Okay, here's your "false flag"

A number of prominent Republicans tried to say the recent attacks on Dems have been false flags done by the Dems to make Trump look bad.  So this looks extremely suspicious.



...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Is it time to be reminded of PNAC?

December 15, 2017 "Information Clearing House" - Years ago there was a plan, A Clean Break: Project for the New American Century (PNAC), to wreck the Oslo peace accords between Israel and the Palestinians and to re-mold the Middle East. It first involved destroying Iraq or in the discredited words of Paul Wolfowitz, “The road to peace in the Middle East goes through Baghdad.”

Destroying Syria was to be next. And then Iran.

[...]

Core promoters of the PNAC plan signed an open letter to then President Clinton calling for the removal of Saddam Hussein. They were Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, R. James Woolsey, Elliot Abrams, Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Zoellick and John Bolton, all solid members of the Neoconservative project.

  Information Clearinghouse

"And John Bolton."

Of course, all this was years ago, but the plan remains, supported by many powerful American war interests.

Also...something from September 2014: A History of Turkish False Flag Attacks on Syria

An article by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh in April of this year  [2014] titled: ‘The Rat Line and the Red Line’, argues that the gas attack last year in Ghouta was an attack carried out by the Syrian rebels with the planning of Turkish authorities as opposed to the Syrian government. In the article Hersh quotes a former intelligence official as stating: ‘We now know it was a covert action planned by Erdoğan’s people to push Obama over the red line’. As soon as the gas attack hit the mainstream press in the West, the calls for war went into overdrive. War was only averted due to massive public opposition to the move which forced the British parliament to vote against intervention in Syria, as well as the Russian government brokering a deal to place the Syrian government’s chemical weapons supplies under international control.

The notion that Turkey is capable of planning such a malevolent attack was strengthened when officials from the top echelons of the Turkish government were caught red handed discussing a false flag attack on their own territory, in order to justify a war with Syria earlier this year. The officials are heard discussing the possibility that they could arrange an attack on the tomb of the grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman Empire, Suleiman Shah, which is situated in a Turkish enclave in the Syrian city of Aleppo. Hakan Fidan, the head of Turkish intelligence is heard saying in the leaked audio tape: “We can also prepare an attack on Suleiman Shah’s tomb if necessary”, Fidan continues, “Listen, listen commander if it’s a pretext we’ll give you one. I’ll send over four men and have them fire right rockets on an empty lot. That’s not the problem, pretexts can be arranged.”

  New Eastern Outlook

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Did US airstrikes in Syria target Hezbollah?

I keep seeing this pop up on various Twitter accounts, but nowhere in the western news sources:

It's believable considering Israel just bombed the same place.

A suspected Israeli missile assault on a Syrian airbase in Homs province was a "historic mistake", the leader of Lebanon's Iranian-backed Hezbollah has said in a televised speech.

Hassan Nasrallah said on Friday from the Lebanese capital, Beirut, that Israel had placed itself in direct confrontation with Iran, referring to the missile attacks that targeted military sites in Syria on April 9.

Two Israeli warplanes, using Lebanese airspace, fired eight missiles at the T-4 military airbase, according to the Russian military.

The attack on the airbase, located 40km west of Palmyra, killed about 14 people, at least four of whom were Iranians from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps - an independent force that answers only to the country's supreme leader.

Nasrallah described the attack as unprecedented in the region - something that could not be overlooked.

[...]

In his speech, Nasrallah described the suspected chemical attack, which killed at least 85 civilians, including women and children, as a "theatrical play", and appeared to clear the Syrian government of responsibility amid a chorus of Western accusations against it.

He cautioned the United States against military intervention in Syria, saying it would pit the country in a battle with "the people of the region" rather than "armies or organisations".

  alJazeera

And, in quick order, Trump did just that.

Israel is technically at war with Syria and occupies a chunk of the strategic Golan Heights, which it seized in the Six Day War of 1967 and later annexed in a move never recognised by the international community.

Israel has sought to avoid direct involvement in the Syria conflict but acknowledges carrying out dozens of air raids there to stop what it calls deliveries of advanced weaponry to Hezbollah.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu coupled praise for U.S.-led strikes on Syrian targets on Saturday with a warning that Iran’s presence there further endangers Syria.

[...]

An Israeli official said Israel was notified of the strikes ahead of time. Asked how much warning Israel had received, the official told Reuters: “Between 12 and 24 hours, I believe.”

  Reuters

Which makes it seem like a coordinated strike with Israel's April 9 strikes.

Asked whether Israel helped choose targets, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said: “Not to my knowledge.”

A non-denial denial. Why would the Reuters reporter even think of that question?

Netanyahu said Israel would not allow Iran to establish itself in Syria, according to his office.

Israel has mounted air strikes in Syria on a regular basis, targeting suspected weapons shipments to Lebanese Hezbollah.

Gee, you don't think they'd stage a chemical attack to appear to come from Assad himself when the US president announced American troop withdrawal from Syria, do you?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  We do know that the Homs area was indeed targeted. 

The targets were a Syrian centre in the greater Damascus area for the research, development, production and testing of chemical and biological weaponry; a chemical weapons storage facility near the city of Homs; and a third site, also near Homs, containing both a chemical weapons equipment storage facility and a command post.

  France24

"Another"

Even after they've been outed for lying about the supposed previous attack, the White House is running with this narrative.

The White House issued an ominous warning to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Monday night, pledging that his regime would pay a "heavy price" if it carried out another chemical attack this year.

[...]

"The United States has identified potential preparations for another chemical weapons attack by the Assad regime that would likely result in the mass murder of civilians, including innocent children," [White House press secretary Sean] Spicer said in the statement. "The activities are similar to preparations the regime made before its April 4, 2017 chemical weapons attack.

"As we have previously stated, the United States is in Syria to eliminate the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria," he continued. "If, however, Mr. Assad conducts another mass murder attack using chemical weapons, he and his military will pay a heavy price."

  WaPo

That never happened.

And our UN ambassador has already pre-assigned culpability, a nice cover for any false flag operations. A nod to our surrogates in Syria to go ahead with a gas attack.

Surprisingly, and shamefully, this Washington Post article does not mention that the allegation of a first attack has been negated, much less contested.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Techno Revolution?

Errata Security

Yeah, sorry.  I don't believe it.  Anonymous might.  But Silicon Valley programmers making beaucoup bucks?  All hat, no cattle, when it comes to revolution.

On most policy questions, there are two sides to the debate, where reasonable people disagree. Crypto backdoors isn't that type of policy question. It's equivalent to techies what trying to ban guns would be to the NRA.

So the FBI trundles along, as if the opposition were hippies instead of ardent revolutionaries.

  ErrataSec

So, a techie slams people by calling them "hippies". Probably how  FBI agents talk, too.

That's an old, worn out insult that isn't an insult at all. What, I ask you, was wrong with hippies? For the most part, they were peace-loving youngsters who respected the environment and believed in "live and let live". It's an insult in the same way the word "liberal" is. I met a Democrat while living in Galveston who said it's a sad day when you get slammed for caring about people. (He also said he was not from Texas; he was from Galveston, an island south of Texas.)

There will eventually be another major terrorist attack in the United States, and the terrorist will have been using encrypted communications.

With this, I agree. Another FBI "sting".

Julian Sanchez is probably right that at this point, the FBI isn't pushing too hard, and is willing to just pressure companies to get what they want (recovered messages from iCloud backups), and to give populist activists like the EFF easy wins (avoiding full backdoors) to take the pressure off. But in the long run, I believe this issue will become violent.

I'm with George. I won't hold my breath waiting..

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

I Prefer Bracelets of Gullibility, If It's All the Same to You

In most parts of the world, the people are inheritors of millennia-old cultures and they understand that the false flag* is how governments operate regardless of what their state media tell them. But most Americans, who wear self-righteous gullibility around their necks like a millstone and crave simple Manichean dramas, are easy marks for the false flag. Americans' proud ignorance of geography and history compounds the problem by making self-contradictory narratives sound plausible.

[...]

The implausibility of that argument [that Iran supports alQaeda] in a Middle East riven by religious schisms - Iran is a theocratic Shiite nation-state, while al-Qaeda is a stateless group seeking a universal Sunni caliphate - matches the unlikelihood of a secular Arab gangster state like Saddam Hussein's Iraq collaborating with al-Qaeda. But Americans - not all, but enough - fell for that one, too.

[...]

But contradictory or not, the propaganda continues and the pressure for war ratchets up. Even the former chief of Mossad. Meir Dagan, is despairing that Israel, supported by the United States, may rush into what he calls "the stupidest idea I've ever heard."

  Retired Republican House and Senate staffer Mike Lofgren for Truth Out

And I bet he's heard some pretty stupid ones.

*False flag (aka Black Flag) operations are covert operations designed to deceive in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities. The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colors; that is flying the flag of a country other than one's own. (source)