The deeply conservative (!) "Die Welt" in Germany has two pieces by Sy Hersh, completely debunking the supposed chemical attack by the Syrians at Khan Sheikhoun. It also paints a highly disturbing picture of the decision-making process in both the White House and the Pentagon.

The first one is a rather short conversation that includes all the goodies: the chemical attack in Syria was, once again, not a chemical attack by Syrian forces -- they hit a stash, just like both the Syrians and the Russians claimed at the time.

The piece also details that US forces are keenly aware that it was not a chemical attack, that the response (Tomahawk strike on Syrian airfield) was equally ridiculous and dangerous, and that the bellicose stance of the US vis-a-vis Russia is complete lunacy.

The longer piece by Hersh himself and displays in great details the disconnect between Trump and his military advisers, as well as between the upper echelons of the military and the troops in the region.

Just a snippet about the strike itself:

A Bomb Damage Assessment (BDA) by the U.S. military later determined that the heat and force of the 500-pound Syrian bomb triggered a series of secondary explosions that could have generated a huge toxic cloud that began to spread over the town, formed by the release of the fertilizers, disinfectants and other goods stored in the basement, its effect magnified by the dense morning air, which trapped the fumes close to the ground.

And the media went along for the ride, for the umpteenth time. Remember Brian Williams fawning about the beauty of the weapons?

At some point, this volatile mixture of warmongering and McCarthyism is going to start WW3, and they'll blame it on the Russians.

I think this quote illustrates the issue quite nicely:
“Did the Syrians plan the attack on Khan Sheikhoun? Absolutely. Do we have intercepts to prove it? Absolutely. Did they plan to use sarin? No. But the president did not say: ‘We have a problem and let’s look into it.’ He wanted to bomb the shit out of Syria.”

INTERCEPTED PODCAST: THE TRUMP MIXTAPE — DANTE’S INFERNO MEETS DISCO INFERNO
https://megaphone.link/FL2441335022

Aha! This is pretty recent, and I've seen the actual play that is being, uh, highlighted.

The Colorado Avalanche (COL, white jerseys) are dead last in the NHL this season, and it isn't even close. They are beyond terrible. I'm a fan, but this season is so grim that I can't bring myself to watch games; just catch up once in a while on a week or two's worth of bad news. I saw this play came up just a few days ago.

In the play in question here (can't see much of it in the video, I'll embed below) a Colorado player gets a breakaway. Scoring a goal wouldn't do anything dramatic like get them back in the game, or save the season or anything. But it might save some pride and make it actually appear like they are professional hockey players. Hell, I think Avs fans would have been happy if he just hopelessly shot the puck right into the logo on the goalie's chest. Going through the motions would be an improvement for this team.

Instead, he inexplicably decides to stop, turn around, and attempt to pass to his teammate a few strides back. But the pass is intercepted by a defenseman from the other team, because OF COURSE it is. So they went from a guaranteed scoring chance (a breakaway shot) to nothing. Pretty much sums up their season, in one play.

Here it is:


Considering all that, I think the whole debacle was completely deserving of having a big dick drawn all over it.

This one's a bit dated (5 weeks), but still good stuff:
http://shout.lbo-talk.org/lbo/RadioArchive/2016/16_12_15.mp3

Mark Ames on "Putin-did-it", starting at around 25:40.

Edit: also, first episode of Intercepted is out, Jeremy Scahill's weekly podcast.

He's got Sy Hersh on this time, and Hersh had a lot to say about "Putin-did-it", including this bit:
"It’s high camp stuff. What does an assessment mean? It’s not a national intelligence estimate. If you had a real estimate, you would have five or six dissents. One time they said 17 agencies all agreed. Oh really? The Coast Guard and the Air Force — they all agreed on it? And it was outrageous and nobody did that story. An assessment is simply an opinion. If they had a fact, they’d give it to you. An assessment is just that. It’s a belief. And they’ve done it many times."

The Senate confirmed Mike Pompeo as Director of the CIA.

Enough has been said about Pompeo's stance on torture, his theocratic tendencies, etc. And the Intercept had a nice piece on the 14 Democrats who voted yes.

What jumped out to me was this: John McCain voted yes. The one thing this warmonger occasionally has going for him is being anti-torture, and he voted yes in the confirmation of guy who continually defended the use of torture.

Hypocrisy must be easier to bear when your pockets are filled to the brim with corporate cash...

I agree with Oliver here, but I think he sorta missed an opportunity to talk about confirming exactly who our US Constitutional protections should apply to.

It has been all-to-common in the past decade-plus for people / bodies in our government to "justify" questionable actions by saying that they were performed on people who aren't US citizens. Detain and torture suspected (or *known*) terrorists indefinitely without trial? That's fine, they aren't citizens. Send drone strikes against people outside of US borders that we suspect may be aiding terrorists, even though collateral damage is likely? Meh, they aren't Americans. Spy on people, record and intercept their communications to the greatest extent possible without a warrant or probable cause? Never mind -- we're not doing it to our own citizens (even though we now know that even that justification is an outright lie).

It would be nice for the government to take a stand and state that ALL of the protections that are granted by our constitution and have made our country what it is should actually be considered universal and binding in terms of how our government interacts with ALL people, not just US citizens.

Freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly, fair trial, no unreasonable searches and seizures, etc. etc. Consistently and universally applied whenever the government has any interaction with any human being on the planet -- inside or outside of US soil, and whether that person is a US Citizen or not.

I suppose it would take a constitutional amendment to codify that. That would require 2/3 support in congress -- so I won't hold my breath. But here is where a president with true leadership could step up and say that whether there is an official amendment codifying that or not, every government office under his (or her) command should behave as though that was law. All the 3-letter agencies, the military, etc. I think that would get the ball rolling and make an amendment possible on down the line.

Our constitutional protections are arguably what made our country great. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain by proving that to the rest of the world by actually standing by the courage of our own convictions.

Glenn Greenwald's (The Intercept) take on the Brexit vote.
https://theintercept.com/2016/06/25/brexit-is-only-the-latest-proof-of-the-insularity-and-failure-of-western-establishment-institutions/

"Can [They] be so insanely sheltered that they think her 'answers' help her?"

If you piece together all of her statements on a plethora of different topics, it is inescapably obvious that they (!) truly have no connection to anyone or anything outside their bubble. Surrounded by sycophants as the Clintons are, people have wondered, and justifiably so, whether she cares or even knows that she's lying on a regular basis. One might make the case that the entire concept of an objective "truth", connected to reality, has no meaning for them.

Additionally, she really does suck at campaigning. But that's not punishable by extended prison sentences, unlike, I don't know, sending Special Access Program (SAP) info through your own bloody email server.

Lastly, Joe mentions Powell (6:16 onwards). When Colin Powell was SoS, his office was connected to the internal system, but had no connection to the internet or the outside world in general. You can't get shit done that way, not in this day and age. That's why he had additional gear set up to at least send and receive emails. This was done separate from the internal network and, if I remember correctly, his entire staff was not only open about it every step of the way, they applied for and received special permissions before they touched anything.

Clinton didn't give a jar of cold piss about the rules that are meant to safeguard access to sensitive information. It was inconvenient to her, and since the rules and laws only apply to plebs, she and her posse set up their own system.

A whole lot of people have to adhere to tedious rules and procedures, with severe punishment looming just around the corner. One guy was in the press for receiving three years of prison after he placed a document on the wrong desk. So, if the FBI drags out the investigation or even buries it, you can bet your ass that a lot of people at different agencies are going to be fuming. And between the FBI, the NSA and CIA, a lot of people have access to the remaining emails from Clinton's server. That opens Clinton up to blackmail, a lot of it. Can't have a compromised president. Not to mention that someone's going to take the data and just drop it over at WikiLeaks or the Intercept.

Seems like this would be an incredibly expensive and complicated means to that end. Fly your launch aircraft close enough to an airport and you're going to arouse suspicion, and my hunch is if you're not close to an airport then intercepting a commercial airliner in a jetpack is going to be next to impossible.

Well, right until Pearl Harbor there were the do-fights and don't-fights. If the anti-war party hadn't been assassinated, ran out and broken, we wouldn't have had to fight Japan at all.

The problem is these people still ruled. Imagine them pressing forward with a nuclear plan (which would have absolutely occurred if they thought they could get away with it.) Interestingly Germany sent material to them to dump on our shores as a sort of nuclear bomb but we intercepted it. It is thought that we used it against Japan, which is hilarious. But I digress.

The point is--even if they planned on surrendering, they had no intention of concessions. Would those in power (who were as guilty as the Nazi) willingly turn themselves over for trial? Huehue.

As far as the Soviet issue, yeah, your facts go without saying. And Truman did get his results--he got Stalin to restrain himself (In a certain way...though there was the cold war.)

Very. Even radio messages were intercepted that made that clear. The USA chose to ignore those, play them down.
Truman had his agenda with the Soviets. What does Russia has to do with Japan? Pretty simple actually. After Germany was defeated Russia was advancing very quickly towards Japan, and Truman didnt want them in Japan. Truman hated Stalin with a passion and used every opportunity to humiliate him or show Americas strength to him. One particular event was very telling, after he announced the nuclear bombs to Stalin and expected respect, fear and acknowledgement from Stalin but instead got indifference and burst in rage about Stalins reaction. Even Churchill noticed how much Truman changed after he got the bomb. He seemed like an insecure boy who suddenly got the power of a superhero. A very dangerous combination and it proved to be fatal for at least the Japanese and was pretty much the sole reason for the cold war.
Japan was bombed not only once but twice, even though the USA knew they would surrender soon, not because of them fearing more human loss on their side, but because they feared Russia would be able to reach Japan if they waited longer.

I just remembered two great examples (turn off your audio unless you enjoy obnoxious music):

During the Supercup in 2013, Neuer spent nearly the entire second half of overtime in Chelsea's half of the pitch. Here's one of his successful interceptions/clearances, 114th minute, Chelsea up 2-1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q-JOubsXc4

Sometimes, his clearance falls short and comes back to haunt him:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbzLln1CAQo

Tuesday: head of counter-intelligence says there is no evidence for espionage by the NSA [in Germany].

Wednesday: WikiLeaks publishes lists of top German NSA targets and intercepts.

Thursday: I need to grab a replacement keyboard from my shelf, because the previous one is now, once again, covered in coffee from when I had a laughing fit.

I don't think your read the same article, read the same document or watched the same video...
The video and the released document does not show that NSA stole his credentials. It shows that NSA cracked password to a 3rd party company that resells their service.

Furthermore, "network map" they showed on pages 3, 4 and 5 are simply AS interconnection maps. You can easily see it here https://www.robtex.com/as/as35207.html#graph or here https://stat.ripe.net/widget/bgplay#w.resource=35207

THEY CAN NOT INTERCEPT COMMUNICATIONS from "any and all of his company's customers". The only thing they can do that password is see physical location of satellite service users and turn on or turn off their service. HE SPECIFICALLY SAID THAT THIS SPECIFIC LOGIN IS LIMITED IN WHAT IT CAN DO!!!!!!!

If it obvious that you have no technical understanding of the issue at hand and this is a perfect example of how this article is scaremongering hype!

I think the issue is quite well documented in the video.

In the video, the engineer learns that the NSA has stolen his credentials and used them to gain access to his company's private, otherwise secure network.

The map shown in the video is not a routing table, nor is it a colorful map of domain records associated with a given domain such as appears in your Robtex link. It's actually a copy of the NSA's rendering of the network map denoting the number of nodes they have penetrated.

He then realizes that the NSA can use this particular access to intercept communications from any and all of his company's customers, and, in the case of satellite customers, use geolocation to pinpoint the physical origin of a given communication.

If you don't agree that this is outrageous, then there's nothing more to discuss.