Trump Strikes Back at ‘Ringleader’ Brennan

I am not a fan of Donald Trump. But I’m still extremely happy that the Clinton Creature didn’t win. The Dims tried to pull a fast one to get Mrs It’s-My-Turn into the White House. Now they’re trying to censor what we say, what sites are officially ‘approved’ for us to go to, and who is ‘worthy’ to be on the internet. Thats Al From/Bill Clinton’s Koch-Brothers-financed, Third Way, Neo-liberal, ‘New’ Democratic Party who's doing this. The Clinton’s have destroyed the left. And one of them pulled one of most egregious anti-constitutional acts this country has ever experienced.

Trump Strikes Back at ‘Ringleader’ Brennan

By Ray McGovern
Special to Consortium News

There’s more than meets the eye to President Donald Trump’s decision to revoke the security clearances that ex-CIA Director John Brennan enjoyed as a courtesy customarily afforded former directors. The President’s move is the second major sign that Brennan is about to be hoisted on his own petard. It is one embroidered with rhetoric charging Trump with treason and, far more important, with documents now in the hands of congressional investigators showing Brennan’s ringleader role in the so-far unsuccessful attempts to derail Trump both before and after the 2016 election.

Brennan will fight hard to avoid being put on trial but will need united support from from his Deep State co-conspirators–a dubious proposition. One of Brennan’s major concerns at this point has to be whether the “honor-among-thieves” ethos will prevail, or whether some or all of his former partners in crime will latch onto the opportunity to “confess” to investigators: “Brennan made me do it.”

Well before Monday night, when Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani let a small bomb drop on Brennan, there was strong evidence that Brennan had been quarterbacking illegal operations against Trump. Giuliani added fuel to the fire when he told Sean Hannity of Fox news:

“I’m going to tell you who orchestrated, who was the quarterback for all this. … The guy running it is Brennan, and he should be in front of a grand jury. Brennan took … a dossier that, unless he’s the biggest idiot intelligence agent that ever lived … it’s false; you can look at it and laugh at it. And he peddled it to [then Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid, and that led to the request for the investigation. So you take a false dossier, get senators involved, and you get a couple of Republican senators, and they demand an investigation—a totally phony investigation.”

*

What needs to be borne in mind in all this is, as former FBI Director James Comey himself has admitted: “I was making decisions in an environment where Hillary Clinton was sure to be the next president.” Comey, Brennan, and co-conspirators, who decided—in that “environment”—to play fast and loose with the Constitution and the law, were supremely confident they would not only keep their jobs, but also receive plaudits, not indictments.

https://consortiumnews.com/2018/08/15/trump-strikes-back-at-ringleader-b...

The Dimocritic Party is dead.

NOTE: I was worried about Consortiumnres.com when Robert Parry died but they’re still putting out great work. Thank goodness some people and websites are still ‘honest’!

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The Aspie Corner's picture

That's where you're wrong. Whether it was the Clintons or their patsy Trump, they won anyway. There was no lesser evil here. Their policies were Trumpy Boy's policies. Enrichment of the capitalists through class collaboration/subjugation while keeping the proles at each other's throats, imperialism, destruction of what's left of welfare capitalism, etc. But go on and be happy Billary didn't win. At least someone can feel good about something.

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

Amanda Matthews's picture

@The Aspie Corner

out this smarmy crap...

But go on and be happy Billary didn't win. At least someone can feel good about something.

You know, every one of your responses to any of my posts has always been sarcastic and rude.

Getting tired of it.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

snoopydawg's picture

@Amanda Matthews

It would be nice if he stops being repetitive about complaints we all recognize and share AS THE RECOGNIZED SYSTEM which hurts us all, and stay within the framework of the essays, the comment threads, and move toward advocating specifics to rectify that system if he has any.

Aspie you are preaching to the crowd unnecessarily, and it is an unnecessary distraction.

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Amanda Matthews's picture

@snoopydawg

but I can only speak for myself.

I’m surprised no one has said something before.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

Pluto's Republic's picture

@Amanda Matthews

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

@Pluto's Republic understand the bitterness in the posts. Life is just too tough at times.

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dfarrah

Amanda Matthews's picture

@dfarrah

all.over. I’m using a phone my daughter pays for because my ‘income’ is at poverty level. I was laid off at 62 and since then I’ve applied for HUNDREDS UPON HUNDREDS of jobs. I’ve had 10 frigging strokes 8 were TIAs, and 2 big ones. So can I act like jackass too?

He’s been nothing but nasty to me and everybody else for as long as I’ve been here.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

Pluto's Republic's picture

@Amanda Matthews

Any essay that does not wail about Trump as the cause of everything that is evil in the universe — and focuses instead on the corruption, its true origins, and other truths at the root of the nation's destructive rot — is seen as a personal threat to his rigid mind map of who to blame.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
The Aspie Corner's picture

@Pluto's Republic rather than criticizing the system itself that gave us Dipshit as the pigs' insurance policy is just as bad. I'm well aware it's not just Dipshit. Hell, it doesn't take a genius to figure out the system was designed to be corrupt in the first place.

But here's what I'm noticing with some posts here: Even when the system IS criticized, it's done only on the pigs' terms i.e. "It's all the Deep State's fault" and other reactionary, stupid shit that utterly ignores the class element in all this. Why else do you think toadies like Manafort and Cohen are taking the fall instead of Dipshit and Billary?

Oh, and let's not forget the typical lesser evilism right in the first sentence (Well, at least Hillary didn't win). Let me reiterate something I posted elsewhere: No matter who wins this latest spat between capitalist pig factions, WE will lose. This latest dog and pony show with Billary is yet another distraction we can't fuckin' afford.

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

CB's picture

@The Aspie Corner

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Amanda Matthews's picture

@The Aspie Corner @The Aspie Corner

Everybody is a PIG.

Happy now?

EDIT: removed a rogue ‘The’

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

@Amanda Matthews You’re not the only one.

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

Alligator Ed's picture

Security clearance--a sick effing joke. Trying to overthrow a legally elected president, both before and after the election, with a transparently bogus plot, no matter how complex, deserves neither sympathy nor forgiveness. Let him repent in Hell.

Check out Wikipedia's section on John O. Brennan.

This guy is amazingly conflicted par for the course in D.C. Voted for Gus Hall in 1976. Now a reactionary, neocon.

He emphasized after leaving office that his entry into the CIA showed that freedom of speech in the U.S. does not disqualify a person for a career in government

Yet, he, his buddy Clapper, Comey, McCabe, Yates, etc. all conspired to terminate a presidency. Like Trump or hate him, he is still the President.

Brennan told The New York Times in January 2010, "I was somebody who did oppose waterboarding,"[27] a claim that he repeated in 2013, during the Senate's hearings about whether to confirm him as Obama's CIA director.[28] None of Brennan's superior officers at the CIA, however, recall hearing his objections, and in 2018, Brennan admitted to The New York Times, "It wasn't as though I was wearing that opposition on my sleeve throughout the agency. I expressed it privately, to individuals."

His reward for Deep Statesmanship is coming and it won't be to his liking.

Consider Brennan being stripped of security clearance as being a test balloon for the stripping of clearances from other anti-Trumpers and co-conspirators.

In a delightful turn of events, the CIA's new boss, Gina Haspell (who also knew of water-boarding and apparently condoned it openly) is now the boss of Brennan's old agency, after he demoted Haspell from leading the National Clandestine Service of the CIA. I'm sure she'll put in some good words for the J.O.B. at his treason trial.

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snoopydawg's picture

@Alligator Ed

their security clearances according to Leveymg because they leaked classified information to the press, but I didn't see a link to verify that. We will have to see if Trump has the power to charge them for doing it. Obama of course didn't charge them because he only charged people who told us things that the government didn't want us to know about.

After Brennan was stripped he doubled down on saying that Trump committed treason today on Meet the Presstitutes. As Ray stated Brennan is hanging in the wind if none of his other intelligence buddies come to his defense.

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Alligator Ed's picture

@snoopydawg None of those bastards will put their neck on the line to save the co-conspirators. Empathy and sympathy are two concepts not in the psychology of these goons.

Two-faced Demonrat

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k9disc's picture

Then saving Brennan in a public act of artificial sacrifice is warranted, right?

Saving one's skin means pretending to lay it all on the line for the cause.
@Alligator Ed

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“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu

Pluto's Republic's picture

@snoopydawg

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

@Pluto's Republic in a government job? Do we want former presidents or HRC to have access? Or former security whatevers?

The policy of courtesy security clearances is ridiculous.

There have to be hundreds of thousand of people with security clearance, yet we the people can't even get a straight story from them or discover the bad stuff they did.

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dfarrah

Pluto's Republic's picture

@dfarrah

The policy of courtesy security clearances is ridiculous.

Plus they use those security clearances to leverage themselves into high-paid consultancies that often work against the wellbeing of the People.

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The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
k9disc's picture

@Alligator Ed Went there the other day to get a "conservative" number of war dead from Vietnam. I was more than a bit surprised by the revised numbers.

Wikipedia, IMO, is now the Memory Hole.

Guenter Lewy in 1978 estimated 1,353,000 total deaths in North and South Vietnam during the period 1965–1974 in which the U.S. was most engaged in the war. Lewy reduced the number of VC and PAVN battle deaths claimed by the U.S. by 30 percent (in accordance with the opinion of United States Department of Defense officials), and assumed that one third of the battle deaths of the PAVN/VC were actually civilians. His estimate of total deaths is reflected in the table.

It's changed so many times I've gotten whiplash trying to make sense of it.

It might be harder to read reality in it than it is in reading legislation.

The bias is ALWAYS slanted towards corporate / Establishment.

@Alligator Ed

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“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu

lotlizard's picture

@k9disc  
with rules supporting transparency and fairness — in this case Wikipedia — turns out to be, when push comes to shove, an authoritarian, pyramidal dictatorship and one-man show whose illusion of “truthiness” is managed by privileged cronies.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales . . .

. . . is ultra-supportive of Israel and claims U.K. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-Semite
https://www.msn.com/en-ae/news/other/time-to-fork-wikipedia-jimmy-wales-...
https://mondoweiss.net/2018/08/wikipedia-suggests-antisemite/

. . . portrays himself in the Guardian as a crusader leading the fight against “fake news”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/03/online-transparenc...

. . . runs Wikipedia in a manner that not only dovetails with his personal biases but also even displays some characteristics of an “establishment psyop”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-44495696
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/05/20/wikipedia-is-an-establishment-ps...

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@lotlizard

Thanks.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

@Alligator Ed those with clearances are asking Trump to revoke theirs in protest.

Good riddance to them all - a bunch of war criminals acting like a bunch of whiny babies.

some of these babies are even whining about how Trump will use government power against somebody - oh, the horror! Apparently, using the apparatus of the state was just fine with them when it was (and is being) used against Trump.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/how-important-is-the-prote...

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dfarrah

snoopydawg's picture

The Atlantic which is the mouthpiece for the Atlantic Council has an article about Trump pulling Brennan's SC. They are saying that he did that just to distract people from Omarosa Manigault-Newman's book. Wagging the security clearances?

This week, beset by bad news about Omarosa Manigault-Newman, President Donald Trump decided to launch a war of choice. The White House announced Wednesday that he had revoked security clearance for John Brennan, who was the CIA director under Barack Obama and has since become a leading Trump critic. Trump also threatened to take clearance away from a slew of other critics.

But wars, once started, don’t always unfold the way you intend. In Trump’s case, a host of prominent retired military and intelligence leaders have entered the fray opposing him. First, retired Navy Admiral William McRaven wrote an open letter to the president in The Washington Post on Thursday criticizing the revocation of Brennan’s clearance and asking to join him: “I would consider it an honor if you would revoke my security clearance as well, so I can add my name to the list of men and women who have spoken up against your presidency.”

Later on Thursday, another 13 former generals and spy chiefs signed a letter in support of Brennan. Some of them have already been visible Trump critics, including the former NSA chief Michael Hayden and the former CIA deputy chief John McLaughlin, but others have been less outspoken, such as Porter Goss, the CIA director under George W. Bush. The real surprises are Robert Gates, a former CIA director and defense secretary, and David Petraeus, who also led the CIA.

Let's talk about David Petraeus shall we? David was charged or should have been charged under the espionage act for leaking classified information to his girlfriend. I'm not sure ... So she could write a book! His sentence? He paid a$100,000 fine and got two years probation. Every one else Obama charged went to prison!

Petraeus was also a war hero, (barf) leading U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan before becoming the CIA director. He was eventually forced to step down for sharing classified information with a woman with whom he was having an affair, but he’s retained a sheen of respect and credibility in national-security circles. He has gone out of his way to avoid criticizing the president, and was considered as secretary of state at the outset of the Trump administration.
....
The second is that it keeps Trump on the back foot, always playing defense against critics. The president views the security clearances as a useful tool for distraction. He first floated the idea in late July, amidst backlash to his disastrous meeting with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. He then revoked Brennan’s clearance in the midst of another firestorm, over Manigault-Newman’s dishy book about the administration. When the White House first announced the Brennan move, they initially failed to scrub the date on the announcement: July 26, 2018. The revocations are entirely symbolic, too. Though there are several reasons former officials typically keep their clearances, Trump is not endangering the livelihood or careers of any of them. (A threat to revoke the clearance of the Justice Department official Bruce Ohr is different.)

If the goal was to distract, it didn’t work. The president’s war of choice against the intelligence community has spiraled out of his control, yet at the same time, Manigault-Newman stayed firmly lodged in the headlines. On Thursday, she released yet another clandestine recording, this one capturing the president’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump offering her a $15,000 a month job in return for silence. (Spies are not the only ones skilled in spycraft, it seems.)

No president in history has had to deal with a hostile press and environment like Trump has. I guess "respecting the office of the president' only happens when the ones who play the games win. Or maybe it's when people aren't trying to say that you are not the duly elected president. Trump didn't have to cheat to win the primary like Herheinous did. He won it the old fashioned way. Like him or not he was elected fairly. The democrats have spent two years now on this false pretense that he wouldn't have beaten 'thee most qualified woman ever' if it wasn't for outside interference.

lol

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Amanda Matthews's picture

@snoopydawg

is that people like them have been scaring the crap out of me and everyone else with their talk about how evil and dangerous RUSSIA! is since I was a little kid. Hiding under my desk praying that the RUSSIANS! didn’t blow us to smithereens. Some kids cried. That shit was horrible to live through. And they’re still pulling that same old shit. I’m tired of it and I’m really really pissed about the mess they’ve created for our kids and grandkids.

Lucky for me that I came of age (16) during the Vietnam war. I saw that it wasn’t RUSSIA! that was so scary, I saw that it was US screwing everything and everybody. People I knew were very smart. They explained how we’d overturn every country that didn’t dance to our tune. And we’ve damn well tried. What the School of the Americas did was a gross obscenity. I am so thankful that I’ve had so many people in my life to teach me these things about this country.

Since 1946, the SOA has trained over 64,000 Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques, sniper training, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence and interrogation tactics. These graduates have consistently used their skills to wage a war against their own people. Among those targeted by SOA graduates are educators, union organizers, religious workers, student leaders, and others who work for the rights of the poor. Hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been tortured, raped, assassinated, “disappeared,” massacred, and forced into refugee by those trained at the School of Assassins.

http://www.soaw.org/about-the-soawhinsec/what-is-the-soawhinsec

It’s amazing how many people don’t know about that. I can’t figure out if they’re woefully uninformed or willfully ignorant.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

snoopydawg's picture

@Amanda Matthews

Of course we didn't learn the truth about this country in school. Instead we learned that we are the good guys who have gone around the world defending people from their brutal leaders (most of the ones that we put in power) and to spear freedumb and democracy when the truth was that we were the bad guys all along.

Now we're hearing that Russia has been the aggressors not us. Putin's involvement in Syria has made the 'civil' war worse when he was the one actually fighting against ISIS and the other terrorists that we propped up. Putin has been protecting Assad who used chemical weapons on his citizens when the truth was that it was the White Helmets who actually used them and we have funded them along with our NATO allies.

Russia Russia Russia has actually been USA USA USA!

IMG_2487.JPG

Did you see my essay on how the democratic Resistance has come to Brennan's defense? How people can't see through the fact that they have been brainwashed into believing this shit show of Russia Gate. It's mostly the people who were Hillary and Barry supporters. Most of the Trump and Bernie supporters see this for what it is.

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Amanda Matthews's picture

@snoopydawg @snoopydawg

everything I posted much better than I did.

EDIT: put the ‘n’ in find

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

Alligator Ed's picture

@Amanda Matthews I humbly profess my ignorance to the School of American Exceptionalism. I am proud of the Amerikkkan dream being passed on to the benighted SudAmericanos so that they may more efficiently rape convert their countries to the model of the good ol' USA.

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snoopydawg's picture

@Alligator Ed

It has trained so many country's troops to run ruff shod over the citizens after we installed brutal puppet dictators.

The School Of The Americas Is Still Exporting Death Squads

South American militaries have been sending soldiers to the U.S. for “ethics” and “human rights” training for years, but history shows that many of these alumni go on to become notorious torturers and murderers, not defenders of peace.

Between 1999 and 2010, Chilean governments sent a total of 1,205 recruits to the school, with Bachelet remaining at the helm of cooperation with the U.S.-based institute that has graduated scores of alumni involved in human rights violations under Chile’s dictatorship era from 1973 to 1990.

Despite the macabre reality inflicted upon Chileans during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, the Concertación governments of the center-left, allegedly embarking upon a democratic future for Chile, retained ties with the school that produced torturers such as Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, who, according to torture survivors, never concealed his identity while subjecting his victims to brutality.
....
Established in 1946 in Panama, the SOA was responsible for training over 64,000 South American soldiers, many of whom later became notorious torturers and murderers in death squads. According to former Panamanian President Jorge Illueca, the SOA was the “biggest base for destabilization in Latin America.”
....
CIA and U.S. Army manuals detailing torture techniques translated into Spanish and utilized by the SOA are a far cry from anything containing human rights protections. Indeed, as SOA Watch explains, “These manuals advocated torture, extortion, blackmail and the targeting of civilian populations

This is just one of many articles on it that shows how this country trained soldiers how to torture and murder in order to keep their puppet masters safe from 'the peasants.'
Gawd! This country has so much blood on its hands!

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Amanda Matthews's picture

J @snoopydawg

Petraeus was also a war hero, (barf) leading U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan

He was a total loser in that position too.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

snoopydawg's picture

People are asking why Trump would want to take clearances from this is that person. It does not make sense. Maybe we are asking the wrong question. Instead ask why would Putin want their clearances taken away.

That Putin guy strikes again!
SMDH

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k9disc's picture

oath and turned his agency loose domestically on congress to hide war crimes to show up on TV calling the President a traitor. Why shouldn't he be entitled to retain his security clearance?

This is completely normal.

The only reason for removing a security clearance in this situation would be to protect oneself from political embarrassment. So simple, right?

@snoopydawg

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“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu

Cassiodorus's picture

They merely revealed that Left to be another version of the Right, and outfitted it with appropriately right-wing policies to suit.

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama