With Assad gaining militarily...
AP: Syrian military sweeps rebels from villages in coastal province near Turkish border
...and politically...
Al Arabiya: Assad wins landslide 88.7% election victory
...the effort to oust him acquires (whether intentional or not) a new strategy: the war theater shifts to Iraq...
And if Maliki must fall, so be it. Note that among the litany of reasons of why he's no good...
DefenseOne: Intimidation, Cronyism, Repression - The Unfortunate Legacy of Iraq’s Nouri al-Maliki
...last but certainly not least - in fact, most...
As Maliki has struggled to remain in office, he has become more dependent on Iran, which is the dominant external power in Iraq. Maliki is a reliable ally who allows Iranian flights over Iraqi territory to transport weapons and manpower to Assad’s regime in Syria. (US officials have tried for years to pressure Maliki to stop the Iranian overflights, with little result.) He also paved the way for thousands of Iraqi Shiites to cross the border and fight alongside the Syrian regime.
In his West Point speech last month...
Reuters: Obama fights foreign policy critics, pledges aid to Syria groups
How he does it...
AFP: Syrian Jihadists Now Using American Made Humvees Seized in Iraq
news.com.au: Iraqi Sunni insurgents seize huge cache of US-made arms and equipment
Insurgents trained in Jordan...
WorldNetDaily: Blowback! U.S. trained ISIS at secret Jordan base
...in the Caucuses...
IBTimes: The Ginger Jihadist of Mosul - Omar al-Shishani the Chechen ‘General’
...and at Abu Ghraib, Gitmo...
The Sullen Bell: The Phenomenon of Radicalization
June 19: Add this to the ISIS arsenal...
Telegraph: Isis jihadists 'seize Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons stockpile'
17.09 Chemical weapons produced at the Al Muthanna facility, which Isis today seized, are believed to have included mustard gas, Sarin, Tabun, and VX.
Here is the CIA's file on the complex. Quote Stockpiles of chemical munitions are still stored there. The most dangerous ones have been declared to the UN and are sealed in bunkers. Although declared, the bunkers contents have yet to be confirmed. These areas of the compound pose a hazard to civilians and potential blackmarketers. Numerous bunkers, including eleven cruciform shaped bunkers were exploited. Some of the bunkers were empty. Some of the bunkers contained large quantitiesof unfilled chemical munitions, conventional munitions, one-ton shipping containers, old disabled production equipment (presumed disabled under UNSCOM supervision), and other hazardous industrial chemicals.
17.05 The Chemical Weapons Convention, which Iraq joined in 2009, requires it to dispose of the material at Al Muthanna, even though it was declared unusable and "does not pose a significant security risk" However, the UK goverment has acknowledgeded [sic] that the nature of the material contained in the two bunkers would make the destruction process difficult and technically challenging.
And here we go again...
NYTimes: Iraq Asked U.S. for Strikes, Officials Say
Roll Call: Obama Not Asking Congress’ Permission on Iraq
AP: Obama - US sending military advisers to Iraq
As for that other smashing "liberation"...
Daily Signal: What’s Left of Libya Is Crumbling
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Ukraine's civil war rages on...
Seemorerocks: The warzone in Novorossia
Information Clearing House: US Turns Blind Eye to Lugansk Massacre
LiveLeak: Crimes against humanity - people are bleeding to death in their basements while Kiev troops target ambulances
RT: Orphanage under fire as Kiev forces shell Slavyansk
181 people killed, 293 injured in Kiev military op in eastern Ukraine
‘100% aimed action’: Ukraine military shelled refugees, Russian journalists, survivor recalls
'White phosphorus' reports: Ukraine military 'dropped incendiary bombs' on Slavyansk
Kiev’s army shelling kills 5yo boy and his mom in Slavyansk
On Tuesday [June 17], Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko declared that he was ready to order a temporary unilateral ceasefire, but since then the Ukrainian army has not shown any sign of ending its military campaign.
During this "cease-fire"...
'Provocation': Moscow slams Ukraine’s shelling of Russian border checkpoint
Last word ‘camera’! Russian journalist killed in E. Ukraine working till dying breath
While much of the above gets nary a mention in the western press, it is this story - the killing of military personnel sent from Kiev - that galvanized coverage; reported as if it were a war crime, the killing of those who would kill you and yours, including civilians...
NYTimes: Separatists Down Military Transport Jet, Killing 49 in Eastern Ukraine
With ethnic Russians being the targets of Kiev's crackdown, Putin thus far has been excessively restrained, when by international law the "responsibility to protect" doctrine is justifiable in the case of severe disruption in bordering countries. Meanwhile, the NATO powers are pondering the unthinkable...
Paul Craig Roberts: Are You Ready For Nuclear War?
International Business Times: US Air Force Sends B-2 Stealth Bombers To Europe For First Time Amid Ukraine Crisis
Stop NATO: Georgia - NATO Secures Control Of Russia’s Southern Border
What goes around comes around...
Washington Free Beacon: Russian Bombers Fly Within 50 Miles of California Coast
RT: Russia sends 24 warships, bombers to Baltic drills as NATO stages war games
RIA Novosti: Attack on Russian Embassy in Kiev a provocation to war
Bloomberg: Russia Puts Troops on Alert as U.S. Broadens Sanctions
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Elsewhere around the world...
Standard Digital: Witnesses recount night of terror, claim ‘white man’ was commander
Lamu, Kenya: Intriguing and conspiratorial accounts have emerged from local residents caught up in Sunday’s Mpeketoni attack with some witnesses claiming a masked white man commanded the attackers...
The alleged white man and his henchmen were masked but his distinctive pale white skin stood out from his exposed hands, neck and eyes in the street lighting. He allegedly wielded a bazooka... But the eyewitnesses did not say what language the alleged commander spoke except alleging he appeared to be the one commanding the operation.
Related?
White Widow Samantha Lewthwaite marries ruthless terror chief on the run in lawless Somalia
Reuters: Pakistan's Karachi in lockdown after politician arrested in London
BBC: Karachi airport: Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan claims attack
Boiling Frogs Post: The New Great Game Round-Up - June 8, 2014
WaPo: Chinese general - U.S. foreign policy has ‘erectile dysfunction'
Strategic-Culture (Wayne Madsen): Obama’s Gambit - A New Indochina War
Central Intelligence Agency director John O. Brennan is too young to have served in the Vietnam War. But when Brennan joined the CIA in 1980, many of his superiors were veterans of the Indochina campaign and their war stories about drug running, prostitution, extrajudicial killings of civilians and prisoners-of-war, and other tales must have made him wish he had been born earlier so that he could have reveled in such exploits...
Actually, as a college freshman, Brennan was briefly in the region in the early '70s; over summer break he visited a cousin working with USAID in Indonesia (around the same time as Obama-mama's work with the same CIA-front in that country - see our Jan. 2013 updates). Perhaps there he was regaled with tales of human heads kicked around as soccer balls, as is said to have occurred following the overthrow of Sukarno.
Speaking of soccer...
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American Gladio in Vegas? Some background stories from a few years ago...
New America Foundation: PATCON - The FBI’s Secret War Against the ‘Patriot’ Movement, and How Infiltration Tactics Relate to Radicalizing Influences
IntelWire: PATCON Revealed - An Exclusive Look Inside The FBI's Secret War With The Militia Movement
See also the numerous entries on PATCON at Sipsey Street Irregulars
Now to the question, is PATCON still active, now being run by Holder's Justice Dep't, if perhaps by an as of yet undisclosed new moniker?...
Cryptogon: Holder Announces Task Force on ‘Homegrown’ Terrorists
As if on cue... Las Vegas - Police Officers Killed in Ambush Shooting
Now paint the opposition with their blood...
Washington Post: Interior Secretary Jewell connects Las Vegas shooting to Bundy ranch
Though the connection is quite flimsy...
Sipsey Street Irregulars: The Las Vegas Shooters and the Bundys
Blacklisted News: LAS VEGAS ‘REVOLUTION’ SHOOTERS ID’D AS RIGHT-WING CONSPIRACY NUTS WITH A DEATHWISH
The New American: Everyday Americans Demonized After Las Vegas Murders
The lines of a civil war are being drawn. Those who would stoke it into a bloody conflagration would capitalize it as "The Second American Civil War" with Obama or Hillary Clinton (depending on the time-table) in the role of Lincoln. On the other side, the nomenclature is...
Alt-Market: A Second American Revolution Is Now Inevitable
The only question is whether it can be bloodlessly accomplished.
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Spook news...
What had been jettisoned from the "USA Freedom Act" (always beware of catchword legislation) is now in the 2015 Defense Appropriations Act... for the time being...
NYTimes: House Votes to Curb N.S.A. Scrutiny of Americans’ Communications
Pull push...
The Hill: Court renews NSA phone program
Washington's Blog: Senior NSA Executive - NSA Started Spying On Journalists in 2002 … In Order to Make Sure They Didn’t Report On Mass Surveillance
Spiegel: New NSA Revelations - Inside Snowden's Germany File
Dagbladet Information: NSA ‘third party’ partners tap the Internet backbone in global surveillance program
Intelligence Online: Brazil reinvents optical fiber encryption to foil NSA
RT: SBU or NSA? Prankster calls Belarus leader posing as Yanukovich’s son, gets convo leaked in Kiev
Al Monitor: Erdogan’s former bodyguards arrested for espionage
PressTV: Bandar Bin Sultan injected with poison - Report
Intelligence Online: Erik Prince's private squadron in Abu Dhabi
TheNews.pk: IHC orders to lodge murder case against former station chief of CIA
The Bergdahl case: front and center-right is the drum-beat of 'Obama traded deserter for hardened terrorists!' Doing so without congressional consultation, Obama could not have given the opposition a more opportune weapon with which to target his presidency. Congress being effectively neutered, however, there have been many false-start, though justifiable impeachment prospects preceding this, all of which have come to naught. If this scandal turns out to be different, then what we may have here is Obama falling on his sword, relinquishing the crown but to save the Leviathan...
RealClearPolitics: Judge Napolitano - Impeaching Obama Over Bergdahl "Very Valid Argument"
That is the head-scratcher as to why they did this. It doesn't make sense from their own point of view. Democrats will begin to flee from the president...
There could be much more to it than meets the eye however...
Cryptome: Bergdahl Case - Classified Documents (via WL)
Aangirfan: BERGDAHL AND BIN LADEN
WaPo: The Supreme Court won’t intervene in the James Risen case. What’s next?
While Ed Snowden enjoys the limelight, here is a natsec refugee you probably haven't heard about...
National Post: Hacker, Creeper, Soldier, Spy
Follow-up...
Refugee hearing for former U.S. soldier, Anonymous hacker adjourned after claim he was over-medicated in jail
Not only does the Justice Department cultivate and radicalize elements of the militia movement (see above PATCON references), but so does it cultivate and utilize those in the hacker community...
DailyDot: How an FBI informant orchestrated the Stratfor hack
Flashback to this Wayne Madsen Report...
March 12-13, 2012 -- White House battles U.S. intelligence factions via WikiLeaks and Anonymous
The Obama White House is running a covert operation that is using authorized leaks of information through groups such as WikiLeaks and Anonymous to battle against other parts of the U.S. intelligence community that are resisting Obama efforts to engage in massive warfare in cyber-space, according to well-placed Pentagon insiders.
Using the assets of the U.S. Cyber Command, headed by General Keith Alexander and continuing warrantless wiretapping authorities carried over from the Bush administration, a covert group of White House conspirators working under the direction of White House Office of Information Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) chief Cass Sunstein and National Security Council adviser Samantha Power, Sunstein's wife, cyber-hackers have gained access to various computer networks and released information damaging to White House enemies in the intelligence community. The most recent target of such activity was the private intelligence firm Stratfor, an Austin, Texas-based company that is close to Republicans and employs a number of former CIA and military intelligence personnel...
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Police state news...
Some judiciary push-back...
Reuters: Federal Judge Rules U.S. No-Fly List Violates Constitution
EFF: Riley v. California and United States v. Wurie
Yet the jack-boots keep stomping...
Infowars: Woman Says DHS Forced Her to Strip Naked at Gunpoint During Terrifying Dawn Raid
A COUNTRY WHERE POLICE BURN INFANTS IN THEIR CRIBS
Kiddie concentration camps USA...
Breitbart: Leaked Images Reveal Children Warehoused in Crowded U.S. Cells, Border Patrol Overwhelmed
WorldNetDaily: Ex-border agents - Immigrant flood 'orchestrated
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Google wants to be God...
Reuters: Google to buy satellite company Skybox Imaging for $500 mln
Wired: Google’s New All-Seeing Satellites Have Huge Potential—For Good and Evil
To know every hair on your head, and thought in your brain...
Motherboard: Our Brains Will Be Hacked, Tracked and Data-Mined
But it is an arbitrary deity...
Aangirfan: CHILD ABUSE DISAPPEARS FROM GOOGLE?
We've had similar issues with search terms that should have yielded WxxxNews posts but didn't.
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Miscellania...
NYTimes (James Risen): Before Shooting in Iraq, a Warning on Blackwater
Politico (Charles Lewis): Why I left 60 Minutes
Cryptome: Danish Activism Site Shut and Seized in Secret
WikiLeaks: Secret Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) - Financial Services Annex
Wall Street On Parade: The South Rises Up to Take on Wall Street and High Frequency Trading
Consensus 9/11: World Trade Center Bldg. 7’s Controlled Demolition - 9/11 Consensus Panel Releases New Evidence from Witness Testimonies and Architectural Drawings
Bloomberg: EU Nations Back Flexibility on Biotech-Crop Cultivation
ENENews: Japanese Journalist: Workers “very worried” about deformed 400 ft. structure falling on Fukushima reactor buildings and causing another crisis — Immediate repairs needed yet “can’t do anything” due to extreme radiation levels — Staff told to “constantly watch it” — One of site’s most dangerous places
MIT Technology Review: Elon Musk Needs a Very Big Factory for His New Solar Technology
33rd Square: NASA's Updated Warp Drive Space Craft Concept Looks Like Science Fiction Brought to Life
UK Express: Secret service infiltrated paedophile group to 'blackmail establishment'
Cryptome: DC Madam on National Security Priapicy
Natsec priapicy puts own dick in mouth...
Gawker: NSA Spook-Turned-Twitter-Pundit Goes Dark After Dick Pic Surfaces