Military judge tells 9/11 defense attorney that he can call CIA interrogation tactics torture

A word that could once not be mentioned in court — torture — was front and center on Friday as a military tribunal prepares to take on the long-delayed trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the confessed chief plotter of the 9/11 attacks, and four other defendants.

"I know torture's a dirty word," defense attorney Walter Ruiz told the tribunal. "I'll tell you what, judge, I'm not going to sanitize this for their concerns."

Ruiz repeatedly used the word "torture" — and gave vivid descriptions of what had been done to his client, Mustafa Hawsawi, in secret CIA-run black-site prisons — something that would have been unthinkable for most of the eight years the case has been ongoing.

Ruiz forged ahead through a storm of objections both from the prosecution team and the witness, CIA psychologist James Mitchell. He read a list of abuses against his client, asking Mitchell if he was aware that Hawsawi had been plunged into a freezing ice bath, had his head slammed against the wall, was hung nude from the ceiling and was slapped in the face. He later added charges of anal rape and waterboarding.

"Did it matter in your assessment that Mr. Al Hawsawi had been tortured in this many ways? Did it matter to you?" he asked.

Torture has been the overriding issue in these hearings since this version of them began in 2012, but for most of that time it was an issue that could not be discussed openly. This week's testimony from Mitchell brought the issue front and center. The hearing included an extended debate between Ruiz and the military judge, Air Force Col. W. Shane Cohen, on Ruiz's tactics. Ruiz was adamant he didn't care if the witness and the prosecution objected to his descriptions.

Cohen has relaxed restrictions on what can be said in his courtroom since taking over the 9/11 case seven months ago. He seemed to explain his reasoning Friday.

Cohen said he didn't care what anybody called the interrogation techniques. What mattered ultimately, he said, was what he and he alone decided.

"The opinion of the Department of Justice, the attorney general, or even the president of the United States is not binding on me," he said.

http://www.yourdestinationnow.com/2020/01/military-judge-tells-911-defense.html

California Base to House US Evacuees from China for Coronavirus Quarantine

March Air Reserve Base in southern California will provide temporary housing for about 200 U.S. citizens evacuated from Wuhan, China, which is the center of a coronavirus outbreak. They are arriving aboard a chartered flight Wednesday, the Pentagon said.

Military personnel will not have contact with the evacuees, who include State Department employees, dependents and other U.S. citizens. They will be cared for by the Department of Health & Human Services during an expected three-day quarantine.

In addition, "evacuees will not have access to any base location other than their assigned housing," Alyssa Farah, the Pentagon's press secretary, said in a statement.

The charter flight was originally scheduled to land at Ontario International Airport in Riverside County, but the State Department and the Centers for Disease Control decided overnight that the base, about 22 miles south of San Bernardino, is better suited to accommodate the passengers.

There are no immediate indications that any of the passengers have the coronavirus, officials said.

At a refueling stop for the charter flight in Anchorage, Alaska, on Wednesday, the passengers underwent two sets of health screenings and were cleared to continue to March.

"A big cheer let out on the plane when we landed," passenger Patrick Stockstill, of Rhode Island, told ABC News upon landing. "I'm tired and exhausted mentally and physically, but happy to be back and just really grateful the United States government came through for us."

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/01/29/california-base-house-us-evacuees-china-coronavirus-quarantine.html

Putin pardons Israeli national Issachar sentenced in Russia for drug smuggling

Naama Issachar was detained at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport in Apri 2019, when she was in the airport’s transit zone before boarding a connecting flight to Tel Aviv after arriving from New Delhi

MOSCOW, January 29. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree pardoning Israeli national Naama Issachar, who was serving a sentence in Russia for drug smuggling, the Kremlin press service informed on Wednesday.

"Guided by the principles of humanity, I decree to pardon Naama Issachar, born in 1993, sentenced on October 11, 2019 by the Khimki City Court of the Moscow Region, releasing her from serving the rest of her sentence," the message informs.

The decree enters into force on the day of its signing.

Naama Issachar, an Israeli and US national, was detained at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on April 9, 2019, when she was in the airport’s transit zone before boarding a connecting flight to Tel Aviv after arriving from New Delhi. The airport’s security guards found 9.6 grams of cannabis in her luggage.

On October 11, 2019, the Khimki City Court in the Moscow Region found Issachar guilty of drug possession and smuggling (Part 1, Section 228 and Part 2, Section 229.1 of the Russian Criminal Code) and sentenced her to 7.5 years in a standard regime penal colony. The Moscow Regional Court upheld the verdict on December 19.

During a visit to Jerusalem on January 23, Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Issachar’s mother, assuring her that "everything will be alright" regarding her daughter. "I am aware of the position of [Israeli] Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] who asks to make an appropriate decision. All that will certainly be taken into account when the final decision is made," Putin said. On January 26, Issachar made an official pardon appeal.

https://tass.com/politics/1114305

US envoy says annexations will only go ahead after okay from US-Israeli panel

But David Friedman avoids stating whether US-Israeli committee must deliberate West Bank sovereignty proposal before cabinet can vote on matter reportedly set for Tuesday

US Ambassador to Israel Friedman suggested on Wednesday that it may take time before Israel can move forward with annexation plans for the Jordan Valley and any West Bank settlements.

The comments in a briefing to reporters came amid Israeli reports that Israel’s caretaker cabinet would convene next Tuesday to vote on annexation, two days later than originally announced in order to allow time to prepare the proposal.

Friedman stressed that an Israeli-American committee to discuss the exact parameters of the ostensible annexation must be established first before Jerusalem can go ahead with its plans.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-envoy-says-annexations-will-only-go-ahead-after-okay-from-us-israeli-panel/

FEDS Leak Explosive Details of Players in Massive Clinton Global Heist; Biden’s Implicated in “Organized crime at the highest level”

High-ranking Justice Department officials are leaking troubling details of a massive cover up involving Hillary and Bill Clinton, the State Department and governments in Europe and beyond in a scheme that steered untold billions of tax dollars from numerous countries to the Clinton Foundation and Clinton associates.

Thomas Paine broke emerging details of the exclusive story on his new Podcast on Wednesday and also discussed the growing scandal Tuesday night on his Patreon show.

And now former Vice President Joe Biden’s name has surfaced as part of the Clinton’s global fraud network, federal sources confirm. Biden is currently a Democratic candidate for president.

“This is a cartel,” a top level federal source said. “This is organized crime at the highest level.”

Billions of dollars in tax monies swiped from the U.S. Treasury while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state and funneled to shell companies and associates who kicked back untold hordes of cash to the Clinton Foundation and in essence: to the Clinton’s themselves.

Added to that large cache of cash, federal law enforcement sources, are now detailing other countries and even more money involved in the scheme: Norway, New Zealand, Australia, India, Switzerland for starters. And that list will grow. And so will the illicit funds.

Attorney General William Barr’s Justice Department has been giving Hillary Clinton and other Democratic politicians another free pass. And federal agents are beyond steamed.

Here is an excerpt from the podcast.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thomas-paine/id1491435111

Let me put this into simple terms. So you understand what’s going on. The Democrats and some of their friends — maybe even GOP folks. Okay, but the Obama Administration, Hillary, the Biden’s and many others. It may go all the way up to the top before it’s all over. Okay, they fleeced multiple countries multiple companies including the United States government of billions of dollars.

https://truepundit.com/exclusive-feds-leak-explosive-details-of-players-in-massive-clinton-global-heist-bidens-implicated-in-organized-crime-at-the-highest-level/

How Government and Media Are Prepping America for a Failed 2020 Election

Russia, China and Iran are already being blamed for using tech to undermine the 2020 election. Yet, the very technologies they are allegedly using were created by a web of companies with deep ties to Israeli intelligence.

As World War II drew to a close in Europe, British philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote that “neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.”

Though numerous examples in the post-World War II era have proven Russell’s point, perhaps one of the best examples was the U.S. public’s willingness to swallow lie after lie about Saddam Hussein’s Iraq due to the climate of fear that followed the September 11 attacks. Those lies, propagated by dubious intelligence, government officials and a compliant media, resulted in catastrophes – large and small, both abroad and at home.

Today, an analogous narrative is being crafted by many of the same players – both in media and government – yet it has avoided scrutiny, even from independent media.

Over the past several months and with a renewed zeal in just the last few weeks, anonymous intelligence officials, dubious “experts” and establishment media outlets have crafted a narrative about the coming “chaos” of the 2020 election, months before it takes place. Per that narrative, certain state actors will use specific technologies to target the “American mind” in order to undermine the coming presidential election. The narrative holds that those efforts will be so successful that the U.S. will never recover as a democracy.

Though these anonymous government sources and their stenographers have already named the countries who will be responsible and the technologies they will use, they also admit that no evidence yet exists to back up these claims, meaning they are — at best — pure speculation.

Headlines such as “Hackers Are Coming for the 2020 Election — And We’re Not Ready,” “Basically Every US National Security Leader Is Warning About Foreign Interference In The 2020 Election,” and “U.S. intel agencies: Russia and China plotting to interfere in 2020 election” have become increasingly common, despite no available evidence, as have warnings that the American public is defenseless against the old scourge of “fake news” and the new scourge of “deep fakes.” Some media reports have gone so far to say that actual foreign meddling isn’t even necessary as merely the fear of foreign meddling could be enough to upend the American political system beyond repair.

Historically, the goal of such fear-inducing narratives has been the trading of civil liberties for increased security, or rather, the appearance of increased security. Yet, when the need for security is felt due to a fear that is based on government-driven speculation and not on evidence, the goal of that narrative is not about protecting the public from a real, tangible threat but instead about the consolidation of power by the very groups responsible for crafting it — in this case, the intelligence community and other key players in the national security state.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/media-israel-intelligence-2020-elections-cyber-security/264361/

Part1

>>7955716

Notably, deep fakes figured prominently and was the tool most used by malevolent hackers in Cybereason’s 2020 election simulation, which saw both video and audio-only deep fakes used to spread misinformation on national and local TV channels in order to impersonate police officers and election officials and to create fake bomb threats by posing as the terror group Daesh (ISIS). Cybereason also happens to be a partner of the organization funding the most well-known creator and producer of deep fakes in the world, an organization that — much like Cybereason itself — is openly tied to Israeli intelligence.

Aside from deep fakes, other technologies weaponized in Cybereason’s election simulation have also been the subject of several media reports, such as the hacking of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and appliances and even the hacking of vehicles that have some form of internet connectivity. In the Cybereason simulation, IoT hacks were used to cut power to polling stations and disseminate disinformation while vehicles were hacked to conduct terror attacks against civilians waiting in line to vote, killing several and injuring hundreds.

Most media reports have claimed that these technologies will be part of the coming “explosion” in cyber warfare in 2020 and do not specifically link them to imminent election meddling. Others, however, have made the link to the election explicit.

Naming the culprits in advance

In addition to the apparent consensus on how foreign meddling will occur during the 2020 election, there is also agreement regarding which countries will be responsible. Again, this is largely based on statements made by U.S. national security officials. For instance, the joint statement issued last November by the DOJ, DOD, DHS, DNI, FBI, NSA, and CISA regarding 2020 election security, states that “Russia, China, Iran, and other foreign malicious actors all will seek to interfere in the voting process or influence voter perceptions” before adding “at this time we have no evidence.”

Similarly, the 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment for the U.S. Intelligence Community, written by then-Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, names these same three countries in relation to imminent 2020 election interference and states that their interference in the 2020 election is “almost certain.” The assessment adds the following about each nation:

Russia: “Russia’s social media efforts will continue to focus on aggravating social and racial tensions, undermining trust in authorities, and criticizing perceived anti-Russia politicians.”

China: “China will continue to use legal, political, and economic levers—such as the lure of Chinese markets—to shape the information environment. It is also capable of using cyber attacks against systems in the United States to censor or suppress viewpoints it deems politically sensitive.”

Iran: “Iran, which has used social media campaigns to target audiences in both the United States and allied nations with messages aligned with Iranian interests, will continue to use online influence operations to try to advance its interests.”

Coats’ assessment was enough to spawn numerous stories on the imminent threat that these three nations pose to the 2020 election, with headlines such as “U.S. intel agencies: Russia and China plotting to interfere in 2020 election.”

https://www.mintpressnews.com/media-israel-intelligence-2020-elections-cyber-security/264361/

Part 2

>>7955737

Media reports also left out the fact that Microsoft is a major government contractor for the U.S. intelligence community and the Pentagon. Notably, the Trump campaign, which Microsoft said was the target of this attack, was later identified as the only major presidential campaign using Microsoft’s “AccountGuard” software, part of its dubious “Defending Democracy” program that also spawned NewsGuard and ElectionGuard. AccountGuard claims to protect campaign-linked emails and data from hackers.

Microsoft surfaced not long after, again claiming that Iran was maliciously targeting the United States’ civilian infrastructure. This subsequent claim was first published by Wired and later covered by other outlets. Those reports cite a single person, Microsoft security researcher Ned Moran, who claimed that an Iran-backed hacking group called APT33 was targeting the U.S. “physical control systems used in electric utilities, manufacturing, and oil refineries.”

“They’re trying to deliver messages to their adversaries and trying to compel and change their adversaries’ behavior,” Moran told Wired. Moran also stated that “Microsoft hasn’t seen direct evidence of APT33 carrying out a disruptive cyberattack rather than mere espionage or reconnaissance, it’s seen incidents where the group has at least laid the groundwork for those attacks (emphasis added).”

Cybereason helps craft the narrative

While U.S. intelligence officials and media outlets alike have been largely responsible for setting the narrative that imminent meddling will be conducted by Russia, China and Iran, key components of that narrative, particularly with respect to China and Iran, have been laid by Cybereason, a company that recently ran 2020 doomsday election simulations and that has close ties to the intelligence communities of both the U.S. and Israel.

Part 3

>>7955760

remarkably few reports have bothered to look at the company best known for creating viral deep fakes.

Canny AI has garnered considerable media attention over the past few years for its persuasive deep fake videos that have frequently gone viral. In the last year alone, the tech firm’s viral deep fakes have included a controversial video of Mark Zuckerberg where the Facebook co-founder appears to be saying “Imagine this for a second: One man, with total control of billions of people’s stolen data, all their secrets, their lives, their futures,” as well as a video showing Richard Nixon giving a speech he never actually gave. More recently, Canny AI was behind the viral videos immediately prior to the 2019 U.K. general election that appeared to show Jeremy Corbyn and his rival Boris Johnson endorsing each other and another video that showed world leaders singing John Lennon’s “Imagine”:

Oddly, many of the media reports that discuss these viral videos fail to mention the role of Canny AI in creating these viral deep fakes and instead only mention the organization or artists with whom Canny AI partnered to create them. For instance, the Corbyn-Johnson videos were reported to have been produced by the group Future Advocacy and artist Bill Posters, but it was actually Canny AI that created those videos for that group. Similarly, the Nixon Speech deep fake was reported by several outlets as having been solely created by MIT’s Center for Advanced Virtuality. However, the Boston Globe noted that “the [MIT] team worked with Canny AI, an Israeli company that does Video Dialogue Replacement, and Respeecher, a Ukrainian startup specializing in speech-to-speech synthetic voice production” to create the video.

The Zuckerberg deep fake that Canny AI created led to lots of positive press for the company, with several media reports dubbing them as the company using “deep fakes for good” and that uses the controversial technology “responsibly.” The Zuckerberg deep fake has been cited as one of the main drivers behind Facebook’s new “deep fake” policy, which only bans some deep fake videos and has been criticized by U.S. lawmakers as insufficient. Notably, neither Facebook nor Facebook-owned Instagram ever took down Canny AI’s deep fake of Zuckerburg.

Given the concern over deep fakes in relation to the coming election and Canny AI standing out as the main producer of deep fakes that have gone viral over the past year, it is important to point out that Canny AI has ties to a state actor with a history of election meddling: the state of Israel.

Indeed, Canny AI is 100 percent funded by an Israeli start-up accelerator called Xcelerator, a joint venture between Tel Aviv University and Israeli intelligence agency Shin Bet (sometimes called Shabak). According to Start Up Nation Central, the Paul Singer-created organization that promotes Israeli technology start ups, Xcelerator-funded “start-ups participating in the program benefit from close mentoring from content and technology experts from the Shabak, experts from Tel Aviv University, and industry leaders. The connection to the Shabak also provides the entrepreneurs with ways to test the capabilities of their technologies and cooperation opportunities (emphasis added).”

In addition, Xcelerator is partnered not only with Israeli intelligence directly, but also with Cybereason, the very company that explored the use of deep fakes in the 2020 U.S. presidential election that saw the election cancelled and martial law declared as well as a company that itself has deep ties to Israeli intelligence. Other notable partners of Xcelerator include NEC Corp, which has intimate ties to top Cybereason investor Softbank; Check Point Technologies, which has ties to Israeli military intelligence Unit 8200; and the Israeli start-up accelerator Team8. In previous reports published by MintPress, Team8 was discussed in detail, particularly their recent hire of former director of the NSA and former head of U.S. Cyber Command Mike Rogers, and their close ties to Paul Singer’s Start Up Nation Central, which itself has deep ties to U.S. neoconservatives.

Part 4

>>7955789

Though vehicle hacking seemed out of left field when the 2020 election simulation took place last November, media reports about the imminent dangers of “car hacking” began to emerge just a month after the exercise took place, most of which cited a December 2019 report created by Upstream. Some of those reports have warned that car hacking could be used to undermine the coming U.S. election.

One report titled “Car Hacking Hits the Streets,” cites only Upstream’s report to claim that “In 2020, the connected-car market will reach a tipping point, with the majority of vehicles already connected to the Internet when sold in the United States, representing a large base of potential targets for attacks.” Another report, titled “New study shows just how bad vehicle hacking has gotten,” uses Upstream’s report (i.e. study) to claim that hacks of regular vehicles have exploded since 2016 and that most of the cars on U.S. roads today are vulnerable to hackers and that over 80 percent of those hacks occur remotely.

Neither report noted Upstream’s ties to Israeli military intelligence. Equally notable is the fact that both reports that covered the Upstream-written study say that only manufacturers can address the problem by partnering with a company like Upstream.

Lucky for Upstream, they have already partnered with a slew of auto manufacturers, including Hyundai, Volvo, Renault and even U.S. auto insurance giants like Nationwide, who now number among Upstream’s most important investors. The company’s original investors are Charles River Ventures, one of Cybereason’s first investors, and Israeli venture capital firm Glilot Capital.

Glilot Capital’s interest in Upstream is telling given the firm’s deep ties to Israel’s Unit 8200. Glilot was founded by two former Israeli military intelligence officers and has “a heavy focus on the cyber sector and the entrepreneurs who emerge from the elite Unit 8200,” according to the Jerusalem Post. Even the name of the firm is an homage to Unit 8200, as the unit’s main base is located in Glilot, near Herzliya.

“It’s as if Americans called a VC Fort Meade Capital [the US Army base in Maryland where the National Security Agency and the United States Cyber Command are headquartered], some VC names are meant to be symbolic, as in our case. Glilot is the home of several of the best intelligence and technology units in the IDF, it’s where we came from and it is where we find our best entrepreneurs,” Glilot Capital co-founder Arik Kleinstein told the Jerusalem Post in 2016.

Upstream is certainly the type of company that Glilot Capital is used to investing in. It was founded by two Israelis who both served in the IDF, with one of them serving in an elite intelligence unit. Upstream’s co-founders, Yoav Levy and Yonathan Appel, met while working at Check Point Technologies, the Unit 8200 alumni-founded company with deep ties to Israel’s military intelligence and military-industrial complex as well as the IoT hacking company Toka. Notably, Upstream recently partnered with the Japanese company Fujitsu, a longtime partner with Softbank — Cybereason’s main investor.

Softbank has also invested heavily in another Unit 8200-founded vehicle security start-up called Argus Cyber Security, a firm known for its numerous demonstrations showing how easy it is to hack vehicles. Argus is also backed by Nadav Zafrir, the former Unit 8200 commander who now runs Team8. Argus’ CEO Ofer Ben-Noon, a former captain in Unit 8200, told Forbes in 2014 that “Everything will be hacked in every single [car] brand. It will take time, it might be weeks, months, or a couple of years, but eventually it will happen.”

Since then, Unit 8200 alumni from Argus, Upstream and other Israeli automobile cybersecurity firms have shown media outlets around the world how much easier hacking vehicles has become in the years since Ben-Noon first made the claim. One such report from VICE includes a vehicle hacking demonstration, courtesy of a Unit 8200 alumni, and notes that “most cars today are susceptible to hacker attacks.”

Of course, Unit 8200 isn’t the only intelligence agency known to be experts at hacking vehicles. Indeed, in 2017, WikiLeaks revealed that the CIA was capable of hacking vehicles and exploring their use in committing “undetectable assassinations.”

Part 5

End

ICC war crime probe more likely to find Israel guilty says Israeli legal expert

Israeli officials are at risk of being issued arrest warrants over possible war crimes in the occupied West Bank. That is the conclusion of Yuval Shany, an expert on international law at the Israel Democracy Institute.

Commenting on what may turn out to be a head on clash between Israel and the International Criminal Court (ICC) over its illegal settlement enterprise, Shany said that US President Donald Trump’s so-called “peace plan”, which endorses annexation, would “significantly” raise the risk of triggering prosecution at the ICC.

Shany’s assessment of a clash between Israel and the ICC was reported in the Times of Israel. The publication exposed the risk posed to Israeli officials by the warm embrace between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

It’s thought that moving ahead with annexation, as set out in Trump’s “deal of the century”, will likely trigger harsh international condemnations and leave the ICC with no option except to find Israel guilty of having committing war crimes.

In December Fatou Bensouda, ICC Chief Prosecutor, opened a war crimes probe on Israel. “I am satisfied that … war crimes have been or are being committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip,” Fatou Bensouda said while launching a full investigation.

The landmark decision was met with hostility in Tel-Aviv. Netanyahu dismissed the court’s decision, stating that it had no jurisdiction to investigate in the Palestinian Territories.

To disrupt the court’s probe, Israel threatened to prevent ICC officials from entering the occupied territories; a move that would mirror its treatment of United Nations investigators, also prevented from entering the region. A further attack on the ICC ensued. Netanyahu denounced the court’s decision as “pure anti-Semitism”.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200129-icc-war-crime-probe-more-likely-to-find-israel-guilty-says-israeli-legal-expert/

OPCW Investigator to UN Security Council: No Gas Attack Took Place in Douma, Syria

A former investigator with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) recently testified about attempts to suppress evidence which contradicted the OPCW’s final report. The report claimed Syrian President Bashar al Assad was responsible for an alleged gas attack in April 2018.

On January 20, investigator Ian Henderson testified at a United Nations Security Council Arria-Formula meeting on the fact-finding mission report on Douma, stating that there was in fact no gas attack in Douma, Syria in April 2018. Henderson worked for the OPCW for 12 years as an inspection team leader and engineering expert.

The Grayzone reports that Henderson told the UN Security Council session that his Fact Finding Mission (FFM) team “had serious misgivings that a chemical attack had occurred.” Henderson also told the UN Security Council that the OPCW had rejected the FFM scientific research, dismissed the entire team, and produce a report that completely contradicted the team’s initial findings. Henderson told the council he doesn’t consider himself a whistleblower and felt the UN Security Council session was a “legitimate and appropriate forum to explain again these concerns.”

Despite Henderson’s damning testimony, critics have noted that the UN Security Council meeting on the FFM to Douma was organized by Russia. However, The Grayzone notes that Russia’s UN representative claimed they had invited the the OPCW director-general and representatives of the organization’s Technical Secretariat to the event but neither organization attended.

The claims made by Ian Henderson mirror what has been revealed by WikiLeaks and OPCW whistleblowers in the last year. Beginning in May 2019, an internal OPCW engineering assessment authored by Ian Henderson was leaked to the public. The assessment claimed that cylinders found on the scene alleged to have been dropped by planes were “inconsistent with what would have been expected in the case of either cylinder having been delivered from an aircraft.” Henderson noted that it was more likely the cylinders had been placed at these locations by hand, not dropped from an aircraft.

By November 2019, a second OPCW whistleblower accused the organization of suppressing contradictory evidence, under pressure by three U.S. government officials.

WikiLeaks also released four document dumps of files related to the OPCW investigation into the alleged gas attack in Douma. These internal emails and memos also make it clear the OPCW leadership chose to release a conclusion that did not match the preliminary findings by the team which actually visited Douma, Syria.

Even before the release of the documents and the revelations from the OPCW whistleblowers, independent journalists have been questioning the veracity of claims of gas attacks in Douma, Syria.

In April 2018, I reported that one of several journalists able to gain access to Douma was Robert Fisk, two-time winner of the British Press Awards’ Journalist of the Year prize and a seven-time winner of the British Press Awards’ Foreign Correspondent of the Year. Fisk interviewed doctors and residents in Douma about the alleged chlorine gas attacks. He reported that he found no evidence of the gas attack.

https://www.activistpost.com/2020/01/opcw-investigator-to-un-security-council-no-gas-attack-took-place-in-douma-syria.html

White House Told Bolton His Book Contains 'TOP SECRET' Information - 3 Days Before NYT Leak

The White House told former national security adviser John Bolton that his tell-all book contains "significant amounts of classified information," including some which is "TOP SECRET" and could harm national security.

"Under federal law and the nondisclosure agreements your client signed, as a condition for gaining access to classified information, the manuscript may not be published or otherwise disclosed without the deletion of this classified information," the letter continues.

Notably, the letter, sent from the National Security Counsel to Bolton's attorneys, was sent three days before the manuscript mysteriously leaked to the New York Times on the eve of the Senate impeachment proceedings - sparking a debate over calling Bolton as a witness in the trial.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/white-house-told-bolton-his-book-contains-top-secret-information-3-days-nyt-leak

Houthis Crush Saudi-led Forces In Central Yemen (Details Released)

The Houthis have foiled a large-scale attack on the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, and responded with a successful counter-attack, a spokesman for the group announced on January 29.

In an official statement, Brig. Gen. Yahya Sari said that the Houthis foiled the Saudi-led coalition large-scale attack and advanced in the district of Nihm in the course of an operation, codenamed “Operation Solid Structure.”

“The armed forces continued to advance following the collapse of enemy forces, reaching the west of the city of Ma’rib, liberating districts in the provinces of Ma’rib and al-Jawf … A total area of more than 2,500 square kilometers was liberated,” the spokesman said.

Brig. Gen. Sari went on to claim that thousands of Saudi-backed Yemeni fighters were either killed, injured or captured during the operation.

The spokesman said that 17 brigades, two of them from the so-called 3rd Region and three from the 6th Region, as well as 20 battalion had participated in the failed Saudi-led coalition large-scale attack.

“The armed forces allowed hundreds of enemy forces to flee in compliance with the leadership directions to preserve the blood of those who decided to leave the battle,” said Brig. Gen. Said.

The Houthis’ response was not limited to a counter-attack. The group also carried out a missile and drone strike on oil facilities and military positions in Saudi Arabia.

Brig. Gen. Sari concluded his statement by promising to release more information on Operation Solid Structure within the upcoming few days. The Houthis usually release videos of such successful operations.

https://southfront.org/houthis-crush-saudi-led-forces-in-central-yemen-details-released/

Trump Has Made Antifa Great Again

With the 50-60,000 strong Democratic Socialists of America recently electing to provide material support and manpower to the once tiny cells of anarchist terrorists, this red terror is only getting worse.

This haunting image of an elderly man being pummeled and robbed by anarchists while leaving a Donald Trump rally in Minneapolis ought to be on the front page of every conservative outlet. It isn't. Instead, the homepages of Breitbart and Drudge are occupied with Zionist war propaganda, Hillary Clinton drama and Pocohantas jokes.

That's because this disgusting scene is more embarrassing to conservatives and president Trump than it is to the army of psychopaths who have taken over the streets of our major cities since 2016. They fear a congruent response from the public, similar to what was seen at Berkeley and Charlottesville, that could up-end the status quo far more than masked criminals effectively making their supporters afraid to go outside.

The main strawman right-wing (and left-wing) critics of popular defense groups attack is that some anti-communist organizations have National Socialist or Fascist leanings, and thus they are "impossible" or "bad optics" to defend when the ADL and the unfree press construct comic book Manichean narratives about it. Yet outside of the largely purged Ann Coulter, not one right-wing figure will come to the full-throated defense of non-racial groups defending their communities from communist brutality with traditional flag-waving conservative ideologies like Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys. As we speak, Proud Boy Tusitala "Tiny" Toese and Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson are fighting trumped up and selectively applied felony charges related to an incident at "Cider Riot," where they defended themselves in a bar state regulators now admit is owned by a Jewish anarchist soccer hooligan who used the venue to host meetings with armed leftist paramilitary groups.

In places like Minnesota and Oregon, Trump can claim that the federal government technically does not have jurisdiction over Antifa embracing mayors like Ted Wheeler using their local police forces as support cavalry for groups like "Rose City Antifa." But if Trump appointee Thomas Cullen can use his power as a federal prosecutor to go after men like Daniel McMahon ("Jack Corbin") in retaliation for unmasking deep state's commie vigilantes, why isn't the White House ordering a crackdown on groups terrorizing its own supporters and voters?

https://national-justice.com/op-ed-make-anarchists-great-again

More Details On Mystery Crash Of US Air Force E-11A Military Plane In Afghanistan

US Navy Seals, reinforced by Afghan Security Forces recovered the remains of the crew who died when a US Air Force Bombardier E-11A crashed in the Taliban-controlled Ghazni province. The plane crashed on January 27th, and the US troops allegedly went there on January 28th, but the timeline is suspect.

The Bombardier E-11A is a electronic surveillance aircraft and is likely from the 430th Expeditionary Electronic Combat Squadron based out of Kandahar Airfield, which is located approximately 286 kilometers away from where it crashed. The Bombardier E-11A typically carries a Battlefield Airborne Communications Node (BACN), which is a communications relay and gateway system that enables real-time information flow across the battlespace between similar and dissimilar tactical data link and voice systems through relay, bridging, and data translation in line-of-sight and beyond-line-of-sight situations.

Ghazni police chief Khaled Wardak said US choppers landed at the site in the late afternoon on January 28th.

“Following the removal of the bodies, our forces have moved back to their bases. We don’t know where the foreigners have taken the bodies,” added Wardak.

Nasir Ahmad Faqiri, the head of the provincial council in Ghazni, confirmed the operation, saying the Americans took at least two bodies from the scene.

The US Forces in Afghanistan spokesperson Col. Sonny Leggett confirmed the operation, saying that the remains of two individuals were recovered, not revealing their identities.

https://southfront.org/more-details-on-mystery-crash-of-us-air-force-e-11a-military-plane-in-afghanistan/

Trump Gives Away the Store and Israel Will Now Officially Become an Apartheid State

Ignoring past Israeli prime ministers who warned that annexation of the West Bank would introduce legal apartheid to Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu said the first phase of annexations would go to the Cabinet on Sunday, reports Joe Lauria.

Within hours of the so-called Trump peace plan on the Palestine-Israel question being revealed on Tuesday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would propose the first phase of West Bank annexation to the Israeli cabinet on Sunday.

Netanyahu sprang into action after the plan, which he essentially created, was unveiled by Trump with Netanyahu at his side at the White House. It was the final piece of a strategy that only a U.S. administration as slavishly pro-Israel as Trump’s could give Netanyahu.

First the Israeli prime minister got the U.S. on Dec. 6, 2017 to recognize all of Jerusalem, including Arab East Jerusalem, as Israel’s capital with the move of the U.S. embassy there, something every previous U.S. administration had refused to do.

Then on March 25, 2019 Trump recognized Israel’s illegal 1981 annexation of Syria’s Golan Heights. Just three months ago Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared expanding Israeli colonies on the West Bank as legal, a violation of the 4th Geneva Convention, which says: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

The last piece Netanyahu needed was Tuesday’s much-awaited “peace plan” from the most anti-Palestinian administration in U.S. history. Even The New York Times‘ coverage admitted the plan was strongly biased towards Israel and that Netanyahu was in on the secretive plan all along.

https://consortiumnews.com/2020/01/29/trump-gives-away-the-store-and-israel-will-now-officially-become-an-apartheid-state/

Consortium News Strikes Back: London’s Five Eyes & Freeland’s Nazi Roots Stand Exposed Once More…

A David vs. Goliath battle between the independent Virginia-based online journal Consortium News and the gigantic Security Communications Establishment of Canada has begun this week. As Consortium News’ Editor-in-Chief, Joe Lauria wrote in his recent press release:

“Consortium News has sent libel notices to the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), Canada’s version of the US National Security Agency, and to a major Canadian television network, Global News, for a report that said Consortium News was “part of a cyber-influence campaign directed by Russia.”

To the knowledge of this Canadian-based writer, no analogous instance of such a lawsuit has ever occurred and the subject of this lawsuit will undoubtedly bring to light some of the ugliest skeletons in the Canadian establishment’s closet that many powerful forces would prefer remain obscured and forgotten.

The Gist of the Fight

On December 10, 2019, Global News ran a widely circulated story citing a classified CSE report which claimed that the Russian Government had used proxies to spread anti-Christia Freeland slander in order to “undermine western democracies”. The CSE report cited by Global News asserted without any evidence that a leading protagonist used by the Russian Government in this endeavor was Consortium News which had run a story on February 27, 2017 entitled the ‘A Nazi Skeleton in the Family Closet’ which explained how Freeland had knowingly covered up the fact that her grandfather Mykhailo Chomiak was a high level Nazi collaborator during WWII.

Since the publication of this 2017 article and the work published even earlier by John Helmer, an fuller picture of Freeland’s Nazi family history and broader post-WWII use of Nazi-affiliated Ukrainian nationalists has become a thoroughly documented embarrassment for Freeland and the broader deep state/Five Eyes Intelligence conglomerate trying to run the world. This history is even more awkward since the use of hives of second and third generation descendants of these Nazi collaborators both in Canada and Ukraine resulted in the toppling of the pro-Eurasian Yanukovych government in 2014.

After decades of myth-making and spin-doctoring, the Canadian spy agencies managing mass perceptions of the population have developed more than a little hubris as their lies have too often passed unchallenged by their victims, making this situation a nice slap of reality.

Since so much has already been written on the issue of Canada’s Nazi problem (namely here, and here and here and here), I would like to do something a bit different and address the deeper question: What is the Canadian Communication Security Establishment exactly, and from where did the Five Eyes arise over the course of the previous century?”

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/01/29/consortium-news-strikes-back-londons-five-eyes-freelands-nazi-roots-stand-exposed-once-more/