Trump's base woke up to a fairly surprising flip-flop this morning from the White House on DACA and the infamous, beautiful border wall which was discussed repeatedly on the campaign trail throughout 2016. It all started when Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi released the following statement after their White House dinner with the President last night:

"We had a very productive meeting at the White House with the President. The discussion focused on DACA. We agreed to enshrine the protections of DACA into law quickly, and to work out a package of border security, excluding the wall, that's acceptable to both sides."
That statement was followed up by a tweet storm (we covered it here) from the President this morning which seemingly revealed his complete support for DACA and referred to 'The Wall' as a "renovation of old and existing fences and walls" rather than the "physically imposing" yet "aesthetically pleasing" structure that he repeatedly promised his supporters.

Gold spiked and USDJPY tumbled as headlines from Japan's Nikkei newspaper confirmed US military officials' observations last night that North Korea is said to show signs of missile launch preparation.

According to the Nikkei, citing an unidentified Japanese government official, the missile is being prepared for launch has engine for liquid fuel, suggesting missile is an ICBM. It adds that the missile is said to be fueled already, ready for launch. As Japan's Asahi further notes, the North Korean missile prep may be for a Hwason 14 ICBM and adds that missile prep is said to have started on Wednesday.

The immediate reaction was a risk-off spike in the Yen and dollar.

Beginning last Monday, soldiers and reservists alike practiced simulating a 10-day-long war with Hezbollah, an Iranian-sponsored Shi’a militant group located mainly in Lebanon. Israel even prepared two field hospitals, as well as trucks and helicopters for evacuating simulated casualties.

According to the Independent, the drill began with small border skirmishes and escalated into a full-on war with the aim of completely obliterating the Lebanese opponents. Even the soldiers playing the role of Hezbollah were to be dressed in the group’s traditional attire and will don their yellow and green flag.

“The purpose of the drill is to test the fitness of the Northern Command and the relevant battalions during an emergency,” one IDF officer told Haaretz.

The drill, known as the “Light of the Grain” drill, took 18 months to plan. It utilizes fighter planes, ships, submarines, drones, cyber and canine units, and Israel’s missile defense system.

Today, the dollar is a strange phenomenon to put it mildly. The United States since 1971 has gone from being a premier industrial nation to a giant debt-bloated casino of speculation.

Ideally, sanctions should be abolished, prohibited for any reasons.

They’re counterproductive, achieving pain and suffering alone for ordinary people in targeted countries, nothing else.

As long as they’re permitted, legally by Security Council members alone, illegal unilaterally, sanction America for its high crimes of war and against humanity, not North Korea, threatening no other countries - even though a US veto would block adoption.

A symbolic 14 - 1 statement would send a powerful message, especially if enough world community nations no longer are willing to put up with endless US wars on humanity.

The leadership of any country threatened by Washington would be foolhardy not to seek powerful weapons and munitions for self-defense.

Abandonment of powerful weapons programs by Iraq and Libya led to their rape and destruction by US-led aggression - a lesson well understood in Pyongyang.

Moscow’s assistance to Pyongyang has emerged not out of a desire to promote its nuclear program, but because Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, sees Kim very much like he see his own country: victims of a U.S.-led international system that tramples on their choices and sovereignty. Russia is itself under international sanctions intended to punish Moscow for its military actions in Ukraine. For Russia, sanctions that successfully force North Korea either to alter its military choices or lead to a change in its leadership would set a dangerous precedent—the possibility of regime change anywhere is never to be encouraged.

Pakistan on Wednesday told medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres’ (MSF) to stop work and leave its impoverished tribal areas that border Afghanistan, the health organization said, ending its 14 year stay in the volatile region.

MSF works out of two health facilities in the Kurram district of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) region, which has been plagued by militancy over the past decade and was the location of many U.S. drone strikes targeting commanders from al Qaeda and other militant groups.

Though security has improved in FATA in recent years, sectarian militant attacks, primarily targeting Shi‘ite Muslims, still occur. Twin blasts in the Kurram’s most populous town, Parachinar killed more than 75 people in June.

Local officials say MSF provides essential healthcare facilities in FATA, an area with some of Pakistan’s poorest healthcare and lowest literacy rates.

Oil-rich Saudi Arabia wants to rule the Persian Gulf and the United Arab Emirates wants to rule Riyadh, indirectly, at least. Both states desire to impose their will on neighboring Qatar, whose independent foreign policy irritates entitled elites not used to criticism let alone opposition. But so far the two nations’ efforts have done little more than strengthen Qatar’s independence and expose their own hypocrisy. Washington should continue to mediate, while making clear that the fault mostly lies with the aggressive and repressive Saudi-Emirati axis.

The latest in a series of moves which seems destined to worsen US-Russian relations, the Justice Department has ordered Russia’s RT television news network to register itself as a “foreign agent,” forcing it to make broad disclosures on contacts within the United States.

This registration is an idea that had long been pushed by Congressional Democrats who accuse RT of being a “propaganda” network. The Foreign Agent Registration Act was meant to target foreign lobbyists and politicians.

It’s virtually unheard of to force a journalistic outlet to register, and the move was quickly condemned by RT as “overreaching.” That the Justice Department made such a move at all is a surprise, and indicative of continued hostility toward Russia.

The press service of the German news weekly Focus said the magazine had no intention to insult Russian President Vladimir Putin by calling him a "dog," with the editors claiming that the author used "an ironic quibble" that has no adequate translation in Russian, Deutsche Welle reported, referring to the magazine's press secretary, Alice Wagner.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that Israel supports the establishment of an independent Kurdistan ahead of a controversial referendum on Iraqi Kurdish independence which Baghdad rejects.

An independent Kurdistan would give Israel an ally in the region and undermine Iranian influence in Iraq.

"Israel supports the legitimate efforts of the Kurdish people to attain a state of its own," Mr Netanyahu's office said.

he defeat of Islamic State in Syria is reliant on a questionable supply-line, funnelling unprecedented quantities of weapons and ammunition from Eastern Europe to some 30,000 anti-ISIS rebel fighters.

Armed with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades fresh from state-owned production lines and stockpiles of the Balkans, Central Europe and increasingly the former Soviet Union, these US-backed troops are spearheading the battle to reclaim Raqqa, the capital of the so-called caliphate, and liberate other areas of Syria held by ISIS.

But the flow of weapons to these Pentagon-backed militia depends on misleading official paperwork, an investigation by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, OCCRP, has uncovered.

The operation has been criticised by arms transfer experts and even worried officials in Berlin, who have seen large quantities of weapons passing through US military bases in Germany on the way to Syria.

On September 8, the New York Times Editorial Board published an opinion piece titled “Hungary Is Making Europe’s Migrant Crisis Worse,” which censured Hungary for its “inhospitable attitudes” toward migrants, while also excoriating President Trump for his “scandalous example” on immigration and dissing Britain’s Brexit vote to leave the European Union.

In his written reply to the Times’ editors, government spokesman Zoltán Kovács takes issue with the newspaper’s presumption in trying to teach Europeans how to solve their migrant crisis while continuing “to show just how much they don’t understand.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday he would meet U.S. President Donald Trump later this month during a visit to New York, where he will address the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 26.

Netanyahu spoke to reporters accompanying him on a trip to Latin America before his plane left Tel Aviv for Argentina on Sunday night. He will also visit Colombia and Mexico before heading to New York.

In Washington, the White House did not initially respond to a request for a comment on a meeting between the two leaders.

"From Mexico I will go to New York to speak at the United Nations General Assembly and there I will meet my friend, President Donald Trump," Netanyahu said.

He added best wishes "to all our friends in the U.S. to overcome these difficult hours (during Hurricane Irma)."

At least 50 people have been killed and over 80 more injured in a pair of gun and car bomb attacks in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah, Reuters reports, citing health officials. Iranian media said that among the victims were Iranian pilgrims.
In the first attack, a group of three or four gunmen entered a restaurant off the Dhi Qar highway and began shooting at random, hitting at least fifty people, several media reported.

Shortly afterward two suicide bombers, including one driving a car rigged with explosives, blew themselves and the car up at a security checkpoint nearby, Iraqi officials told AFP.

The survivors are being treated at the al-Batha and Nasiriyah hospitals, but due to the nature of some of the injuries the death toll is expected to rise, the director of the city's Health Directorate, Jasim al-Khalidi, told Reuters.

Jassem al-Khalidi, a senior health official, told the TV channel that more than 87 people had sustained injuries in the attacks.

- Spain's public prosecutor on Wednesday ordered a criminal probe of over 700 Catalan mayors who are cooperating with an October 1 independence referendum deemed illegal by Madrid.

The move increases the pressure on Catalan officials just one day before the pro-separatist camp officially kicks off its referendum campaign in the Mediterranean port of Tarragona.

Furious at the decision to instigate a probe, Catalan municipal associations called on all the region's mayors to protest in Barcelona on Saturday to show their "rejection of a Spanish judicial system that goes after the media, ballot papers, ballot boxes... and now mayors".

Less than a day after US officials observed North Korea moving mobile missile launchers and engaging in preparations for what appears to be another missile test, a North Korean state committee has stepped up its belligerent rhetoric, threatening to use nuclear weapons to “sink” Japan and reduce the US to “ashes and darkness” after the UN Security Council passed new sanctions against the isolated country earlier this week, Reuters reported. The North also accused the US of “cooking up” the latest restrictive measures against it and demanded that the US be beaten “to death as a stick is fit for a rabid dog.

A program that supplies university police with surplus military equipment is enjoying a renaissance under Trump and Sessions. Most of the military gear is going to campuses in states with the highest poverty rates, where the weapons will be used not only to repress student protests but also to perpetuate racial and class divides between campuses and their surrounding communities.

Sending an ominous signal to student protest movements nationwide, universities across the US are once again able to equip their police forces with castoff military gear, tying them ever more intimately into the military-industrial complex.

In August, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced at a Fraternal Order of Police convention that Program 1033 would resume providing ex-military equipment to police organizations, including university police departments.

A “silent pandemic of neurodevelopmental toxicity” is disabling a generation of children around the world.

This is the verdict of neurology experts Philippe Grandjean and Philip Landrigan in a 2014 report in Lancet Neurology. The staggering tsunami of developmental disabilities now affects at least one in six children in the U.S. and millions more worldwide. Two new studies suggest that the most common of these illnesses—autism spectrum disorder (ASD), attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and tics—are related to each other and may share common causation. The culprit? Environmental toxins, particularly heavy metals.

About 11% (or one in nine 4-17-year-olds) have received an ADHD diagnosis—and in some states, as many as 19%. The most recent ASD estimates in the U.S., from 2014 data, report a prevalence of one in 45 children, representing a “significant increase” compared to 2011–2013.

The ADL (Anti-Defamation League) has just launched a new initiative for college students called “ADL CAMPUS: Tools for Dealing with Anti-Semitic and Anti-Israel Incidents on Campus.”

This resource contains much useful information about addressing anti-Semitism, endorses such valuable principles as freedom of speech and non-violence, and recommends that students talk to others who may hold different perspectives.

It also, however, contains some deeply problematic components for anyone who believes that human rights and justice should apply to all people without exception.

Unfortunately, the ADL does not share this belief. While it announces prominently, “We protect the Jewish people and secure justice and fair treatment to all,” in reality the ADL supports Israeli injustice against Palestinians.

Its recent campus resource exemplifies this, and distorts facts and words in order to do so.

The latest round in their campaign was U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley’s disingenuous and falsehood-filled speech at the American Enterprise Institute last week. The speech is useful in one sense: it provides a handy summary of just about every creative and mendacious argument that die-hard opponents of the JCPOA have been cooking up since the agreement was signed. Unfortunately, it is neither an accurate guide to the agreement, to its current status, nor more importantly, to U.S. interests.

Among other things, Haley claimed — falsely — that the deal “gave Iran what it wanted up-front, in exchange for temporary promises to deliver what we want.” The truth is about 180 degrees from this claim: Iran gave up enriched uranium, destroyed 13,000 centrifuges, dismantled the Arak reactor, let the U.N. install monitoring devices, implemented the NPT Additional Protocol, and a host of other measures — all before the United States or anyone else began lifting sanctions.

On the 16th anniversary of 9/11, a prescient Hunter S. Thompson column from the day after the attacks was shared on social media. Thompson wrote at ESPN on Sept. 12, 2001:

The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now — with somebody — and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.

Thompson couldn’t have been more right. More than a decade and a half since the attacks, the United States has led regime change in Iraq and Libya and is still bogged down in the longest war in American history in Afghanistan. During that time, Al-Qaeda has been diminished but remains. A group even more extreme that al-Qaeda, the Islamic State (also sometimes known as ISIS), has risen in the power vacuums created by U.S. interventions.

President Trump appeared very dismissive today of having successfully gotten new sanctions against North Korea through the UN Security Council. Trump referred to the resolution, which was watered down from initial US demands to get China to sign off, as “not a big deal,” saying he wasn’t sure if it would have any impact at all.

Given the instability of the situation and US threats of war, anything that’s not a big deal might be good news. That would be the case, if President Trump weren’t saying that he intends to follow it up with much bigger moves against North Korea.

Speaking during a meeting with the Malaysian Prime Minister, Trump says much tougher measures are needed, and that the Monday sanctions pale in comparison with what’s likely to “have to happen” to North Korea in the future.

ISTANBUL — In the clearest sign of his pivot toward Russia and away from NATO and the West, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on Tuesday that Turkey had signed a deal to purchase a Russian surface-to-air missile system.

The deal cements a recent rapprochement with Russia, despite differences over the war in Syria, and comes as Turkey’s ties with the United States and European Union have become strained.

It is certain to stir unease in Washington and Brussels, where officials are trying to keep Turkey — a longtime NATO member, and an increasingly unlikely candidate for European Union membership — from entering Russia’s sphere of influence.

Spain's Constitutional Court has suspended the law that was to become Catalonia's transitional constitution if it declared independence. Prosecutors in Barcelona have ordered police to seize election resources.

The Madrid-based court preventatively suspended a second law relating to Catalonian independence on Tuesday, news agencies quoting unnamed Spanish court sources reported, adding another legal hurdle for separatists.

Prosecutors in Catalonia also on Tuesday ordered police to seize ballot boxes, election fliers or other items that could be used in the banned referendum, news agency AFP reported.

The court, Spain's highest authority on such matters, had already suspended the law and decree calling for a referendum on Catalonia's independence to be held on October 1.

North Korea rejected the latest round of United Nations sanctions on the isolated state, and vowed to accelerate its plans to acquire a nuclear weapon that can strike the U.S. homeland.

In its first official response to the new resolution, North Korea’s foreign ministry released a statement on state-run media saying the sanctions justified its nuclear push and strengthened its will to “follow this road at a faster pace without the slightest diversion until this fight to the finish is over.”

“The adoption of another illegal and evil ‘resolution on sanctions’ piloted by the U.S. served as an occasion for the DPRK to verify that the road it chose to go down was absolutely right,” the ministry said, according to the Korean Central News Agency. “The DPRK will redouble the efforts to increase its strength to safeguard the country’s sovereignty and right to existence,” KCNA said, using the country’s formal name.

Hillary Clinton was confronted by Laura Loomer during her book signing for What Happened moments ago, with Loomer asking Hillary, “What happened to your 33,000 emails?”

The event was held at Barnes & Noble in Union Square. Hillary’s new book, What Happened, has been panned by critics as yet another example of Clinton’s inability to take personal responsibility for her election defeat.
“So the American people would like to know, what happened to your 33,000 emails?” What happened in Benghazi?” asked Loomer, to which Hillary responded, “Go read the book.”

Honolulu, HI — In America’s modern-day police state, it seems the state knows no bounds as to how far it will go to keep children and adults in a perpetual state of fear. A recent lawsuit out of Hawaii illustrates the extent of the American fear culture and how its insanity is tormenting and traumatizing America’s youth.

For more than 10 minutes, middle school children were held hostage by a raging lunatic in a mask, swinging a hammer while threatening to kill them all. Naturally, officials claim this drill, involving a school official wearing a mask and holding a hammer while threatening to kill children, was done for the “safety of those children.” Well, Michelle and Eddie Chavez aren’t buying that excuse.

According to a report from Courthouse News, the couple has since filed a federal lawsuit over this incident.

A nightmare driving scenario, is slowly making its way across the country. As states begin installing 'Variable Speed Limits' (VSL) and granting law enforcement access to speed limits, which can be changed on a whim.

Imagine you are cruising down the highway, obeying the posted speed limit of 75 MPH only to find out that you're being ticketed for driving 15 miles over the speed limit.

How can this happen you ask?

In cash strapped America, it is now possible for the police to change speed limits using VSL's. States like Wyoming, Oregon, Georgia, Washington, Utah, New Jersey, Florida and Minnesota. have already begun using them

The USDOT is paying states $1 billion to use VSL's to create 'aggressive congestion-relief programs'.

But how will states payback the $1 billion?

By ticketing motorists of course.
States claim VSL's aren't used to create speed traps

The Georgia DOT claims, VSL's aren't being used to create speed traps...

I paid a professional price when the group attacked me in 2009. Now I wear its mud as a badge of honor.

The U.S. Senate will hold a vote on an amendment to the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) tomorrow. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) presented an amendment seeking to sunset the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for Use of Military Force (AUMF). This will be the first time the Senate has held a vote regarding the AUMF since 2002.

The amendment would not only repeal the 2001 AUMF, but would also repeal the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002. The 2001 AUMF was passed in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, while the 2002 AUMF was passed in order to authorize the Iraq War.

The amendment would also require Congress to hold a vote to approve any future authorization of military force. According to Sen. Paul, most senators do not want to take any responsibility for America’s ongoing wars, and would rather refuse to vote on authorizing any future wars.

If passed, it would be six months before the amendment would go into effect.

The death of free speech is imminent. Anyone with access to a computer and the internet can see that the United States mainstream media is nothing more than a propaganda machine designed to brainwash the masses into a lemming-like agreement with the government.

And now, it’s oh-so-ironic that the same government that tells the media what to report on in order brainwash the public is seeking to quiet those who disagree and label them as “propaganda.” Some may call it fake news, others just want a different opinion rather than the left-leaning media hysteria we are accustomed to. But now, media outlet RT (Russia Today), founded in Russia will have to register with the United States as “foreign media;” which will forever give it the inaccurate title of “propaganda.”

Security at the State Department's Benghazi compound was so dire that another contractor was brought in to clean up the mess just two weeks before the 2012 terror attack – and was later pressured to keep quiet by a government bureaucrat under then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, according to two men from the American security company.

A puzzling study of U.S. pregnancies found that women who had miscarriages between 2010 and 2012 were more likely to have had back-to-back annual flu shots that included protection against swine flu.

Vaccine experts think the results may reflect the older age and other miscarriage risks for the women, and not the flu shots. Health officials say there is no reason to change the government recommendation that all pregnant women be vaccinated against the flu. They say the flu itself is a much greater danger to women and their fetuses.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reached out to a doctor's group, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, to warn them the study is coming out and help them prepare for a potential wave of worry from expectant moms, CDC officials said.

While I remained at my headquarters unit in Virginia, my friend embarked on multiple tours of duty within a short two years as a Marine infantryman. I remember even then being surprised and unsettled by how rapidly his overseas deployments came. He was killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq on his third deployment overseas prior to his twenty-first birthday. He had selflessly tried to stop a car laden with explosives as it sped into his checkpoint, possibly preventing more deaths among the nearby group of Marines wounded in the attack.

Paul Wolfowitz, considered one of the chief architects of the Iraq War, attended my friend’s funeral at Arlington National Cemetery. More recently, Wolfowitz spent last year's anniversary of the 9/11 attack on NBC’s Meet the Press shamelessly arguing that he and the Bush administration had done nothing wrong in selling the war and were honest with the American people.

Junk epidemiological studies are rather like pigeons in New York—an omnipresent nuisance that you learn to live with and ignore and hope they don't make too much of a mess. It's too bad that CNN didn't have the judgment to do this. Instead, the network took what is just about the worst study to ever fly the coop and not only ran with it but also sensationalized it by using both children's health and the September 11th terrorist attacks as manipulative hooks. Shameless.

It's no use simply telling people they have their facts wrong. To be more effective at correcting misinformation in news accounts and intentionally misleading "fake news," you need to provide a detailed counter-message with new information—and get your audience to help develop a new narrative.

Those are some takeaways from an extensive new meta-analysis of laboratory debunking studies published in the journal Psychological Science. The analysis, the first conducted with this collection of debunking data, finds that a detailed counter-message is better at persuading people to change their minds than merely labeling misinformation as wrong. But even after a detailed debunking, misinformation still can be hard to eliminate, the study finds.

North Korea’s hackers have been linked with many attacks, including the 2014 Sony hack, but it looks like the totalitarian state is now targeting bitcoin, and crypto coin exchanges in particular, with its hacking teams.

Torres Advanced Enterprise Solutions, a large, Virginia-based security and private military contracting firm, told Breitbart News that the State Department approached the company less than two weeks before Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were brutally murdered.

Blue Mountain Group, the small Welsh security contractor to which the State Department initially awarded the contract over Torres’s bid earlier in the year, was allegedly failing on the job.

An EU agency, specifically tasked with fighting what the West terms ‘Russia propaganda,’ has launched its new website to provide Europeans with “a single resource” to “enlighten” them about alleged “pro-Kremlin propaganda.”

The site was launched in English, German and Russian. It’s part of the ongoing “EU vs disinformation” campaign waged by the EU’s East Stratcom Task Force.

“Today we launch our new website www.euvsdisinfo.eu, providing you with a single resource on addressing the challenge of pro-Kremlin disinformation,” a statement on the website says.

As aside, related in a different way- The US has been hit by two hurricanes and they are crying the blues and begging for money all over the place- But, clearly, priorities are very very skewed since the US obviously has multiple billions of dollars, accessible and ready to spend, to destroy other nations.

Leonard Peltier is an imprisoned Native American considered by Amnesty International, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, National Congress of American Indians, the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Rev. Jesse Jackson, among many others, to be a political prisoner who should be immediately released.

Leonard Peltier was convicted for the deaths of two FBI agents who died during a 1975 shoot-out on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Mr. Peltier has been in prison for over 29 years.

If you thought that media coverage during the 2016 presidential election seemed, more often than not, to boost Donald Trump and criticize Hillary Clinton, you didn't imagine it, a new report says.

According to the report from Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, which applied data analysis techniques to 2 million election stories to understand better what people were reading and sharing, Trump not only got the most attention from media outlets across the political spectrum, but his preferred core issues—immigration, jobs and trade— received significant coverage and were widely shared online. In contrast, news about Clinton focused negatively on her family charitable foundation, her use of a private email server as U.S. secretary of state, and the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, the study found.

If anyone should have any questions about whether the United States of America is not the most aggressive, warlike, and terroristic nation on the face of the earth, its latest proposed action against the supposed rogue state of North Korea should allay any such doubts.

Last week, the US circulated a draft resolution which it intends to present to the UN Security Council that would give the American Navy and Air Force the power to interdict North Korean ships at sea to determine if they were transporting “weaponry material” or fuel and that US forces would be given “the right” to use “all necessary measures” to “enforce compliance.”*

NORTH KOREA AMBASSADOR TO RUSSIA SAYS NORTH KOREA HAS ONLY ONE PATH - DEVELOPMENT OF NUCLEAR FORCES: IFX

NORTH KOREA DEVELOPING, IMPROVING NUCLEAR WEAPONS AS MEANS TO DETER U.S. HOSTILE POLICY - NORTH KOREAN AMBASSADOR TO RUSSIA: IFX

NORTH KOREA ABSOLUTELY DISMISSES U.N. SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTIONS, THEY ARE UNLAWFUL - NORTH KOREAN AMBASSADOR TO RUSSIA: IFX

NORTH KOREA AMBASSADOR TO RUSSIA SAYS OUR NEXT MEASURES WILL THRUST U.S. INTO WORST PREDICAMENT IT HAS EVER KNOWN: IFX

Maybe the Democrats did win the 2016 election. Or at least the the Deep State and its accomplices among the beltway political class, K-Street lobbies and the media did.

That’s because the media won a giant victory against something they deplore and despise more than anything else - the public debt ceiling. They sanctimoniously admonish that it’s a relic of the nation’s fiscally benighted past. They operate on a belief that this is an episodic tendency to threaten America’s credit and to offer Capitol Hill an opening to grandstand about the fiscal verities is a blight on orderly governance.

So the Donald’s latest burst of impetuosity — agreeing with Sen. Schumer to permanently abolish the public debt ceiling — has descended on the beltway like manna from heaven. Not Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter or even the Great Texas Porker, Lyndon Johnson, dared to utter the thought of it — at least not in polite company.

Last week the Washington Examiner reported that Hina Alvi, the wife of Debbie Wasserman Schultz's now-infamous former IT staffer Imran Awan, had struck a deal with federal prosecutors to return to the U.S. where she currently faces charges of conspiracy and bank fraud. The deal with prosecutors mandates a return to the U.S. during the "last week of September 2017" and is structured so that she will not be arrested in front of her children.

Now, if you're the cynical type, then it might have struck you as somewhat odd that Alvi would agree to return from Pakistan, the place to which she successfully fled specifically to avoid the charges she now seems to be embracing.

Federal law enforcement agents working the Imran Awan and Hina Alvi fraud probe said the couple, along with other members of the family, were never properly vetted for Congressional security clearances.

Instead the clearances, which provided the Awans access to dozens of Congressional Democrats computer networks and IT systems, were likely approved absent each individual background file getting “fully investigated.”

“I seriously doubt they could have passed a full background (check),” one FBI insider said. “These clearances were pushed through.”

FBI insiders used the word “forged” to describe the process of what happened to the Awan files. Federal law enforcement sources with knowledge of the case divulged:

Either someone with clout in Congress, or higher, made sure the Awans received their security clearances despite glaring problems or the investigators pushed their files through for approval as part of a systemic breakdown.

When the Islamic State siege on Deir Ezzor was broken by the Syrian Arab Army we asked:

Will the SAA cross the Euphrates at Deir Ezzor to retake the valuable oilfields east of it? Or will it stay south of the river and leave those oil fields to the Kurdish U.S. proxies in the north?

To cross the river is clearly desirable but also potentially contentious.

Since then several convoys of military bridging equipment have been seen on the road to Deir Ezzor. It is now obvious that the SAA will bridge the river (all regular bridges have been destroyed by U.S. bombing) and send significant forces across. New questions now are: When, where and with what aim?

The hatched areas of the map show possible next aims for the U.S. proxy campaign (yellow) and the Syrian government forces (red) in their fight against ISIS (grey) and against each other.

Cindy Vesterggard, a Senior Associate with the Nuclear Safeguards rejected a few conservative media outlets report on a letter by the Somali FM that Al-Shabaab was mining UOC for transport to Iran.
last week, a few conservative media outlets including Fox News and VOA ran a story on a letter by the Somali FM that Al-Shabaab was mining UOC for transport to Iran.

Fox news reported, “Al Qaeda affiliate mining uranium to send to Iran, Somali official warns US ambassador.” and VOA also said, “Somalia Seeks US Help, Says Militants Plot to Supply Uranium to Iran…the letter might be intended to draw additional military support from Washington more than anything else.”

After Syria threatens repercussions following airstrike attributed to Israel the state's Scientific Studies and Research Center, Israel’s defense minister issues tough warning against following up on threats, warning Syria ‘not to test us, because we take threats seriously.’

Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Monday issued a threatening message to President Assad's regime in Syria, saying "I strongly suggest to our neighbors in the north not to try us or make threats," while warning any confrontation would "end very badly for them."

Regarding the attack attributed to Israel in Syria, Qassem said that it was not a prelude to the war and that there was no need to blow the situation out of proportion.

The UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is responsible for verification of the P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran. This means they offer monthly assessments, all of which have affirmed Iran is in total compliance with its requirements under the deal.

Monthly reminders of that fact are increasingly seen as insufficient, however, with the US government publicly attacking the pact and making wild accusations of unspecific Iranian violations. Now, IAEA officials feel obliged to publicly defend the concept of a deal, the nature of this specific deal, and Iran’s compliance all at once.

IAEA chief Amano Yukiya today defended the deal’s verification program as the “most robust” ever, noting that the IAEA has dramatically increased its number of inspections in Iran since the deal was signed, calling the pact a “clear and significant gain.”

Senate officials are hoping to get to a final vote on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a military spending bill in excess of $700 billion. Getting to that vote, however, means dealing with all the military and war-related amendments in the bill.

Senate leaders appear to have decided that the easiest way to get around this is to severely curtail debate on certain particularly controversial issues, with an 89-3 vote today agreeing to limit procedural debates on the matter.

Sen. Paul intends to repeal the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF). The amendment is seen as politically awkward for some hawks, who argue that they want to create a new AUMF that explicitly covers current wars, but who are reluctant to see any limitations placed on the way America’s wars are waged.

The much-touted meeting between US Under Secretary of State Thomas Shannon and Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov in Helsinki has produced no breakthrough, with Russia confirming that further retaliatory measures against US diplomats are imminent.
“We urged them to stop destroying Russian-American relations and undermining international law, and to occupy themselves with solving problems that have arisen not due to any fault of our own,” said a statement from the Russian foreign ministry at the conclusion of the first day of a two-day summit.

READ MORE: Diplomatic war: From Obama’s expulsion of Russian embassy staff to Trump’s closure of SF consulate

When asked if this meant that further restrictions against the US diplomatic corps in Russia will happen within a month, Ryabkov told the Sputnik news agency that he “doesn’t think it will take as long as that.”

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The FBI has questioned former Sputnik employee Andrew Feinberg as part of an ongoing Congressional investigation into whether the agency is a 'Russian propaganda network' worthy of a registry in the US Foreign Agents Act. Speaking to Sputnik, respected author and journalist James Petras explained what was really at the heart of this political circus.

Unlike UNSMIS, led by Norwegian General Robert Mood and based in Syria, the IICOIOS was based in Geneva, never visited Syria and was deeply compromised by its link to US diplomacy and its reliance on jihadist sources. The US Government, by then, was arming anti-government jihadist groups in Syria. Ban had thus embedded a deep conflict of interest in a nominally ‘independent’ UN agency.

The Abuzayd-Pinheiro group, joined by Italian lawyer Carla del Ponte, issued a series of distant reports which echoed western war propaganda against Syria. Notable amongst these were reports on the 2012 Houla massacre, a report on the 2016 liberation of Aleppo, and a recent report which seeks to blame a series of chemical weapons attacks in 2017 on the Syrian Government. Carla del Ponte, in a better moment, revealed in mid 2013 that the first use of sarin gas in Syria was by Jabhat al Nusra. But none of this appeared in the group’s reports.

Adam Carter has published a new article which states that important authorities including Robert Mueller and Jeff Sessions have been personally informed of the latest information debunking the Russian Hacking narrative. Pretended ignorance on the matter would be unacceptable.

Disobedient Media has previously reported on the extensive work conducted by the independent analyst known as Adam Carter. For months, Carter has been on the forefront of debunking the Russian hacking narrative by dismantling the Guccifer 2.0 persona and its contradictory claims. Carter’s work has been instrumental in creating the impetus and grounds for the analysis of the Forensicator, and in corroborating the efforts of Veteran Intelligence Professionals For Sanity (VIPS).

Last week the FBI denied Ty Clevenger's FOIA request for Hillary Clinton's emails due a supposed "lack of public interest." No really...once you've manage to stop laughing, you can read our prior post on the topic here: FBI Denies FOIA Request For Hillary Documents Due To "Lack Of Public Interest".

Alas, Clevenger isn't the type to give up so easily and managed to find a judge in Maryland who seemingly agrees that the willful destruction of evidence subject to a Congressional subpoena might not be just a "frivolous" issue that suffers from an overwhelming "lack of public interest." As the Washington Times points out today, Maryland judge Paul Harris Jr. has ordered the Maryland state bar to investigate former Hillary aides David Kendall, Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson for their efforts in allegedly helping Hillary "destroy evidence."

The company that supplies all services for RT America channel, including TV production and operations, in the US, has received a letter from the US Department of Justice, claiming that the company is obligated to register under FARA due to the work it does for RT.

Adopted in 1938 to counter pro-Nazi agitation on US soil, the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, exists so that “the people of the United States are informed of the source of information (propaganda) and the identity of persons attempting to influence US public opinion, policy, and laws.”

There are 401 entities in the active FARA register and include tourist boards and lobbyists, but no media outlets, which have traditionally been exempt from the legislation.

"The war the US establishment wages with our journalists is dedicated to all the starry-eyed idealists who still believe in freedom of speech. Those who invented it, have buried it," said RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan.

As the two old, cold war adversaries, Russia and NATO, prepare to begin massive war games to show off their respective military strengths, it was the UK's turn to accuse Russia first of "testing the West" by conducting war games on NATO’s eastern flank in its biggest military exercise in four years. Speaking on BBC's “The Andrew Marr Show” on Sunday, U.K. Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said that Russia's exercise "is designed to provoke us, it’s designed to test our defenses, and that’s why we have to be strong. Russia is testing us and testing us now at every opportunity. We’re seeing a more aggressive Russia. We have to deal with that."

Google has taken the unprecedented step of burying material, mostly from websites on the political right, that it has deemed to be inappropriate. The problem, however, is that the world's largest search engine is a left-leaning company with an ax to grind.

Let's face it, deep down in our heart of hearts we knew the honeymoon wouldn't last forever. Our willingness to place eternal faith in an earth-straddling company that oversees the largest collection of information ever assembled was doomed to end in a bitter divorce from the start. After all, each corporation, just like humans, has their own political proclivities, and Google is certainly no exception. But we aren't talking about your average car company here.

Sept. 11, 2001, is remembered for a number of reasons, and one of the most important, which often goes unnoticed, is that it was used as an excuse to degrade the liberties of Americans through the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act.

The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act was signed into law by President George W. Bush on Oct. 26, 2001—just 45 days after 9/11. The act passed in the Senate with a vote of 98-1, and it passed in the House with a vote of 357-66.

Former Texas Congressman Ron Paul was one of the few who voted against the act when he was in the House of Representatives, and he has been speaking out against it ever since. Paul is also known for his presidential campaigns, and when he was seeking the Republican nomination in the 2012 election, he reminded the world of one of the most crucial aspects of the PATRIOT Act.

“They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.” – George W. Bush addresses the nation on September 20, 2001 — 9 Days after the attacks

Those of us who are old enough to remember a time before 9/11 can recall “the good old days” before the police state was ramped up to the militaristic control grid that it is today.

We remember a time before fear became the only thing that your television fed you. Sure, the propaganda machine and the war machine has existed long before 9/11, but since that fateful day, the fear peddlers and the tyrants have cranked it up a notch – or ten.

Freedom diminishing step one: The TSA

Following Steve Bannon’s highly anticipated interview with Charlie Rose on 60 Minutes Sunday night, professional photographer Peter Duke published a video explainer on how CBS may have used color adjustments to make the Breitbart News boss “look bad” on television.

The big players in the GMO and agrochemical industry – Monsanto, Bayer, Dow, Syngenta, DuPont – are engaging in an extensive public relations, advertising, lobbying and political campaigning to make sure that genetically engineered crops (GMOs), and the chemical pesticides they require, continue to proliferate in the U.S.

To improve their public image, they are attempting to manipulate everything we see and hear about GMO crops and pesticides in the media and on TV, the internet and print articles – using propaganda-laden commercials, “mommy-blogger” articles, farmer endorsements, hired operatives to change Wikipedia, and front group websites. The biotech industry is feeling threatened, and their profits hang in the balance. They are trying to silence the truth!

We now have evidence that the website Snopes.com is being manipulated by the industry too. But first, let’s examine what Snopes really is…