The leaders of Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt all pressurized the US to bomb Iran prior to negotiations on the 2015 nuclear deal, former US secretary of state John Kerry said. He described the proposition as a “trap in lots of ways” for Washington.

Kerry, who chaired the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee before heading the US diplomatic corps in 2013, recalled how he met Saudi King Abdullah, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his capacity as legislator. All three leaders lobbied him for military action against Iran. “Each of them said to me: You have to bomb Iran, it’s the only thing they are going to understand,” he said.

“I remember that conversation with President Mubarak. I looked at him and said: It’s easy for you to say. We go bomb them and I bet you’ll be the first guy out there the next day to criticize us for doing it. And he went: ‘Of course, ha-ha-ha-ha!’” Kerry said. “It was a trap in a lot of ways. But more importantly, Prime Minister Netanyahu was genuinely agitating towards action.”

read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/411316-kerry-egypt-bomb-iran/

...

​Binney explained that a team of specialists from the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity tried to download data from the East Coast of the US to Eastern Europe to simulate parts of the hack.

"Guccifer 2 put out a bunch of data that this was the hack of the DNC on the fifth of July. So my task was simply to say, ‘Okay, was this a hack or what is it?' So I looked at the technical data along with a half-dozen other people — technical people, all of us — and we looked at that and said this is coming down too fast, it can't be hacked, there's no way it can go across the internet at that speed," Binney said.

"So all I did was look at that and say this is obviously not a hack," he added, noting that his findings flew in the face of the establishment narrative about what happened.

Even with the best technology available, experts could not match the speed of the alleged breach that occurred in July 2016. These facts, Binney concluded, show the data transfer must have been "local" — that is, copied from the DNC servers onto an external source such as a thumb drive.

The firm hired to investigate DNC's servers, CrowdStrike, claims that, beyond the shadow of a doubt, it was Russia that hacked the servers, despite not providing clear evidence of the packet transfer.

The same cybersecurity firm also famously reported in 2016 that Russian malware had led to the destruction of Ukrainian howitzer artillery units, a claim the Ukrainian armed forces themselves denied, causing CrowdStrike to issue a major retraction.

Indeed, the FBI never actually looked at the DNC's servers to conduct their own forensic analysis. Despite "multiple requests at different levels" to access the allegedly compromised servers, former FBI Director James Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee in January, the FBI was blocked from looking at the servers and instead had to rely on a "highly respected private company": CrowdStrike.

"We'd prefer to have access hands-on ourselves if that's possible," Comey said, adding that he didn't know the reason the DNC rebuked the FBI's requests.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/us/201712021059623071-not-hack-democrats-dnc-leak/

The POTUSes, the Presidents of the United States, have a common characteristic, whichever side of the Great Party Divide they come from, whether from the lobby-controlled Democratic Party or the lobby-controlled Republican Party, basically the same thing dressed as an elephant or an ass, or is it a jackass? This common characteristic is the somewhat arrogant insistence on calling themselves the Leaders of the Free World, a claim which by the way is as polite as a raucous, sonorous fart rasped noisily at a dinner table.

So let us examine the characteristics of a Leader and let us see what a Free World is. For a start to be a Leader, in a truly democratic political system, you have to be elected freely and fairly. So since the POTUS is not elected by the rest of the world, and since the electoral process is confined to citizens of the United States of America, the claim is nonsense. Conversely, if the POTUS wishes to have the right to make the claim, then all the citizens of the world should be allowed to vote to see if they want an American to rule over them. The result, according to my opinion poll, would be a massive rejection by some 99 per cent. So the POTUS is not the leader of the free world, has never been and will never be.

Secondly, a leader has to lead in something. Leader in wars? Yes. Leader in gratuitous violence? Yes. Leader in shitfaced insolence? Yes. Leader in disrespecting the electoral processes in sovereign nations? Yes. Leader in cavorting with terrorists and using terrorist forces to implement policy, as in Libya? Yes. Leader in interfering and sticking his nose where it is not asked for and opining about whether democratically elected leaders of sovereign nations should "have to go" or "stay"? Yes. Leader of the Lobbies (the BARFFs - Banking, Arms, eneRgy, Finance, Food, pharmaceuticalS Lobbies), the $inister $ix $isters which dictate US policy at home and abroad? Yes. Leader in polluting the planet from the bottom of the oceans to space? Yes. Leader in exporting pieces of trash who pay to go to Africa to murder animals? Yes. Leader in poisoning the planet with Genetically Modified food and agricultural methods which are decimating the populations of birds and bees, creating the conditions for a total interruption of the pollination process which will lead to a Mars-like catastrophic collapse of the atmosphere? Yes.

So a Leader like the Pied Piper of Hamlyn, leading the rats off a cliff edge? Yes.

And what is this claim about a "free" world? Are we free to travel around where we wish? No. Is it safe to travel wherever we wish? No, because of the policies of the POTUSes. Are people "free"? No, they are not. Their lives are controlled from day #1, forced into an education system which conditions them instead of teaching them how to think, conditioned by the electronic gadgets which have taken over their lives. They do not have access to free dental care or free healthcare systems which work in a timely fashion - at best they will have to wait for unacceptably long periods of time to get to see a doctor. Or else, spend days or weeks every month begging and pleading with a f*cking insurance company to provide the treatment they signed up for. They do not have access to free education, it has become a business. They do not have access to free higher education, it has become a business. They do not have access to free housing. They do not have guaranteed housing. They do not have a guaranteed job. So how can one call a system like that, where people are expected to pay for bad services without having the proper training or security to start, make and maintain a family, "free"?

Free? Mr. Trump in your own country, the United States of America, people are being poisoned by the supply of water, the most basic element needed to sustain life and the most primary, basic public service, because the quality is unfit for human consumption. Free? How free is a black person born and raised on a ghetto, stigmatized and labeled before (s)he even has a chance? Free? How free are people to walk the streets at night in the main cities of your country without fearing getting mugged or murdered by marauding gangs of drug addicts? Suppose you started addressing these problems first and then worry about the rest of us but HOW DARE YOU call yourself our Leader? We did not vote for you and do not want you. And nor will we allow you to impose an as*hole system like that in your country on the rest of us.

And finally, the political process the POTUSes claim to be the leaders of. The entire "democratic" system is a sham, a cynical exercise in manipulating into power and justifying the existence of non-elected lobbies and lobbyists which in turn control our policies behind the scenes, I repeat, unelected. The way it works is like this.

The lobbies choose their candidate and sneak her/him into power, either by a political selection process, greasing a few palms, sexing up the presentation or by tailoring the CV to the candidate before a public tender is launched so that only that candidate will meet the specifications. Then they conduct policy through their chosen ones. How democratic.

So someone with his hands tied by the plastics lobbies gets to make decisions on whether plastic cladding should be used on buildings, and what type of plastic cladding and the Senate or Congress or Parliamentary Select Committees are staffed with hundreds of these "elected" obedient minions living in the pockets of the unelected lobbies that control them. Conclusion: this is not a "free" world.

So, leader of a cabal of mafiosos conducting their business through a cynical manipulation of the word "Democracy"? Yes. Leader of the Free World? Neither Leader, nor Free and certainly not of this world. The Underworld, maybe.

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

One hundred years is a good run. Countless people across the globe have gained or preserved their freedom through American power. Errors were conspicuous. Nations are no more infallible than the individuals who compose them. Yet, all in all, liberty, democracy and a rules-based order, protected by far-flung American garrisons, spread and prospered. Pax Americana was no rip-off. It delivered. But all things must pass.

That the world was ripe for a shake-up has been Donald Trump’s singular intuition and constitutes his singular gamble. A property guy who was raised in New York, he’s used to gambles and a values-free transactional universe. As his company once operated, so he now believes the United States should operate. He is at home with authoritarian thugs; he recognizes their ilk. His obeisance to the treaties, trade pacts, multilateral organizations and alliances that have advanced American interests in conjunction with the interests of America’s friends has been grudging at best. He thinks all that is hogwash.

In fact, he does not even believe he needs more than the bare bones of a State Department. American foreign policy has ceased. “The one that matters is me,” he tells Fox News. “I’m the only one that matters, because when it comes to it, that’s what the policy is going to be.” Call it “Me-ism.” And so, in his slash-and-burn way, driven by instinct, Mr. Trump has already ushered in a new world order.

read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/03/opinion/america-fractured-2017.html

The BBC will be carrying out a controlled journalistic “explosion” on their Panorama programme, airing tonight in the UK. Their report, dramatically titled, “Jihadis You Pay For” is about to expose UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) for the funding of extremist and terrorist groups in Syria via their “Free Syrian Police” project set-up in ‘rebel-held’ areas of Syria since 2014. 

To referee this virtual clash of the titans, The Guardian has been drafted-in to do the honours.

“The report, Jihadis You Pay For, will claim that Foreign Office money paid to the FSP reached people with links to the extremist group al-Nusra Front.” ~ The Guardian

Mike Raddie of BSNEWS commented:

“Is the Guardian’s Daniel Boffey attempting to whitewash the massive scandals of FCO and BBC funding and working with extremist groups in Syria? Why did he not ask Vanessa Beeley or Robert Stuart to explain how these UK institutions are working alongside al Qaeda/ISIS linked groups inside Syria?

Is it any wonder the Guardian has closed reader feedback on the story, less than 8 hours after it was posted? “Comment is Free” so long as you don’t mention unsayable truths such as BBC’s Panorama and Boris Johnson’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office are both working with and financing al Qaeda in direct contravention of UK anti-terror legislation.”

Boffey’s response to Raddie’s inquiry:

In other words, if you don’t adhere the mainstream media’s narrow narrative, then you must be a Russian agent.

We thought that “Comment is Free” (CIF) at The Guardian, but apparently not. Perhaps #CommentIsNotFree or #CINF would be appropriate hashtags when discussing this on Twitter.

Patrick Henningsen of 21st Century Wire made the following point via Facebook:

“Nice to see the Mainstream Media fraternity close ranks this morning on UK FCO/Funding Terrorism story. Just remember which media outlet broke this story first. None of these MSM outlets will dare link to us, or mention name Vanessa Beeley because then they would have to acknowledge this story is much bigger than the little pigeon hole they’ve carved out – which they will “manage” into oblivion, as with tonight’s BBC Panorama soft ball pitch. Who’s the real independent media? Here, we beat them, and with a much bigger story…”

read more:

http://21stcenturywire.com/2017/12/04/bbc-panorama-free-syrian-police-fo...