Iran Front Page, “Iran Confirms Death of ISIS Leader al-Baghdadi” 29 June 2017:

An Iranian official has confirmed that the ISIS terrorist group’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is ‘definitely’ dead.

Representative of Iran’s Leader in IRGC Quds Force, Ali Shirazi, said on Thursday ‘the death of this terrorist [al-Baghdadi] is certain’.

Last Thursday, Russia’s deputy foreign minister had declared that it is highly likely al-Baghdadi, the ISIS leader, was killed in a Russian airstrike near Raqqa, Syria, on May 28.

Oleg Syromolotov told Sputnik* the “information is now verified through various channels.”

The remarks are similar to those made June 16 by the Russian Defence Ministry, which said Baghdadi was among more than 300 ISIS militants, including mid-level field commanders, who were killed as a result of Russian airstrikes near Raqqa, the city that serves as the terrorist group’s de-facto capital.

* Sputnik is not in much of a place to confirm anything but Active Measures propaganda. Nevertheless, the story is apparently corroborated by other sources, therefore we’ll presume it to be true.

Though he does a very admirable job of exposing Israeli misdeeds, it’s almost as if former CIA officer Philip Giraldi has been flipped to Active Measures. The site that he writes for, Unz Review, acts suspiciously like an organ thereof. Image, Philip Giraldi by Gage Skidmore.jpg

There is a saying that “the darkest spot - and therefore the best place to hide - is directly beneath the light.” It is apparent that many Jewish interests are in diaspora and they hide directly beneath the light of anti-Zionism.

This article at Unz Review, “How Israel Manages Its Message: A new app enables instant pushback,” provides significant insight into Hasbara‘s power and influence in the war of perception. But its author, Philip Giraldi, is wasting his insider insight (he’s former CIA officer) at the Unz Review. And it is apparent that he is welcome there because with Giraldi, as ever, the issue with Jews is strictly a matter of Zionism - which he criticizes very well, but apparently at the price of letting their diaspora influence to flee to Russia, the US and elsewhere - allowing their nefarious influence to go uncritiqued in diaspora, while their cover there is protected and deepened - for example, in collusion with The Russian Federation’s Active Measures in its infiltration of the European and American Right Wing.

Philip Giraldi, at Unz Review, 27 June 2017:

“How Israel Manages Its Message: A new app enables instant pushback”

Those of us who are highly critical of Israel’s ability to manipulate U.S. foreign policy frequently note how sites that permit comments on our articles are almost immediately inundated with hostile postings that are remarkably similar in both tone and substance. Given that it is unlikely that large numbers of visitors to the sites read the offending piece more-or-less simultaneously, react similarly to its content, and then go on to express their disgust in very similar language, many of us have come to the conclusion that the Israeli government or some of the groups dedicated to advancing Israeli interests turn loose supporters who are dedicated to combating and refuting anything and everything that casts Israel in a negative light.

The fact is that Israel is extremely active in an enterprise that falls in the gray area between covert operations and overt governmental activity. Many governments seek to respond to negative commentary in the media, but they normally do it openly with an ambassador or press officer countering criticism by sending in a letter, writing an op-ed, or appearing on a talk show. Such activity is generally described as public diplomacy when it is done openly by a recognized government official and the information itself is both plausible and verifiable, at least within reasonable limits. Israel does indeed do that, but it also engages in other activities that are not so transparent and which are aimed at spreading false information.

When an intelligence organization seeks to influence opinion by creating and deliberately circulating “false news,” it is referred to as a “disinformation operation.” But Israel has refined the art of something that expands upon that, what might be referred to more accurately as “perception management” or “influence operations” in which it only very rarely shows its hand overtly, in many cases paying students as part-time bloggers or exploiting diaspora Jews as volunteers to get its message out. The practice is so systemic, involving recruitment, training, Foreign Ministry-prepared information sheets, and internet alerts to potential targets, that it is frequently described by its Hebrew name, hasbara, which means literally “public explanation.” It is essentially an internet-focused “information war” that parallels and supports the military action whenever Israel enters into conflict with any of its neighbors or seeks to influence public opinion in the United States and Europe.

The hasbara onslaught inevitably cranks up when Israel is being strongly criticized. There were notable surges in activity when Israel attacked Gaza in 2009 and 2012, as well as when it hijacked the Turkish humanitarian relief ship the Mavi Marmara in 2011. The devastating 2014 Gaza fighting inevitably followed suit, producing a perfect storm of pro-Israel commentary contesting any published piece that in any way sympathized with the Palestinians. The comments tend to appear in large numbers on websites where moderation and registration requirements are minimal, including Yahoo! News, or Facebook and Twitter.

The hasbara comments are noticeable as they tend to sound like boilerplate, and run contrary to or even ignore what other contributors to the site are writing. They often include spelling and syntactical hints that the writer is not natively fluent in English. As is the practice at corporate customer support call centers in Asia, the commenters generally go by American-sounding names and use fake email addresses. They never indicate that they are Israelis or working on behalf of the Israeli government and they tend to repeat over and over again sound bites of pseudo-information, as when they falsely insist that Hamas was solely responsible for the recent Gazan wars and that Israel was only defending itself. The commenters operate in the belief that if something is repeated often enough in many different places it will ipso facto gain some credibility and create doubts regarding contrary points of view.

READ MORE...

Freddie’s Dead, das What I said.

SBDL, “$10.9 Million: The Combined Amount of Money Families of Freddie Gray, Michael Brown and Philando Castile Received in Settlements,” 26 June 2017:

Posthumously, it pays to be a black criminal:

Freddie Gray was a heroin dealer, who should have been in jail.

Michael Brown tried to kill Darren Wilson.

Philando Castile refused to cooperate with police.

All in all, in death they are worth a combined $10.9 million.

This is why we coined the term of America being irredeemable.

Freddie Gray: Baltimore to pay Freddie Gray’s family $6.4 million to settle civil claims, Baltimore Sun, 9-8-2015. 

Michael Brown: ‘Secret’ settlement in lawsuit over Brown’s death was $1.5 million, St. Louis Today, 6-24-17.

Philando Castile: Philando Castile Family Reaches $3 Million Settlement, New York Times, 6-26-17

Oh, and Tamir Rice’s family got $6 million from the city of Cleveland.

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KIRO7, SEATTLE - A man was killed in a stabbing near Dick’s Drive-In in Seattle’s Queen Anne neighborhood Friday morning in what witnesses say was an unprovoked attack, 23 June 2017:

Friends tell KIRO 7 News that the 26-year-old man killed is Andrew Pimentel. He was hanging out and singing karaoke at Ozzie’s at First Avenue West and West Mercer Street went the three blocks to get Dick’s Drive-In about 2 a.m.

Witnesses said the suspect, in an unprovoked attack, came across the street and plunged a large knife into Pimentel’s chest in the restaurant parking lot.

Medics gave Pimentel first aid and then took him to Harborview Medical Center, where he died from his injuries. The suspect walked away from the scene.

Witnesses were hysterical. A woman was so upset by what she saw that she had to be transported to the hospital too.

               

Washington Post, 23 June 2017:

“Obama’s secret struggle to punish Russia for Putin’s election assault”

In political terms, Russia’s interference was the crime of the century. It was a case that took almost no time to solve and was traced to Russian President Vladimir Putin. But because of the ways President Barack Obama and President Trump handled it, the Kremlin has yet to face severe consequences. Through interviews with more than three dozen current and former U.S. officials, The Post tells the inside story of how the Obama administration handled the Kremlin’s meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.

ROUNDING UP THE REVELATIONS

•••••••••••

Stunning intelligence: U.S. intelligence agencies had sourcing deep inside the Russian government capturing Vladimir Putin’s direct instructions to damage Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning and help elect Donald Trump.

READ MORE...

New Observer, “Israel Moves to Tighten its Racial Purity Laws” 23 June 2017:

Israel has moved to tighten its racial purity laws with the main Rabbinical authority in charge of training rabbis upholding its ban on performing marriage ceremonies between Jews and Goyim—while at the same time, the Israeli government has announced a new law which will squash all legal challenges to its biologically-based Jews-only racial immigration requirements.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency has reported that the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), which trains rabbis for the Conservative movement, said it is committed to keeping its ban on clergy from performing “interfaith” wedding ceremonies.

The JTS said that a marriage in Israel “is not only a celebration of a couple, but a commitment to the Jewish covenant” and that therefore marriages between Jews and non-Jews would remain illegal.

Currently, it is illegal under Jewish law for Jews to marry non-Jews in Israel, but recently some liberal Jews have tried to get this changed.

Trump the great deal -maker not.

It means that Trump has helped to make matters much worse by encouraging Saudi Arabia’s King Salman to elevate his 31-year-old son Mohammed bin Salman to first in line to the throne - in a “dramatic reordering of the kingdom’s line of succession that will have far-reaching consequences for the key US ally and the Middle East as a whole.”...

CNN, “What Saudi Arabia’s royal reshuffle means for the world”, 21 June 2017:

What does it mean for the US?

The key US priorities in the Middle East are stability and predictability, and the appointment of the relatively inexperienced Mohammed bin Salman is undoubtedly a shift away from that.

As defense minister, the prince has taken a hard line with Qatar, Iran and Yemen—and the US should expect to find itself increasingly caught up in the ebb and flow of the region’s ever-increasing political tensions.

The current diplomatic crisis between the Saudis and Qatar—Riyadh is trying to isolate Doha over claims that the latter supports terrorism—is a study in diplomatic tightrope-walking for the US.

Washington is publicly backing the Saudis over the spat—which has been led on the Saudi side by the new crown prince—while at the same time maintaining its large military base in Qatar.

Now, with a more gung-ho crown prince set to take charge, it is fair to assume that the Saudis will double down on its hardline positions on Qatar, Iran and the Yemen conflict.

What does it mean for Qatar?

In the short term, it’s hard to tell. The message to Qatar is clear: Expect more of the same. Mohammed bin Salman’s appointment means that the hard line taken by the Saudis is here to stay—and that no older, wiser voices are going to swoop in and moderate the stance any time soon.

What does it mean for Iran?

The move will further destabilize an already dangerously unstable situation.

Earlier in June, the Iranians pointed the finger at Saudi for a terror attack in their capital, Tehran. They then used this as a reason to fire missiles into Syria—a shot across the proverbial Saudi bow.

Tension between the two has been slowly building recently, and Mohammed bin Salman has taken a hard line against Iran. “We are a primary target for the Iranian regime,” he said in one recent interview. “We won’t wait for the battle to be in Saudi Arabia. Instead, we’ll work so that the battle is for them in Iran.”

Again, without more experienced voices around him, the new crown prince will feel emboldened to pursue his vision of a larger Sunni alliance, in which Saudi Arabia is the unchallenged leading power in the Middle East. This could lead to a dangerous miscalculation.

What does it mean for the Yemen conflict?

This is a conflict that Mohammed bin Salman has played a large part in—assisting the Yemeni forces in fighting off Iranian-backed Houthi rebels. In some respects, it is his war and he has to see it through.

But this is more than about saving face; Saudi stability is linked to Yemeni stability and, for that reason, the kingdom needs to continue supporting Yemen.

The brutal reality is that the conflict in Yemen is an Iran-Saudi proxy war, and the new crown prince one of its architects. It is not going to be solved through diplomacy any time soon.

       

Will the new crown prince loosen up Saudi’s conservative culture?

Forget about the monarchy lifting the ban on women driving any time soon. That will happen on the Saudis’ time frame—regardless of international pressure to change the law—and whatever they say, it is not a priority. One day it will arrive, but it’s not coming fast.