Mr. Turnbull was speaking on the Miranda Devine Live program on the Sydney Daily Telegraph website after being asked if President Trump was a “traitor” for holding a joint press conference with Mr. Putin in Helsinki. Mr. Turnbull said:

Of course not. Donald Trump is a patriot.

He’s an American patriot and his job is representing his country and he’s doing that to the best of his ability just like I represent my country Australia to the best of my ability.

I think he’s doing exactly what he said he’s seeking to do, he believes it’s better to talk to people and to engage with them and again this obviously has been highly controversial in America and I don’t run a commentary on Australian politics let alone American Politics.

This is the second time this year Mr. Turnbull has backed Mr. Trump on the world stage.

In January, the Australian leader said Mr. Trump’s sweeping tax cuts combined with reforms in corporate regulation benefit the global economy.

Read more:

https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/07/17/american-patriot-aus...

See also: why trump is facing resistance: skull and bones, the elite of the empire...

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Canberra Times expert in international affairs, Thomas Friedman, believes that Donald Trump should have issued the following ultimatum to Vladimir Putin in Helsinki:

"You have attacked our democracy, as well as two core pillars of the global economic and security order that have kept the peace and promoted prosperity since World War II - the European Union and NATO. We are not interested in any of your poker-faced denials. Just know that if you keep doing it, we will consider it an act of war …”

At the risk of offending Thomas, Mr Putin could have responded thus:

“What extraordinary hypocrisy you display. Your military-intelligence establishment routinely & systematically interferes in the elections of countries all over the world & will even initiate regime change to serve its interests. We are also not interested in any of your poker-faced denials. Just know that if you keep doing it, we will also consider it an act of war …”

Is this really the best that 5,000 years of recorded history has to offer?

Former FBI Director James Comey joined a chorus of Americans Monday night after the Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki, Finland. Comey tweeted that US President Donald Trump “sold out” America at the meeting and directed low blows toward US journalists and Russian media that didn’t quite land.

"Having sold out our nation on an international stage, Mr. Trump will now explain it all to Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson?" the disgraced director tweeted. "I'm guessing RT and Sputnick [sic] were unavailable. He owes it to our nation to sit down with a serious journalist."

Beyond the obvious misspelling of yours truly — Sputnik News International is named after the Sputnik 1 satellite, the first successful satellite ever launched in 1957 — there is a bit to unpack from Comey's remarks. Meanwhile, Comey's grandstanding was not lost on the Twitterverse.

Perhaps the former FBI director fancies himself a news director, since he's now calling the shots on who is and who isn't a good reporter.

One might think Comey, given his attention to news networks RT and Sputnik, would be familiar at this point with the spelling of the latter. He, alongside former CIA Director John Brennan, ex-NSA Director Michael Rogers and bigoted former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, briefed Trump on the Director of National Intelligence report on "Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections."

That report devoted roughly half of its length to RT's coverage of US politics. "RT and Sputnik… consistently cast President-elect Trump as the target of unfair coverage from traditional US media outlets that they claimed were subservient to a corrupt political establishment," it said, adding that the networks "contributed to the influence campaign" of Russia alongside "quasi-government trolls."

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/us/201807181066450686-Comey-Tries-to-Slam-Sputnick/

Meanwhile:

US Defense Secretary James Mattis is open to the possibility of the first talks since 2015 with his Russian counterpart, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, Reuters reports, citing sources close to the matter.

The possibility of talks emerged after the summit in Finland between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"Two US officials, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said Mattis was open to the possibility of talks. They did not suggest he was actively seeking discussions with Shoigu, either in person or by telephone."

Last week, Shoigu said in an interview with Italy's Il Giornale newspaper that he firmly believed that all the disputes should be settled peacefully and without the use of military force.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/us/201807181066450081-usa-russia-pentagon-defens...

Read from top.

See also: http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/32086

By MARK LANDLER 2:56 PM ET

• President Vladimir V. Putin had asked to question American citizens in return for giving the U.S. access to 12 indicted Russians. On Monday, President Trump praised the proposal as an “incredible offer.”
• Two days later, his press secretary said Mr. Trump saw it as an “interesting idea.” Then on Thursday, the White House rejected it.

Facebook removed 32 pages and accounts from its platforms Tuesday, including Instagram, for engaging in “coordinated inauthentic behavior.”

While the accounts and pages remain unattributed, Facebook, lawmakers and much of the US media are pointing their fingers in the direction of Russia — though a browse through Facebook's actual blog post on the ban offers little support for that.

But if the mainstream media is to be believed, the supposedly Kremlin-run troll farm, the Internet Research Agency is determined to keep on shitposting despite the February indictment of 13 of its alleged operatives. 

Facebook can't or won't say who's behind the latest round of banned pages, although lawmakers say they can. "It's clear that whoever set up these accounts went to much greater lengths to obscure their true identities than the Russian-based Internet Research Agency," the company said in a blog post. "We face determined, well-funded adversaries who will never give up and are constantly changing tactics."

"[We] don't have all the facts," the company said.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/us/201808011066839578-Facebooks-Ban-Resistance-A...

In a classified leak to the Washington Post Monday, anonymous US intelligence officials said that North Korea is constructing new missiles at a factory that produced the country’s first intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the US mainland.

Author and professor Tim Beal, whose most recent book is "Crisis in Korea," told Radio Sputnik's Loud & Clear Tuesday that the mainstream media is notorious for making up stories in an effort to sabotage the peace talks between the US and North Korea.

"The whole mainstream media is worried about peace breaking out as, of course, the Pentagon is. All these people make their money stoking up fear about war. As far as I understand from the Washington Post article, they are not even claiming new missiles. They are just claiming work on existing missiles," Beal told hosts John Kiriakou and Brian Becker Tuesday.

According to the Washington Post article, which cited unnamed US officials familiar with the intelligence, North Korea is renovating a factory that was used to build the government's first intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM). 

The evidence suggests that North Korea is working on at least one, possibly two, liquid-fueled ICBMs at a research facility near Pyongyang, the report added.

"They [US intelligence organizations] take photographs in space of buildings, and then they [the mainstream media] decide what they think is in them. In that same Washington Post article they talked about a research institute, which they claimed a couple months ago was doing uranium enrichment," Beal told Sputnik.

"The article admits that European intelligence experts don't agree with that. So, who knows what they [the mainstream media] are arguing about and what evidence they've got? This is all part of the pushback against the possibility of peace. These stories will keep on coming out. The point is, they want to derail any movement toward peace," Beal added.

North Korea made rapid progress in nuclear weapons research last year, conducting its strongest atomic test to date and testing a series of missiles. On June 12, 2018, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met with US President Donald Trump in Singapore, where the two leaders came to an agreement that requires Pyongyang to denuclearize in exchange for a freeze of US-South Korean military drills and eventual sanctions relief.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201808011066841229-us-media-attempts-sa...

Sensational reports about Butina’s alleged activities in Washington read like a spy novel, but the US government’s case against the 29-year-old Russian student and gun activist is far more mundane, Robert Driscoll, Butina’s lawyer, told RT in an exclusive interview.

“If you read the indictment of the case, she is alleged to be an agent of Russia who failed to register with the attorney general. Essentially, that means that they have not charged her with espionage and if you read the allegations against her, none of the allegations have anything spy-like about it. Essentially, the government is conceding that even under their own theory, if she had filed a piece of paper with the attorney general’s office at the beginning of her trip to America, everything she did was legal.”

Driscoll also criticized the way that his client’s case was being presented to the public, noting that even though Butina has not been charged with espionage, “the media – and the government to some extent – are treating it like an espionage crime.”Furthermore, the government has yet to produce evidence to substantiate the claim that Butina traded sex for influence.

“[The honey trap] allegation was set forth in a proffer by the government, meaning they did not produce evidence to back up that allegation at the time. We’re still waiting to see that, and we’re not sure that it even exists, or that it exists in any meaningful form,” Driscoll told RT.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/434794-butina-driscoll-lawyer-interview/

Much of the interest in Butina centers on her relationship with Paul Erickson, an unmarried, well-connected Republican activist nearly twice her age—the sort of hapless ancillary character who might find himself bamboozled in a subplot of The Americans. Last month, a Daily Beast report portrayed him as a balding, lonely fool in love. (In the indictment filed against Butina last month, prosecutors alleged that she had “expressed disdain for continuing to cohabitate” with Erickson.) Like any political operative of his vintage, Erickson—whose résumé includes stints representing a Congolese dictator, running P.R. for a man whose wife infamously cut off his penis, and working for Pat Buchanan—seemed an unlikely match for a college student. (Erickson has not released a statement related to the charges against Butina.)

Read more:

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/08/maria-butina-russia-spy-financia...

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

First, the Daily Beast is rarely credible.... Then the name Pat Buchanan pricked my ears... Is he the same one who publishes article on The American Conservative? Such as this one:

On July 19, the Knesset voted to change its nation’s Basic Law.

Israel was declared to be, now and forever, the nation-state and national home of the Jewish people. Hebrew is to be the state language.

Angry reactions, not only from Israeli Arabs and Jews, came swiftly.

Allan Brownfeld of the American Council for Judaism calls the law a “retreat from democracy,” as it restricts the right of self-determination, once envisioned to include all within Israel’s borders, to the Jewish people. Inequality is enshrined.

And Israel, says Brownfeld, is not the nation-state of American Jews.

What makes this clash of significance is that it is another battle in what might fairly be called the issue of our age.

The struggle is between the claims of tribe, ethnicity, peoples, and nations, and the commands of liberal democracy.

In Europe, the Polish people seek to preserve the historic and ethnic character of their country with reforms that the European Union claims violate Poland’s commitment to democracy.

If Warsaw persists, warns the EU, the Poles will be punished. But which comes first if the two are in conflict: Poland or its political system?

Other nations are ignoring the open-borders requirements of the EU’s Schengen Agreement, as they attempt to block migrants from Africa and the Middle East.

They want to remain who they are, open borders be damned.

Britain is negotiating an exit from the EU because the English voted for independence from that transnational institution whose orders they saw as imperiling their sovereignty and altering their identity.

When Ukraine in the early 1990s was considering secession from Russia, Bush I warned Kiev against such “suicidal nationalism.”

Ukraine ignored President Bush. Today new questions have arisen.

If Ukrainians had a right to secede from Russia and create a nation-state to preserve their national identity, do not the Russians in Crimea and the Donbass have the same right—to secede from Ukraine and rejoin their kinsmen in Russia?

As Georgia seceded from Russia at the same time, why do not the people of South Ossetia have the same right to secede from Georgia?

Who are we Americans, 5,000 miles away, to tell the tribes, peoples, and embryonic nations of Europe whether they may form new states to reflect and preserve their national identities?

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/buchanan/will-tribalism-trump-de...

Here the viewpoints expressed by Pat Buchanan run contrary to the long expressed hegemony of the US Empire... Is this what Maria Butina is pushing out of her own belief or is she doing it as a PR agent for the new Russians "expression" without being "a spy"...? Should anyone expressing an opinion contrary to the swamp of ningnongs attached to the Potomac shit-house be charged for conspiracy? We would fare well on this score...

Read from top.

Politico revealed Wednesday some interesting aspects of the relationship between Senator Rand Paul and the president, particularly on foreign policy: “While Trump tolerates his hawkish advisers, the [Trump] aide added, he shares a real bond with Paul: ‘He actually at gut level has the same instincts as Rand Paul…’.”

On Iran, Politico notes, “Trump has stopped short of calling for regime change even though Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, and Bolton support it, aligning with Paul instead, according to a GOP foreign policy expert in frequent contact with the White House.”

But this part of the story was the most revelatory: “’Rand Paul has persuaded the president that we are not for regime change in Iran,’ this person said, because adopting that position would instigate another war in the Middle East.”

This is significant, not because Trump couldn’t have arrived at the same position without Paul’s counsel, but because it’s easy to imagine him embracing regime change, what with virtually every major foreign policy advisor in his cabinet supporting something close to war with Iran. “Personnel is policy” is more than a cliché.

Paul and Trump apparently like making fun of some White House staffers, as Politico also reported: “the Kentucky senator and the commander-in-chief have bonded over a shared delight in thumbing their noses at experts the president likes to deride as ‘foreign policy eggheads,’ including those who work in his own administration.”

Eggheads indeed. For every foreign policy “expert” in Washington who now admits that regime change in Iraq was a mistake (and a whole slew of them won’t even cop to that), you will find the same people making the case for regime change in other countries, including Iran, explaining how this time, somehow, America’s toppling of a despot will turn out differently.

“So let’s understand that the people pushing for regime change in Iran are seeking to destabilize and harm the country…” writes TAC’s Daniel Larison. “Just as many of the same people did when they agitated for regime change in Iraq and again in Syria, they don’t care about the devastation and chaos that the people in the country would have to endure if the policy ‘works.’”

These are the same Washington foreign policy consensus standard bearers who would likely be shaping U.S. foreign policy unfettered if 2011 Libya “liberator” Hillary Clinton had become president—or any other Republican not named Trump or Paul.

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/rand-paul-against-the-w...

The Latest US Sanctions Point to a Declining World Superpower

James O’Neill

On Monday 6th of August the United States imposed a fresh set of sanctions on Iran. These are intended as a prelude to even stronger sanctions to take effect in November. The clearly stated intention is to break the Iranian governments will to resist American demands, and to cause such domestic pain that the Iranian people Will rise in revolt against their government and bring about the long sought after (by the Americans) regime change.

These policies [are] not new. The first ‘regime change’ operation in Iran that occurred in 1953 when a combined CIA-MI6 operation toppled the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mossadegh and replaced it with the brutal rule of the Shah.

The Shah in turn was overthrown in the Islamic revolution of 1979 and ever since it has been a central goal of the United States government, driven in no small part by the violent and racist regime in Tel Aviv, to reverse that Revolution and reinstall a government in Tehran that (a) is pliable to United States wishes; and (b) represents no challenge to Israel’s quest for regional dominance.

In a recent and widely quoted article, the American journalist Eric Margolis (www.EricMargolis.com 28 July 2018) wrote about “The Coming War Against Iran.” The article has been widely, and in my view correctly, criticized, as for example in a comprehensive analysis by the Saker (www.thesaker.is 3 August 2018).

Margolis is correct in suggesting that the United States’ weight of numbers in missiles and bombers could wreak significant damage on Iran’s infrastructure and cause huge civilian casualties. That however, is not the point. There is absolutely no justification under the international law for such an attack. While on their past record it would be naïve to dismiss the possibility of the Americans, or one of the regional stooges, from creating a false flag event to provide an ostensible excuse for the attack, there is now enough well-founded cynicism about such matters to make it an extremely risky proposition. The political fallout for the Americans would also be substantial.

The damage that could be inflicted would not only be reputational. The Iranians do not have nuclear weapons such as deterred the United States from attacking North Korea, notwithstanding similar overblown and infantile rhetoric that preceded an actual meeting between their respective Presidents. There was at least the appearance of a wish to work constructively toward a resolution of long standing issues. The post summit demands and claims of the Americans suggest that it would be unwise to assume any immediate likelihood of actual progress.

The Iranians do however, have a large arsenal of missiles ranging from the Safir missile with a range of 350km to the Soumar cruise missile with a range of up to 3000 km. That means that there is no country within the Middle East, with their American bases, that are not within range. According to a fact sheet produced by the American Security Project (US Military Bases and Facilities in the Middle East, June 2018) there are literally dozens of US military facilities and thousands of military personnel that would be vulnerable. These include the US naval forces central command headquarters in Bahrain, base to the US 5th fleet, and the biggest US base in

1

the Middle East at Al Udeid in Qatar.

The Israeli nuclear weapons facility at Dimona, a strike against that could have potentially devastating environmental consequences, is also within range. It is always interesting to contrast the coverage in the western media of Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons program (almost always presented as an existential threat) and the way that same media tip toes around Israel’s actual stockpile of nuclear weapons; its non-participation in the nuclear non- proliferation treaty; and its resolute refusal to allow any inspection of its nuclear facilities. It is a measure of hypocrisy not lost upon the Iranians.

Even the potential that the Iranians have to block the Straits of Hormuz, a strategic waterway through which more than 18 million barrels of oil pass each day, would have profound consequences. In the event of an actual outbreak of hostilities, no insurance company in the world would provide cover for any tankers traversing those waters. Some analysts have predicted oil going to US$200 a barrel, a boon to oil producing countries such as Russia and Venezuela not reliant upon the Straits of Hormuz, but disastrous for nearly everyone else.

The painstakingly negotiated joint comprehensive plan of action (JCPOA) by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany and Iran and the EU in a representative capacity, unanimously ratified in 2015 by the UNSC, was unilaterally abrogated by the United States in May 2018.

That unilateral withdrawal, in the face of multiple certifications by the Atomic Energy Agency that Iran was in full compliance with its obligations under the JCPOA, did more than confirm the Russian view that the United States was “not agreement capable.” It was merely the latest in a long history of US abrogation of multilateral treaties, including the 2002 withdrawal from the ABM treaty, and the 2017 withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord.

The reputational damage to the United States done by this constant breaking of agreements entered into by the other parties in good faith should not be underestimated.

Trump followed his tirade of threats against Iran with an offer on 30 July to meet them “any time they want to” without preconditions. This was met with understandable skepticism by Iran’s President Rouhani, who pointedly observed that the US administration is not able to prove its trustworthiness for any negotiations after its withdrawal from the JCPOA and a number of other international treaties. 

In an interview with Iranian TV on 6 August 2018 Rouhani said: “we are always in favour of diplomacy and talks. But talks need honestly. Negotiations with sanctions doesn’t make sense.”

There is however, a further and very important reason why Iran will not be attacked and that the illegal US sanctions, while causing undoubted pain in Iran, will ultimately fail in their objectives.

That reason relates to Iran’s geographical location and its corresponding centrality to the most important geopolitical transformation currently underway. Iran is a crucial component of China’s BRI. It is an associate member of the SCO, a key partner of the International North South Transportation Corridor, and has recently signed trade agreements with the EAEU.

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Both Russia and China have made significant capital investment commitments, both actual and promised. China has refused point-blank to participate in the United States’ sanctions war against Iran, which is clearly sees as a strategic asset, and not only because it takes a significant and growing percentage of Iran’s oil exports.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova pointed out that:

“We have never supported and will not support the policy of unilateral sanctions, as we are convinced of their illegitimacy and are determined to move forward in our multifaceted cooperation with Iran.”

Iran is also not without friends in the region. Relations with Turkey are better now than for a very long time. Turkey has also made significant moves to distance itself from the United States, most recently at the BRICS summit in South Africa where it made clear its desire to become a member of that body, which of itself currently accounts for more than 40% of world trade.

Iran also enjoys good relations with Iraq and Syria, playing an important role in the latter’s war where again in contradistinction with the United States it is an invited participant within the parameters of international law.

Iran has also entered into negotiations Qatar for the joint development of the giant South Pars gas field that is shared between them.

The latest round of sanctions that the United States has imposed are not restricted to Iran. The US administration has threatened that they will sanction any country that trades with Iran. This necessarily includes countries that are supposedly friends and allies of the United States, such as members of the European Union, Canada and Australia.

On one level, those threats are illustrative of the extraordinary hubris that characterizes US foreign policy: a determination that others will bend to US dictates or suffer the consequences. As Andrei Martyanov points out, America’s geopolitical “theory” is both highly unimaginative and rigid. Its main fallacy is an assumption that the United States is eternal and ever omnipotent. Both are false notions (Losing Military Supremacy, Clarity Press 2018).

The latest US sanctions perfectly encapsulate this weakness. Iran will undoubtedly suffer some pain. The European countries, despite their protestations to the contrary, will probably succumb to US pressure to a greater or lesser extent. But the longer-term consequences will be far reaching.

The US has been further exposed yet again as not only “not agreement capable”, but a nation prepared to sacrifice friend and foe alike in a vain attempt to stem the inexorable transfer of geopolitical power east to Eurasia, with China, Iran and Russia as three of is centrepoints in a new world multi-polarity.

James O’Neill - Barrister at Law and geopolitical analyst. He may be contacted at

joneill@qldbar.asn.au 

Trump’s aim is to scare his critics into silence, Brennan wrote in an editorial on Thursday: “Mr Trump clearly has become more desperate to protect himself and those close to him, which is why he made the politically motivated decision to revoke my security clearance in an attempt to scare into silence others who might dare to challenge him.”

But “the national security state has nothing to fear from Donald Trump except his conduct as commander-in-chief,” Weiner said.

“John Brennan clearly sees him [Trump] as a threat to national security,” Weiner said. “So do I. It is remarkable that we have to say that about a president of the United States. Trump, on the other hand, fears everything and everyone connected to the Russia investigation.

“The president of the United States is terrified.”

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/18/why-is-donald-trump-atta...

Yes, Donald Trump is "terrified"... that the "intelligence" community will concoct another "war on Saddam" style of disinformation campaign for him to deal with. Obviously, the "Russian did elect Trump" is one of such fake campaign and they all hate him for not bending at the knees. I don't like Trump more than the next Trump "hater", but the US intelligence agencies have been concocting some mega crap in these few decades after WW2. Now Trump has employed Pompeo who used to work as the Chief of the CIA and you don't hear any pips from him. He now spends his time smoothing the pathway from dealing with North Korea and the Russians on a better footing than the previous administrations. 

Trump has also adopted Bolton as an advisor, (I guess) mainly to know what not to do, and silence him as well. Bolton would know as well as Pompeo that the CIA has pumped out a lot of crap recently and the problem with all these former directors of the "intelligence" agencies being up in arms because Trump does not take any notice of their "lies".  Revoking their "licence  to access" the intelligence agencies to the "retired personnel" is the only thing to do, and they hate him for it.

So Trump is "terrified" that one of the "intelligence" agencies will manufacture some new fake information about him. His way to deal with all this is to muddy up the waters all the time and let them guess where he's going next... Pompeo and Assange might become best friends (this is satirical irony but you know what I mean: Assange knows that the CIA has told a lot of fibs and a lot of these fibs end up "in the media" as gospel...

So in the words of one of Murdoch (Murdoch having supported Trump from the beginning) oracles, Michael Goodwin: 

This month marks the two-year anniversary of one of the most important articles ever written on journalism. On Aug. 7, 2016, after Donald Trump formally secured the Republican nomination and the general election was underway, New York Times media columnist James Rutenberg began with a question:

“If you’re a working journalist and you believe that Donald J. Trump is a demagogue playing to the nation’s worst racist and nationalistic tendencies, that he cozies up to anti-American dictators and that he would be dangerous with control of the United States nuclear codes, how the heck are you supposed to cover him?”

Under the Times’ traditional standards, the right answer is that you wouldn’t be allowed to cover any candidate you were so biased against. But that’s not the answer Rutenberg gave.

Instead, quoting an editor who called Hillary Clinton “normal” and Trump “abnormal,” Rutenberg suggested “normal standards” didn’t apply. He admitted that “balance has been on vacation” since Trump began to campaign and ended by declaring that it is “journalism’s job to be true to the readers and viewers, and true to the facts, in a way that will stand up to history’s judgment.”

I wrote then that the article was a failed attempt to justify the lopsided anti-Trump coverage in the Times and other news organizations. It was indeed that — and more, for it also served as a dog whistle for anti-Trump journalists, telling them it was acceptable to reveal their biases. After all, history would judge them.

Weeks later, Dean Baquet, the Times’ executive editor, told an interviewer the Rutenberg article “nailed” his thinking and convinced him that the struggle for fairness was over.

“I think that Trump has ended that struggle,” Baquet boasted. “I think we now say stuff. We fact-check him. We write it more powerfully that it’s false.”

Because the Times is the liberal media’s bell cow, the floodgates were flung open to routinely call Trump a liar, a racist and a traitor. Standards of fairness were trashed as nearly every prominent news organization demonized Trump and effectively endorsed Clinton. This open partisanship was a disgraceful chapter in the history of American journalism.

Yet the shocking failure of that effort produced no change in behavior. After the briefest of mea culpas for failing to see even the possibility of a Trump victory, the warped coverage continued and became the media wing of the resistance movement.

Which is how we arrived at the latest low moment in journalism. This one involved the more than 300 newspapers (including The Post) that followed The Boston Globe and, especially his accusation that they are “the ­enemy of the people.”

The high-minded among the media mob insisted they were joining together to protect the First Amendment and freedom of the press. In fact, the effort looked, smelled and felt like self-interest and rank partisanship masquerading as principle.

True to their habit, most of the papers expressed contempt for the president and some extended that contempt to his supporters.

Read more:

https://nypost.com/2018/08/18/the-medias-hatred-of-trump-is-only-hurting...

The only thing Trump is terrified of is that Uncle Rupe could dump him. And this is not going to happen soon, knowing how much Murdoch hates the Democrats, global warming science and hates restrictions on pumping the good oil and his love of burning dirty coal.

Ask Trumble about it. Trumble's job is in the balance, not because of Labor, but because of all the Murdoch inspired commentators who still support Turdy Abbott... "while being on the same side"...

In a separate open letter on Thursday, William H McRaven, the retired navy admiral who oversaw the operation to kill Osama bin Laden, requested in solidarity with Brennan that Trump revoke his security clearance as well.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/18/why-is-donald-trump-atta...

Well well... I smell a rat. William H McRaven's security clearance should be revoked. 

We tend to forget that the murder of Bin Laden was revenge — not justice as we have come to accept it. And was it revenge? For all we know, Bin Laden was responsible for a lot of terrorism attacks and yet after his murder, we got loaded with far more of the same crap, including the "birth" of IS — an ultra Wahhabi branch of Al Qaeda. We also suspect that Bin Laden was "protected species" for the Saudis... By the time of his assassination, Bin Laden was leading a peaceful life in retirement, drinking tea. We will never know the extend of what he did if he ever did what he has been accused of. His complete elimination after a raid on his home was not something to be proud of. He could and SHOULD have been brought to "justice", but one can suspect that he knew too much and the "legend of Bin Laden" might unravel as a plot of the CIA to bamboozle the punters...

He had to be eliminated not for revenge nor glory but because he had to be silenced. He could have written a different narrative... and he possibly had... His papers were seized and some of the back door connections might not have been savoury.

Read from top.

Sign into any social media platform and you're immediately bombarded by endless feeds full of links to news stories, often accompanied by breathless comments or rants, each jostling for a precious sliver of your attention.

Throw in the fact that fake news spreads faster online than the truth and it can be hard to quickly and accurately discern what's real from the hoaxes.

So don't believe everything you read — or see or hear. Here are a few common ways you're getting conned while scrolling through your social media feed.

• Out-of-date or out-of-context information
• 
  
• Fake victim and perpetrator profiles
• 
  
• Fake victim and perpetrator profiles
• 
  
• Pranks, campaigns and satire
• 
  
• ... and finally, literal fake news

Pay attention to clues like language, licence plates and road signs to nut out where the photo or video was originally taken.

Be critical of eyewitness accounts posted to social media. They may not be lying but they can be mistaken, or perhaps they only saw part of the incident.

Often after domestic attacks, witnesses will tell police they heard the perpetrator speaking Arabic; in many cases, neither the perpetrator nor the witness understand the language.

There are tools available for people that can readily debunk a fake. A quick reverse image search can tell you if a photo has been used online before, and Snopes has a database dedicated to viral content.

And while not always reliable, you might check what other readers are saying about viral content.

If a tweet attracts a large-enough audience, it will often have rebukes and debunks in replies or comments.

Finally, put more trust in information from news outlets that can confirm claims through official sources — even if they're not completely immune to being fooled too.

read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-09-11/fake-news-online-five-ways...

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Here on YD, we use a special tool kit to detect bullshit. In it there are such things like "common sense" and cross referencing — and secret channels. We know that the biggest hoax perpetrated on the world was "Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction" fake information which fooled nearly all the English hegemony media and promoted a useless war the repercussions of which are still felt. The same goes with the war on Afghanistan and the war on Libya — and Syria.

"Intelligence" agencies such as the CIA, MI6, ASIO cannot be trusted at any level. Some of the information might be "correct" but it will be packaged to suit an outcome. The outcome defines the information.

Often you can ask yourself, what is this caper for? For example Channel 7 had an exclusive visit into the vault of the Reserve Bank yesterday. Some 36 billion bucks in cages under Martin Place, Sydney. Today's news: the Reserve Bank warns about the unsustainable "national debt". Are the two events related? We will have to wait but one needs to be prepared for the "government tightening something, especially credit". 

Another example is "Religious freedom is under no threat" as an editorial of The Sydney Morning Herald. Why is this? Because our new monkey-in-chief, ScoMo, has made FALSE claims that "religious freedom was under threat". So the false information is coming from the highest authority of the land, the Prime Minister.

The advent of social media has not helped either way the promotion or the "debunktion" of fake news. Fake news has been with humans since they fell off the tree. Even sciences are not immune to fake experiments, though most scientists try hard to avoid fake results. Meanwhile, religious beliefs are the biggest fake explanation about humanity's existence on this little planet.

Welcome to Planet Deceit. We are living, and have lived for a long time, in the "Age of Deceit". Deceit is a natural function of survival. We humans have turned this into an art form. We even lie to our self.

See toon at top.

See also:

Following the overwhelming backlash over the first full-fledged summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in July, Donald Trump was said to have been forced to backtrack on some of his comments.

The CIA plunged into “panic mode” in July when President Donald Trump somewhat hinted that Vladimir Putin’s “strong and powerful” denial of meddling in the 2016 election outshined the US intelligence assessment, The Washington Post reported, citing an unnamed intelligence official.

“There was this gasp” among those watching at the CIA, the insider claimed, adding “You literally had people in panic mode watching it at Langley. On all floors. Just shock”.

The CIA and the White House are yet to comment on the report.

READ MORE: ‘Full Extent’ of Russian Meddling on Google in 2016? $4,700 Spent on Ads (VIDEO)

Standing next to Putin in Helsinki, Trump said that while he had “great confidence” in the US intelligence community, he didn’t see any reason why Russia would have interfered in the election process.

“He [Putin] just said it’s not Russia. I don’t see any reason why it would be, but I really do want to see the server. I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today”, he said.

But on the very next day, Trump made a U-turn in his support of Putin’s denial of Russian meddling in the US election, claiming that he had misspoken during the joint presser and accepted US intelligence conclusions that Moscow had purportedly sought to influence the outcome of the vote.

“The sentence should have been: I don’t see any reason why I wouldn’t – or why it wouldn’t be Russia”, he clarified at the time, claiming he had used a very confusing “double negative”.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/world/201812131070653850-cia-panic-trump-intelli...

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