zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — actually, I think the IC keeps its eyes fixed on threats, foreign and domestic, as required ]
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Five Eyes is, as most Zenpundit readers will know, the intelligence-sharing arrangement between Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and US. Well, at the moment it’s squinting. From the day before yesterday:

The Independent, It’s like nothing we have come across before

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The attorney general is focusing on the theory, aired on far-right conspiracy sites, and raised by Trump and Giuliani, that Ukraine framed Vladimir Putin over the US election in a complex triple-cross operation by impersonating Russian hackers.

Trump and Barr have also been asking other foreign governments for help in investigating the FBI, CIA and Mueller investigators. The US president has called on the Australian prime minister Scott Morrison for assistance, while the attorney general has been on similar missions to the UK and Italy.

And the information being requested has left allies astonished. One British official with knowledge of Barr’s wish list presented to London commented that “it is like nothing we have come across before, they are basically asking, in quite robust terms, for help in doing a hatchet job on their own intelligence services”.

Something to ponder.

[ by Charles Cameron — think of these screen-grabs as frames in a comic, okay? — delicious ]
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Rachel Maddow:

on having her first taste of mille feuille on her b’day —

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Rachel:

Apparently this is a whole category of dessert ..

It looks like a normal cake from the outside .. That is what this news story out of Florida is .. So it’s not s million layers of cake, it’s a million layers of weirdness, one on top of another, that culminate in tonight’s news story ..

Rachel:

At this point in the delicious layer cake, we’ve got the massage parlor owner selling Chinese nationals personal physical access to the President, his family and cabinet-level officials in the administration, while she is simultaneously hanging out at the President’s private club, taking pictures with him, and working with the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government in a number of murky organizations that seem to have no public-facing purpose.

Rachel:

Layer on top of that, the arrest on March 30th, of a new lady we had not heard of before ..

Undisclosed cash flowed at Trump inaugural ball with ties to China, embattled Saipan casino

and so forth…

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And here’s the icing (?) on the cake:

[ by Charles Cameron — theology and espionage, non-dual — how could i possibly resist? ]
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!!

Thank you, dear friends.