course, with NATO allies.

In short, NATO membership is not attractive if all it involves is interminable rotations through Afghanistan. A dreary prospect indeed.

Besides the multitude of unpleasant locations with few hotels and bars, another problem with the "War on Terror" is that the enemy is small and feeble – IEDs, suicide vests, small arms. Small money weapons that don't require big money weapons systems to counter.

"Chicago Riot" by Richard Sale

As a cub reporter for LIFE Magazine I was assigned to head five street teams to cover the streets at the Chicago Convention of 1968. The characters are Roger Snider, the magazine’s top political writer who was demoted for having offended a U.S. Senator in one of his articles. Roger thinks himself the brightest mind on earth, an idea which makes him the most boring. But even his superiority becomes overwhelmed when the violence occurs.

Other characters are Crown, Roger’s photographer, and Barnaby Hart, who is another reporter.

I covered the event with Howard Bingham, Mohammed Ali’s personal photographer. I was witness to the police brining up the saw horses in front of the Haymarket Inn. I escaped.  Richard Sale

                                                   Chapter 87

     Grant Park was not the usual park; it displayed belts of greenery that had been cut into major parallel streets between Michigan Avenue and Lake Michigan one and a half miles away. After the attacks of the afternoon, the police wanted to pen the kids up in Lincoln Park, keeping them away from the Hilton, but there were a variety of bridges and overpasses that went north and south and which crossed over the railroad lines and they led into Michigan Avenue. Many of the kids who had escaped the attacks up at Lincoln Park were now heading there. The exodus from Lincoln Park speeded up after the National Guard began to gas the kids and it found that there were too many bridges, too many choices, and the authorities had been outwitted. The wind suddenly shifted west, causing eyes to tear, faces grimacing, people stopping to try and put a handkerchief to their eye, many of them never having to sniff tear gas before in their lives.

Worse, the beatings in Lincoln Park had attracted hundreds of newsmen, all of whom had now headed to the Hilton to cover what was soon to be called, “The Wednesday Night Massacre.”

Roger Snider stood squarely out in the middle of Michigan Avenue, next to the Hilton, behind the police line, his hands thrust into the pockets of his white gabardine jacket, wearing expensive, tasseled loafers and dress slacks. He had eaten a steak dinner, had two scotches and now he felt full and contented and less anxious. He had spent his afternoon drinking at a local bar where Norman Mailer, who had suddenly left to go speak at the bend shell, leaving him with McCarthy staffers most of whom were in a glum mood. (Roger would only learn later that Mailer was watching the spectacle that violent night from the safety of the nineteen floor of the Hilton.)

A lot of whisky had made Roger feel brave. The sight of the revolving blue lights of the numerous police cars was hardly cheering to his spirit, and what he felt now was a gloomy foreboding. The crowd was keyed up to an extraordinary pitch of frustrated despair, disgusted rage, and helpless indignation. Seeing that both the kids and cops were edging towards a more lawless mood, the situation had, minute by minute, manifested a more menacing character. A slow fuse was burning towards one final, horrible explosion, Roger thought. It was just a matter of when.

On his right, he saw the dense throng contained by the Guard in Grant Park while to near to his left was the impressive, illuminated Hilton Hotel, its entrance ringed by blue figures. To the north, the intersection was filling solid with people, coming from the band shell, and the street before him was lit up by harsh, stark lights, and it was starting to fill up.

Roger was a cool, methodical man, hard to frighten, alert to atmospheres and able to interpret what they meant. As he looked on, he assumed his usual a patronizing air, animated by his usual sense of seeing things from a greater mental height than others did, and he frowned tensely: one thing was clear. In the case of both the cops and the kids, Roger knew he was witnessing a case of mental contagion. The cops hated the kids. Because of that, they would set out to break the kids’ spirit, ruin their will, and pursue them into their innermost recesses in order to make them afraid of the police. To a cops, frightfulness pays, Roger thought.

What happened to Micah Johnson?

An open question with regard to the Dallas sniper has to do with his motivation.

IMO we need to know how this man who is variously described as having been; goofy, a clown, interested mainly in his Engineer Corps duties as a carpenter and mason in an Engineer Corps Army Reserve construction unit became an enraged Black nationalist who "hated white people." 

How did that happen?  This is not the usual trajectory of development for Army Reserve or National Guard soldiers.  These part timers normally become quite attached to and indeed rather maudlin about their units and comrades.

So, what happened?  The idiot MSM does not seen interested in this.  They prefer to go weepy and wet over the funerals instead of finding out WHY this man went bad.  Their reaction is just about as brainless about this as was their fascination with the hunt for the particular  "guilty alligator" at the Disney resort in Florida.  Apparently any shiny object can hold their attention.  Ben Rhodes is right.  They  are ignorant, uneducated and easily led.

My own theory of the case is that there was something wrong about the way an accusation of sexual harassment was made about him in Afghanistan and then the way some officer or officers handled the case.

IMO it is quite possible that an ambitious officer or officers covered his/their ass by dropping the hammer on this guy.

That would do it.  pl

The Chief Rabbi of the IDF?

"it is necessary to scrutinize the original text and what was originally asked on the first Kipa article in 2003. The inquirer asked specifically: “How is it then, that it was told to me by a rabbi, that a comely woman can be [raped], according to some of the [Halachic] rulers, also before the whole process described in the Torah? That is, that [a man would] surrender to his desires, and have sex with her, and only later take her to her home etc.?” Indeed, the text of the Torah is worrying in its formulation. Let us have a look at it. This is Deuteronomy 21:10-14: “When you go out to battle against your enemies, and the LORD your God delivers them into your hands and you take them away captive, and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and have a desire for her and would take her as a wife for yourself, then you shall bring her home to your house, and she shall shave her head and trim her nails. She shall also remove the clothes of her captivity and shall remain in your house, and mourn her father and mother a full month; and after that you may go in to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife. It shall be, if you are not pleased with her, then you shall let her go wherever she wishes."  Mondoweiss

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This character is the Chief Rabbi of the IDF.  He is the equivalent of the Chief of Chaplains on the US Army.  pl  

http://mondoweiss.net/2016/07/israeli-advocated-becomes/?utm_source=Mondoweiss+List&utm_campaign=9e45fde3c6-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b86bace129-9e45fde3c6-398535769&mc_cid=9e45fde3c6&mc_eid=66341903b8

“Lebanon to receive advanced Russian weapons” Al Masdar News - TTG

The Lebanese Ambassador to Russian Federation, Chawki Bou Nasser told Sputnik News on Tuesday that Beirut requested a large number of Kornet ATGMs (anti-tank guided missiles), T-72 Tanks, and advanced cannons from Moscow. “Lebanon needs weapons to fight these people [terrorists], and especially the Russian rockets, there is one well known, Kornet, because Lebanon got some of the weapons and used them effectively, and is still working with the Russian side to provide these kinds of weapons… Kornet, and the cannons, and the tanks, T-72 tanks, although old — but Russia promised to renovate them and to update the systems in these tanks — and of course the shells for the cannons, ammunition,” Nassar said. “Lebanon is, of course, expecting to get these within a year,” the ambassador said, expressing hope that Russia will also follow up on its previous pledge to supply up to nine helicopters through a grant. (Al Masdar News)

__________________

The Lebanese Army has been using the same equipment since the early 80s. Their main armored vehicles are the M-113 APC and the M-60 MBT. I was a  young SF captain when we supplied them with this stuff. When I left, the LAF 8th Brigade was battle tested and competent. That was a long time ago.

For the first time since their civil war(s), the LAF is now forced to face an external enemy. It must take on the Nusra and IS jihadis in the Qalamoun Mountains. Whether they like it or not, the LAF must also coordinate with Hezbollah. They’ve done okay for the last two years, but they need improved equipment and training if they want to become a credible defense force. The upgraded T-72 tanks will be almost equal to the T-90. The Kornet ATGM is as good as anything we have and its thermobaric rounds are sweeter than sweet. What AA missiles might this equipment include? Obviously Russian trainers will accompany this equipment. 

Israel is deathly afraid of improved LAF equipment falling into the hands of Hezbollah. That’s why every serious effort to equip the LAF with modern weapons has been stymied in the past. The Russians, however, may have decided that it’s time for the LAF to become a full and capable part of the R+6 coalition in the fight against the IS and it’s jihadi allies. We may be talking about the R+7 this time next year. If Russia supplies this equipment, will it go directly through Beirut or Tripoli? Will this spur closer coordination between the LAF and Hezbollah? What will Israel do? What can she do?

TTG

Unwelcome "news" for the Left.

 

"A new study confirms that black men and women are treated differently in the hands of law enforcement. They are more likely to be touched, handcuffed, pushed to the ground or pepper-sprayed by a police officer, even after accounting for how, where and when they encounter the police.

But when it comes to the most lethal form of force — police shootings — the study finds no racial bias.

“It is the most surprising result of my career,” said Roland G. Fryer Jr., the author of the study and a professor of economics at Harvard. The study examined more than 1,000 shootings in 10 major police departments, in Texas, Florida and California.

The result contradicts the image of police shootings that many Americans hold after the killings (some captured on video) of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.; Tamir Rice in Cleveland; Walter Scott in South Carolina; Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, La.; and Philando Castile in Minnesota."  NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/upshot/surprising-new-evidence-shows-bias-in-police-use-of-force-but-not-in-shootings.html?_r=0

------------------

 Well pilgrims, this is where we are in an age of manufactured facts and "truthiness."  The reaction to this NY Times article on "Mornin' Joe" today was both sad and hysterically funny.  Joe watched the circus from behind his defensive mask while Eugene Robinson the ("Pulitzer prize winning associate editor of the Washington Post") mumbled disconsolately that he "has a hard time with this"  and that there must be an examination of the data.  The Blackness of the Harvard professor is clearly a problem for his long transmitted narrative assertions.  The "legendary columnist" Mike Barnicle observed that we "should all wait to learn what Obama says at the funerals in Dallas.  It seemed to me that he was saying that Obama would tell us what to think.  pl

************

 "Authorities now think that on New Year's Eve, more than 1,200 women were sexually assaulted in various German cities, including more than 600 in Cologne and about 400 in Hamburg.

More than 2,000 men were allegedly involved, and 120 suspects — about half of them foreign nationals who had only recently arrived in Germany — have been identified.

Only four have been convicted, but more trials are underway.

On Thursday, a court in Cologne sentenced two men in the New Year's Eve assaults. Hussein A., a 21-year-old Iraqi, and Hassan T., a 26-year-old Algerian, were handed suspended one-year sentences. Both arrived in Germany in the past two years, a court spokesman said. He declined to specify whether the two had sought asylum."  Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/07/10/leaked-document-says-2000-men-allegedly-assaulted-1200-german-women-on-new-years-eve/

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The European and other Left want desperately to believe that we humans are all much the same.   In America, the believers often assert that behavior of the "German New Year's Party" type by people from another culture is evidence of madness.  It is not.  It is evidence of difference.   I guess the fellows involved are not "pilgrims" in the sense that most Germans understand the word, but what do I know?  Ah, I do know that many younger Middle Eastern men are unequipped by upbringing and shared assumptions to deal with the spectacle of young women cavorting, drinking and flirting in the public square at midnight.  Their instinctive reaction to that is believe they are whores.  pl 

 

Sultan Tayyip is sincere? - I don't think so.

 

If you read through all the linked material below, you might reach something like the conclusions that I have:

1.  Turkey continues to allow/support re-supply and reinforcement of Nusra/Ahrar al-Sham forces in the Latakia and Aleppo princes of Syria.  These forces continue to play the major role in attempts to block government and YPG interdiction of the Castello Highway into rebel held parts of Aleppo City.  This is presently the only available LOC into rebel territory.  As of the 11th of July the SAA Tiger forces armored brigade has closed from the north to within several hundred meters of the Castello Highway after having taken, lost and re-taken the Mellah farms area.   at the same time the YPG Kurds having re-taken the Sheikh Maqsood neighborhood south of the Castello Road are also close enough to make the road unusable to the rebels through attacks by fire.  The RUAF contributes mightily to this interdiction situation through more or less continuous strkes on the road in its loop from the west through the jaws of the SAA and YPG disturbance of this route into the city.

2.  In response the rebels, principally Nusra Front and other jihadi groups supported by Turkey, the US and Saudi Arabia have been heavily shelling government held parts of the city using weapons and ammunition that continued to be supplied by their foreign sponsors through Turkish border control posts on the Hatay Province/Syria border.  It should be noted that the government held parts of Aleppo City are the place where the great majority of Syrian civilians live.

3.  Additionally, the variegated rebel groups are counter-attacking on the ground wherever they can engage.  They are attacking the Tiger Forces brigade from the NW seeking to threaten the rear line of communications of the brigade enough to force another withdrawal from the high ground overlooking the Castello Highway.  This worked once a few days ago and the brigade had to fight to re-take the lost ground, losing men and equipment in the process.  At the same time rebel forces are attacking to the NW and SW from WITHIN the rebel held parts of the city with the evident objective of opening a new LOC to their friends outside the government area of Aleppo City by breaking out of what is now an encirclement.

4.  If the rebels within the encirclement cannot break out somewhere or re-open the Castello Road as an LOC to the inner city they are certainly going to lose their foothold in the city .  It will be just a matter of time.

5.  At Manbij east of Aleppo, the SDF/YPG Kurd/Arab alliance have so far been unable to capture the city.  This, despite heavy US air support and the  mentorship of US SF.  This not a good sign.  Here as in the defeat of the SAA attempt to advance to Tabqa air base, a shortage of means on the ground is evident.

6.  While all this is occurring the MSM in the US is trying to develop the idea that Erdogan has made a serious effort to regain Russian favor by distancing Turkey from the non-IS jihadi AQ allied rebel forces in Lattakia and Aleppo provinces.  These are the same jihadi forces that Turkey has continued to help with massive assistance to the present day.  At the same time, apparently to "sweeten" the appeal of Turkey's "offer" to the Russians, the US has supposedly made an offer of joint operations in Syria to the Russians, perhaps from Incerlik Air Base at Adana in Turkey.  I agree with those like "b" who say that this is yet another trick like the late un-lamented cessation of hostilities. 

7.  Erdogan is trying to win the day through chicanery.  The Russians would be well advised to demand several "pounds of flesh" at each stage of a rapprochement. with Turkey.

8.  At the tactical level, it would seem logical that ground mounted surveillance radar placed on the heights overlooking the Castello Road would enable SAA artillery fire and Russian air in keeping the road closed to rebel traffic.  the road can easily be cratered by Russian air and all bridges or overpasses wrecked and collapsed.  In that situation, repair work should be interesting and challenging.  pl  

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/double-game-even-as-it-battles-isis-turkey-gives-other-extremists-shelter/2016/07/10/8d6ce040-4053-11e6-a66f-aa6c1883b6b1_story.html

https://southfront.org/major-syria-developments-soon/

https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/civilian-onslaught-continues-aleppo/

https://southfront.org/syrian-war-report-july-11-2016-heavy-clashes-in-aleppo-city/

61% panicked ...

" ... what should disturb Obama, who bypassed his own vice president to lay out the red carpet for Hillary, is that the email transgression is not a one off. It’s part of a long pattern of ethical slipping and sliding, obsessive secrecy and paranoia, and collateral damage.

Comey’s verdict that Hillary was “negligent” was met with sighs rather than shock. We know who Hillary and Bill are now. We’ve been held hostage to their predilections and braided intrigues for a long time. (On the Hill, Comey refused to confirm or deny that he’s investigating the Clinton Foundation, with its unseemly tangle of donors and people doing business with State.)

Write A Comment

We’re resigned to the Clintons focusing on their viability and disregarding the consequences of their heedless actions on others. They’re always offering a Faustian deal. This year’s election bargain: Put up with our iniquities or get Trump’s short fingers on the nuclear button.

The Clintons work hard but don’t play by the rules. Imagine them in the White House with the benefit of low expectations."  Maureen Dowd in the NY Times

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 Panicked?  Yes indeed!  Why should they not be?

A significant attempt is underway to re-program Trump as a more plausible person who could be trusted with the actual ability to launch a nuclear strike without congressional action.   That ability is a vestige of the Cold War when it was thought that MAD required it.  Do we still need for the president/commander in chief to have that actual power?  Is there really a threat of such immediacy that the concentration of such apocalyptic power is justified?   The neo-cons and neo-liberals are trying to re-start the Cold War.  Why are they doing that?  I don't know.  I don't see what the actual, as opposed to notional, threat from Russia consists of.  In any event can Trump actually be trusted when in office?  That is the question and I expect that will remain the principal question.

Hillary is not trusted by the public.  She polls at around 20% with regard to whether or not people across the country trust her.  Can one actually and successfully govern with that low a level of public trust?  The Democrats undoubtedly think that they will re-capture control of the senate because of mistrust of Trump, but is that really true in light of the level of mistrust of Clinton?

Baggage?  She has a lot of it. 

1.  Health.  There are massive questions, unresolved by her physician's statements, as to the actual state of her health.  How bad was her head injury?  Has she had a series of micro-strokes? What about her numerous blood-clot incidents?  What is the total effect of the prescription drugs that she takes, drugs designed to keep her alive by keeping her blood thin?    How much is she medicated for stress and anxiety?  

2.  Legal problems.  Comey let her off on the issue or whether or not she could be successfully prosecuted for malpractice with regard to government secrets but a number of other issues remain.   Representatives Gowdy and Chaffetz have their staffs perusing all of HC's sworn statement to Congress looking for material upon which to make a "referral" to the FBI for an investigation of possible perjury.  Comey declined to discuss before Chaffetz' committee the question of whether or not there is a different ongoing FBI investigation into the operations of the CGI and the Clinton Foundation and possible intersections of HC's receptivity at State to foreign people or groups who were or later became donors to the CGI and the Clinton Foundation.  There is also a question concerning the Greece centered hedge fund activities of HC's son in law, Mezvinsky.  It has been alleged that HC provided Mezvinsky US government secret material concerning the intentions of various European leaders with regard to propping up the Greek economy.   This would have obviously been useful to Mezvinsky in making "bets" in the markets on Greek economic recovery.  He was a miserable failure at doing that but that would not obviate HC's culpability if she did give him US Government information especially if, as it is said to me, some of this were SIGINT products.

IMO if HC faced anyone but Trump she would be "toast."  pl  

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/opinion/sunday/the-clinton-contamination.html?emc=edit_th_20160710&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=405151&_r=0

HC and Mark Shields on the Newshour - 8 July 2016

HC was on the Newshour last night so that an adoring Judy Woodruff could give her a chance to pontificate.   HC looked really bad.  She looked as though a combination of exhaustion and over-medication had turned her into one of the walking dead.  The dead pan recitation of left wing talking points in a monotone was not inspiring.  In her responses to Woodruff's softballs, she served up responses obviously intended to soothe and re-assure all the elements of the present Democratic Party base; Blacks, unmarried educated women, Latinos, sexually heterodox people, Borgists, other fellow neocons of the National Review variety now defected to the Democratic base.   Even Judy looked disappointed.  And then the dynamic duo of Brooks and Shields appeared ...  They danced around for a while until the subject of Clinton's immediate previous interview came up.  And then ...  And then ... Mark Shields the ultimate liberal Democratic Party loyalist said that he was amazed by Clinton's response to Woodruff's question concerning whether or not Comey's testimony and TV statements had been damaging.  Her response had been that she had done nothing wrong and that Comey had exonerated her.  Shield's amazement was appropriate.  Comey did not exonerate her.  He said he did not have enough evidence to successfully prosecute her.  pl 

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/hillary-clinton-calls-for-police-reform-national-use-of-force-standards/

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/shields-and-brooks-on-dallas-police-murders-trumps-republican-problem/

 

 

Focus on Domestic Violence

Let's have a general discussion of recent highly public violence in the US.

1 - The Baton Rouge police shooting in a convenience store parking lot of a recently released sex offender felon who seems clearly to have been shot repeatedly by a couple of policemen who had him pinned down on the ground.  He was armed but panic among the police seems to me to have been a major factor in this killing.

2 - The Minnesota shooting by a policeman of a man halted for a traffic violation who informed the policeman that he was armed and had  a permit for concealed carry of a firearm.  He was then shot several times by the cop while he tried to pull his identification from a pants pocket.  Once again, police fear and panic seem to have been a major factor in this killing.  There is video filmed from within the car while the man was dying.  The policeman can be seen outside the car and he seems very fearful and panicked.

3 - The attack on lightly armed Dallas, Texas area police by one or more assailants armed with rifles who managed to kill 5 policemen and wound seven others.  One of the attackers was killed by police after some discussion between the shooter and hostage negotiators.  In the course of the discussion the shooter told the police that the attack on the police was retribution for police killings of Blacks and that he was racially motivated by hatred of white people.

4 - Presidemnt Obama took the opportunity presented by the Dallas attack to agitate for his gun control obsession.

5 - The US MSM is doing its best to ignore the role it has played in the last couple of days in whipping up sentiment against police.

6 - Perhaps in discussing this we might consider the MSM led drive since Ferguson toward disarming and de-militarizing police tactical forces.  pl

"A bad day for Tony Blair" by Willy B

    Tony Blair is a sad pathetic excuse for a human being, Even the New York Times acknowledged, yesterday, something that he still refuses to: Iraqis have suffered, and still suffer, enormously from the 2003 invasion and its continuing aftermath. "Widen the lens more broadly over Iraq, and a panorama of suffering that most Iraqis attribute to bad decisions by the United States and Britain comes into view: more than three million people displaced from their homes because of fighting with the Islamic State; cities in rubble; a barely functional government facing a severe financial crisis; Iranian-controlled militias that seem more powerful than the Iraqi Army," the Times reports. "Some Iraqis took a modicum of satisfaction in seeing Mr. Blair, who made a statement on Wednesday in which he said he took "full responsibility" for any mistakes related to the war, called to account for his decisions."
    More Iraqis died in the Sunday suicide bombing in Baghdad than did British soldiers during the entire war, the Times notes. Haidar Sumeri, an Iraqi analyst who made the comparison on Twitter, wrote in an email, "It highlights the degree of irrelevance of Iraqi suffering in the West." He continued: "People see another bombing in Baghdad, roll their eyes, make a comment about how bad it is there and move on. No one really likes to think about how we got here, how we can change the situation or learn from what happened so it doesn't happen again."
    In this regard, the Telegraph says of Blair, "Tony Blair was sorrowful. But he wasn't sorry." Blair apologized for many things, "But he wouldn't apologise for the invasion of Iraq itself. He still believed it had been "the right thing to do". He still believed he would take the same decision again, in the same circumstances, with the same information. And he still believed – still – that the world was a safer place because of what he, and George W Bush, had done. He wasn't sorry for any of that. No matter how sorry he looked. And he did look sorry: sorry in the sense of wretched, miserable, diminished." And Blair's problem is this: "If people don't believe he was honest in taking the country to war, they won't believe he's honest in anything."
    Reuters characterized Blair's two-hour dramatic performance of yesterday as coming down to one message: "Please stop saying I was lying." According to Reuters, Blair was at times contrite and emotional, and at others clearly angry at the way his actions had been portrayed. "If you disagree with me fine, but please stop saying I was lying or I had some sort of dishonest or underhand motive," he said. "'You lied about the intelligence' - that's what people say the whole time," Blair said. "Actually if people are being fair and read the whole report, that allegation should be put to rest, because it's not true and it never was true."
    The Independent was even less charitable. "The former Prime Minister seemed to be emotionally on edge. His voice sometimes appeared to be almost cracking. He was defending something that is very hard to defend, and presenting a version of the story that did not always fit well with reality, or with the findings of yesterday's report." Deep in its coverage the Independent draws from the Chilcot report that Blair told his cabinet members very little about what his real intentions were with respect to Iraq. The whole business of going to the UN to get an "ultimatum" was, itself, just a cover. Privately, "Blair told the US President that he did not believe that the Iraqi dictator would give up his forbidden weapons – and we now know that he could not, because he did not have any. Saddam Hussein's fate was, therefore, sealed in Crawford."
    Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn, who always opposed the war, was, on the other hand, very apologetic on behalf of the Labour party. "The decision to go to war in Iraq has been a stain on our party and our country," he said, after a private meeting with families who lost members in the war. said Labour MPs who, unlike him, voted for the war "were misled by a small number of leading figures in the Government who were committed to joining the US invasion of Iraq come what may and were none too scrupulous about how they made their case for war". Corbyn declared: "So I now apologise sincerely on behalf of my party for the disastrous decision to go to war in Iraq in March 2003. That apology is owed first of all to the people of Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost and the country is still living with the devastating consequences of the war and the forces it unleashed. They have paid the greatest price for the most serious foreign policy calamity of the last 60 years."
    Earlier, in the House of Commons, he called the Iraq war  an "act of military aggression, launched on a false pretext" and the "colonial style occupation" that followed led to the rise of ISIS. The Blairites were reportedly very unhappy with his statement. "It was an act of military aggression launched on a false pretext, as the Inquiry accepts, and has long been regarded as illegal by the overwhelming weight of international legal opinion," he went on. "It led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and the displacement of millions of refugees. It devastated Iraq's infrastructure and society. The occupation fostered a lethal sectarianism that turned into a civil war. Instead of protecting security at home or abroad the war fuelled and spread terrorism across the region."
    The one thing he didn't do, and this was a point of disappointment for the families of British military personnel killed in the war, was call for Blair's prosecution.
    David Cameron, however, would not apologize for the war. During a parliamentary debate on the report, Conservative MP John Baron asked: "Will the Prime Minister now do something that no government has done since 2003? "That is, finally and unequivocally, admit that this intervention was both wrong and a mistake." Cameron replied: "I think people should read the report and come to their own conclusion. Clearly the aftermath of this conflict was profoundly disastrous in so many ways. I don't move away from that all."
    Baron, some may recall, played a key role in 2013 in preventing a British attack on Syria, which would've been alongside the one that Obama was contemplating.

    Meanwhile, the Bush-Cheney Gang Remains As Deluded As Blair

    GW Bush said, through a spokesman, yesterday, that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein. "Despite the intelligence failures and other mistakes he has acknowledged previously, President Bush continues to believe the whole world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power, spokesman Freddy Ford said in a statement, reports the Independent. Furthermore, "President Bush believes we must now find the unity and resolve to stay on the offensive and defeat radical extremism wherever it exists."
    Karl Rove, meanwhile, flatly denied that the war and occupation had anything to do with the chaos that followed. Instead, it was the fault of Obama. He defended the invasion, he defended the war, and he defended both Bush and Blair saying that "The world is a better place without Saddam Hussein." In an interview with The Telegraph, he said the idea that Saddam's removal had unleashed the sectarian violence that gave rise to Isil was "twisting it to the extreme." It was Obama who screwed it up by withdrawing US troops at the end of 2011.  
    The Guardian provides a roundup of other reaction from the US side, the indicates the degree of delusion among these guys. Paul Bremer, the least defensive of the gang, admitted that there was a failure of planning for the aftermath of the invasion. Former Bush speech writer David Frum argued the invasion of Iraq actually offered Iraqis a better future. Whatever [the] West's mistakes: sectarian war was a choice Iraqis made for themselves," he claimed, citing Syria as "proof" of his contention.  David Wurmser, who was a Middle East advisor to Cheney, blamed the sectarian warfare and the terrorism on Syria and Iran (the Saudis, of course, get off scot free).

    No word from Cheney, yet. He's probably still looking for those WMDs.

New Category: Borg Wars

  pl

The Borg queen skates on ...

 

"The FBI director shredded so many of the talking points that the former Secretary of State and her top aides have used over and over again throughout this scandal, including that she never emailed classified material; that information in the emails was classified retroactively; that none of the emails were marked as containing classified information; that there were definitively no security breaches; that she turned over all work-related emails to the State Department; that the set-up was driven by convenience; and that the government was merely conducting “a security review.”

Rosalind Helderman, who has been covering this saga closely, writes that Comey “systematically dismantled” Clinton’s defenses. She juxtaposes Clinton quotes since last March against Comey quotes from yesterday. (Read her full piece here.)

-- While Clinton dodged a legal bullet that could have been catastrophic to her candidacy, yesterday was neither vindication nor exoneration, and it certainly will not put the matter to rest. Instead, Comey’s declaration that she was “extremely careless” in handling classified material and should have known better will dog her through November. Though the FBI director said “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring a criminal case against Clinton, his nearly 15-minute speech was tantamount to a political indictment."  Washington Post

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It is clear to me that Hillary Clinton is an unscrupulous liar.  Are we really going to let her "skate" on this in order to avoid living with the clown Trump?  Washpost 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2016/07/06/daily-202-clinton-s-credibility-gap-widens-after-fbi-rebuke/577bff0c981b92a22d5b2044/

Chilcot Report Blasts Blair by Willy B

            Note: What follows is really only a thumbnail sketch of this morning's release of the Chilcot report on Britain's participation in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, along side the GW Bush Administration.  There is much more to be said as more of the report is studied and to come, especially on how it might blow back into the US, if it does.

            Sir John Chilcot released his report, this morning, with a 12 page statement that excoriates Tony Blair and the way he made the decision to go to war. It's clear from Chilcot's statement that Blair made the decision independent of intelligence that contradicted his beliefs and of where disarmament efforts actually stood. The Independent finds  that while Chilcot did not use the word "lie" in his report, and doesn't even question that Blair "believed" that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, "his damning conclusion is that the former Prime Minister deliberately blurred the distinction between what he believed and what he actually knew."

            "We have concluded that the UK chose to join the invasion of Iraq before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted," Chilcot said. "Military action at that time was not a last resort." The report concludes that:

• The judgements about the severity of the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction – WMD – were presented with a certainty that was not justified.

• Despite explicit warnings, the consequences of the invasion were underestimated. The planning and preparations for Iraq after Saddam Hussein were wholly inadequate.

• The Government failed to achieve its stated objectives.

            In reviewing key points in the report, Chilcot said that the formal decision to go to war was made on March 17, 2003, but it was shaped by "key choices" made by Blair's government over the previous 18 months. After 9/11 Blair had urged the GW Bush administration not to take hasty action in Iraq. By December, US policy was shifting and Blair suggested that the US and the UK should work on what he described as a "clever strategy" for regime change in Iraq, which would build over time. When Blair met Bush at Crawford in April of 2002, the formal policy was still to contain Saddam, but by then, "there had been a profound change in the UK's thinking:"

• The Joint Intelligence Committee had concluded that Saddam Hussein could not be removed without an invasion.

• The Government was stating that Iraq was a threat that had to be dealt with. It had to disarm or be disarmed.

• That implied the use of force if Iraq did not comply – and internal contingency planning for a large contribution to a military invasion had begun.

1. ) Blair Brainwashes Bush

            According to Chilcot, Blair set out his thoughts to Bush in a series of private messages. In one note, written on July 28, 2002, Blair in the face of opposition from the Cabinet Office, said: "I will be with you [Bush] whatever."

            It added: "This is the moment to assess bluntly the difficulties. The planning on this and the strategy are the toughest yet. This is not Kosovo. This is not Afghanistan. It is not even the Gulf war." At times, the Guardian reports, Blair's notes read more like stream of consciousness than considered policy documents. The note continued: "He [Saddam] is a potential threat. He could be contained. But containment ... is always risky." According to Chilcot, Blair shaped his diplomatic strategy around the need to get rid of Saddam which – he told Bush – was the "right thing to do". Blair suggested that the simplest way to come up with a casus belli was to give an ultimatum to Iraq to disarm, preferably backed by UN authority.

            Blair urged Bush to go to the UN to get an ultimatum: Either Saddam disarm or else. This happened on Nov. 8, with UNSCR 1441. Saddam let the inspectors back in and he appeared to be fully cooperating with them. "Without evidence of major new Iraqi violations or reports from the inspectors that  Iraq was failing to co-operate and they could not carry out their tasks, most  members of the Security Council could not be convinced that peaceful options to disarm Iraq had been exhausted and that military action was therefore justified." So Blair decided to act anyway, in the absence of UN authority, claiming that the UK Government was acting on behalf of the international community "to uphold the authority of the Security Council."  "In the absence of a majority in support of military action, we consider that the UK was, in fact, undermining the Security Council's authority," Chilcot said in the report.

            2) The Dodgy Dossier

            The "dodgy dossier" that Blair presented to the parliament on Sept. 24, 2002 presented judgements "with a certainty that was not justified. The Joint Intelligence Committee should have made clear to Mr Blair that the assessed intelligence had not established "beyond doubt.'" The report apparently minimizes allegations that Alistair Campbell, who was Blair's communications chief at the time, "sexed up" the dossier in favor of the view that Blair was driven by what he believed to the point that he dismissed intelligence that contradicted his beliefs. "The deliberate selection of a formulation which grounded the statement in what Mr Blair believed, rather than in the judgements which the JIC had actually reached in its assessment of the intelligence indicates a distinction between his beliefs and the JIC's actual judgements," the report says. "The assessed intelligence had not established beyond doubt that Saddam Hussein had continued to produce chemical and biological weapons. Nor had the assessed intelligence established beyond doubt that efforts to develop nuclear weapons continued… The dossier made clear that, as long as sanctions remained effective, Iraq could not produce a nuclear weapon."

            Blair also ignored warnings that military action in Iraq would, itself, be a chaos factor. On March 18, 2003, he told the House of Commons that he judged the possibility of terrorist groups in possession of WMD was "a real and present danger to Britain and its national security" – and that the threat from Saddam Hussein's arsenal could not be contained and posed a clear danger to British citizens.  Blair had been warned, however, that military action would increase the threat from Al Qaida to the UK and to UK interests. He had also been warned that an invasion might lead to Iraq's weapons and capabilities being transferred into the hands of terrorists. "It is now clear that policy on Iraq was made on the basis of flawed intelligence and assessments. They were not challenged, and they should have been," Chilcot said.

            In fact, Chilcot points out, intelligence agencies had different ideas on what was the "real and present danger" to Britain. 1) Iran, North Korea and Libya were considered greater threats in terms of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons proliferation; 2) The joint intelligence committee believed it would take Iraq five years, after the lifting of sanctions, to produce enough fissile material for a weapon; 3)  There was no evidence that Iraq had tried to acquire fissile material and other components or – were it able to do so – that it had the technical capabilities to turn these materials into a usable weapon; and 4) Saddam's regime was "not judged likely" to share its weapons or know-how with terrorist groups.

             3) Chaos In the Aftermath

            Chilcot also blasted Blair's assertion that it wasn't possible to know what the difficulties of the occupation would be beforehand. "We do not agree that hindsight is required," Chilcot said. "The risks of internal strife in Iraq, active Iranian pursuit of its interests, regional instability, and Al Qaida activity in Iraq, were each explicitly identified before the invasion." Chilcot also criticized the lack of planning for the occupation which "continued to have an effect after the

invasion." In fact, the FCO had prepared a paper on Islamism in Iraq which foreshadowed the rise of extremist groups like Isis which went on to exploit the chaos of post-war Iraq. This paper was shared with the US in December of 2002. It warned that it was likely groups would be looking for "identities and ideologies on which to base movements" and anticipated that a number of emergent extremist groups would use violence to pursue political ends.

            4) Chilcot Concludes War Was Unncessary

            Chilcot concluded that "Military action in Iraq might have been necessary at some point." But in March 2003:

• There was no imminent threat from Saddam Hussein.
• The strategy of containment could have been adapted and continued for some time.

• The majority of the Security Council supported continuing UN inspections and monitoring. 

            Tony Blair issued a statement right away in self defense, promising more to follow. "The report should lay to rest allegations of bad faith, lies or deceit," he claimed, adding that whether people agree or disagree with the decision, "I took it in good faith and in what I believed to be the best interests of the country." He said that in the followup statement he would issue, "I will take full responsibility for any mistakes without exception or excuse," and that "I will at the same time say why, nonetheless, I believe that it was better to remove Saddam Hussein and why I do not believe this is the cause of the terrorism we see today whether in the Middle East or elsewhere in the world."

http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/the-report/

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chilcot-report-inquiry-tony-blair-iraq-war-weapons-of-mass-destruction-evidence-verdict-a7122361.html

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jul/06/chilcot-report-crushing-verdict-tony-blair-iraq-war

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chilcot-report-tony-blair-made-fully-aware-of-post-saddam-chaos-risk-in-iraq-but-went-to-war-anyway-a7122421.html

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2016/jul/06/chilcot-report-live-inquiry-war-iraq

 

HARPER: HILLARY'S SPECIAL TREATMENT FROM FBI

Anyone either watching or reading FBI Director James Comey's press conference announcing that the Bureau has submitted a "no prosectution" recommendation to the Department of Justice concerning Hillary Clinton's private email server should have been left with a sinking feeling in their stomach.  Comey spent the better part of the conference itemizing all of the violations of felony provisions of Federal Codes that Hillary was guilty of.  He freely admitted that "110 emails in 52 email chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received."  He further itemized: "Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information."  Comey noted that, while the FBI did not uncover "clear evidence" of intentional violation of the laws "governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information."

 

Specifically, Comey reported  that "seven email chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received.  These chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending emails about those matters and receiving emails from others about the same matters."  He even concluded that "There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton's position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation... None of these emails should have been on any kind of unclassified system, but their presence is especially concerning because all of these emails were housed on unclassified personal servers not even supported by full-time security staff, like those found at Departments and Agencies of the U.S. Government--or even with a commercial service like Gmail."

 

Comey went on to report that Secretary Clinton exclusively used her private server when she was traveling, including when she was traveling in countries with a history of hacking into sensitive government data.

 

At the end of the day, Comey fell back on a simple excuse for the "no prosecution" recommendation:  Hillary Clinton was not behaving like a classic spy out to do damage to the national security of the United States on behalf of a foreign power or for personal motives.  Just because the FBI attorneys could not find case precedent for Secretary Clinton's behavior is not the same thing as saying she is not worthy of felony prosecution.  Indeed, people with far more background in national security law than I can claim, have made clear to me that the mishandling of Top Secret/Special Access Program material is a serious felony--slam dunk, no ifs ands or buts.

 

Comey has done what FBI Directors have done far too often in the past:  He has passed the buck to the Department of Justice.  The FBI recommendation of "no prosecution" is not the final word--and Director Comey made that point on several occasions throughout his uncomfortable appearance before the press.  It is the Justice Department that makes that call, so in a technical sense, Hillary Clinton is still not out of the woods.

 

Just prior to the Comey announcement and the scandalous encounter at Phoenix Airport between Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton, some news organizations reported that Hillary Clinton had also been suspected of sharing classified information with her son-in-law Mark Mezvinsky, a hedge fund manager married to Chelsea Clinton.  I was told that some of that information may have constituted insider trading, because she was sharing information about the ongoing Greek debt negotiations with the Troika.  Some of that information may have come, according to one of my sources, from communication intercepts of German government officials.

 

That issue never came up in Comey's presentation of the FBI's effort at "transparency."

 

This story is not over, by a long shot.  In addition to the predictable Republican Party outcries, serious students of national security law will be digging deeper into the case, based on Director Comey's public pronouncements alone.  The 2016 Presidential campaign, already one for the record books, has just taken on a new dimension altogether.  Stay tuned...  

"Comey’s full remarks ... " Washpost

"From the group of 30,000 e-mails returned to the State Department, 110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were “up-classified” to make them Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the e-mails were sent."  Comey

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What I heard was that Comey said that although Clinton and her staff broke the law in mishandling government secrets, there was not enough evidence of specific intent to recommend prosecution in a criminal case or cases.

He also said that given the unsecured nature of the Hillarygate system there was no reason to think that the system could not have been penetrated by just about anyone with a modicum of knowledge.

Soo, HC will be the Democratic Party candidate.

Just to be clear, when she is president/CinC  she will have unlimited access to ALL the secrets of the United States.  She will have that by virtue of her constitutional office.

IMO the GOP should start thinking of a convention revolt to find a candidate who can hold the senate against Hillary control of judicial appointments.  Forget the White House, think of the senate.  think!  pl 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/05/extremely-careless-and-7-other-comey-quotes-that-explain-the-fbis-clinton-email-findings/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/07/05/fbi-director-comeys-full-remarks-on-clinton-email-probe/?utm_term=.47894ff67c29