Puppet MastersS


Briefcase

Trump to file unlawful search and seizure motion over 'illegal' FBI raid

fbi raid mar a lago trump
© Giorgio Viera/AFP via Getty ImagesAn FBI agent stands outside Trump's Mar-a-lago as it conducted a raid August 8, 2022
Former President Donald Trump announced he will file a Fourth Amendment unlawful search and seizure motion over the FBI's "illegal" raid on Mar-a-Lago in a post made on TRUTH Social on Friday.

"A major motion pertaining to the Fourth Amendment will soon be filed concerning the illegal Break-In of my home, Mar-a-Lago, right before the ever important Mid-Term Elections," Trump posted.

The former President said the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago violated his rights, "together with the rights of all Americans," and added that it is part of a continued witch hunt against him. Trump added:
My rights, together with the rights of all Americans, have been violated at a level rarely seen before in our Country. Remember, they even spied on my campaign. The greatest Witch Hunt in USA history has been going on for six years, with no consequences to the scammers. It should not be allowed to continue!

Comment:


Bad Guys

Putin's claim that US is deliberately dragging out Ukraine conflict has merit - American military analyst

putin
FILE PHOTO:
Claims made by Russian President Vladimir Putin that the United States is intentionally prolonging the Russia-Ukraine conflict may not be as implausible as described, says one U.S. military veteran and journalist.

In a speech this week, Putin called out "Western globalist elites" who he said are "provoking chaos, inciting old and new conflicts," and attempting "to preserve the hegemony and power that is slipping out of their hands." He added that the situation in Ukraine shows the U.S. is "trying to prolong the conflict."

Sean Spoonts, a U.S. Navy veteran and editor-in-chief of Special Operations Forces Report (SOFREP), told Newsweek that President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky seem to have separate policy goals in mind.

"It seems like while Ukraine would like to end the war quickly and decisively defeat Russian forces and drive them out of their country, U.S. policy almost seems designed to prolong the conflict hoping to bring about the collapse of Russia itself, both militarily and economically," Spoonts said.


Comment: Except that Russia is nowhere near to being overextended and has only needed to deploy a fraction of its forces, it's even able to prioritise civilian life over it's mission to deNazify Ukraine. Moreover, there is no way that Ukraine, nor the US for that matter, could 'quickly defeat Russia', even if they wanted to.


Comment: Despite even American media admitting that the US is directly involved in the war on Russia, it seems that the US, knowing it can't take Russia on directly, is willing to concede, at least officially, to Russia's red lines, which is at least one reason for why it hasn't sent more advanced weaponry to Ukraine: Putin says West trying to contain formation of multipolar world by activating old conflicts


Eye 2

Saudi-led coalition violates UN-brokered truce with Yemen over 200 times in 24 hours

yemen saudi bombing
© AFPFILE PHOTO: Yemenis inspect the damage following overnight air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition in the capital Sana'a, on January 18, 2022.
The Saudi-led coalition forces and their allied militant groups have over the past 24 hours breached more than 200 times a UN-brokered nationwide truce that took effect in war-ravaged Yemen in April.

Yemen's Arabic-language al-Masirah television network cited an unnamed Yemeni military official as making the announcement on Sunday, saying the violations included reconnaissance missions over the provinces of Ma'rib, Ta'izz, Jawf, Sa'ada, al-Hadidah, Sana'a, Ad Dali', al-Bayda, Hajjah and border areas.

The source said the Saudi-led coalition forces committed truce violations initially with air strikes on citizens' homes, the positions of the Yemeni army and Popular Committees in the district of Maris in Ad Dali' and in the northwest and northeast of Hais in al-Hadidah.

Sherlock

Daughter of Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin killed in car bomb attack in Moscow

Darya Dugina
© Social MediaDarya Dugina was killed in a car bombing on the outskirts of Moscow.
A car belonging to the daughter of famous Russian political scientist and philosopher Alexander Dugin exploded late Saturday in Moscow, according to media reports.

Darya Dugina's car exploded on Mozhayskoye highway around 9.45 p.m. local time, with witnesses claiming the blast rocked the vehicle in the middle of the road and scattered debris.

Preliminary reports said she died instantly. The elder Dugin has arrived at the scene, according to a video on social media.

Comment: The Guardian reports:
Witnesses said debris was thrown all over the road as the car was engulfed in flames before crashing into a fence.

"An explosive device allegedly installed in a Toyota Land Cruiser car went off at full speed on a public highway, and then the car caught fire," investigators wrote in their report of the incident. "The female driver died on the spot. The identity of the deceased has been established: it is the journalist and political scientist Darya Dugina."

Andrey Krasnov, a friend of Dugina and the head of the Russian Horizon social movement, confirmed the reports, according to the news agency Tass.

He said the bomb could have been intended for her father.

"This was the father's vehicle. Darya was driving another car but she took his car today, while Alexander went in a different way. He returned, he was at the site of the tragedy. As far as I understand, Alexander or probably they together were the target," Krasnov said.

The media outlet 112 reported that Dugin and his daughter had been at an event outside Moscow and had been due to travel back together until he decided to go separately at the last minute.

Footage on social media appeared to show him at the scene in a state of distress.






Alexander Dugin
© Francesca Ebel/APAlexander Dugin.
A number of pro-Kremlin officials immediately blamed Kyiv for the blast. Margarita Simonyan, the head of the state-funded RT television station, wrote that "they blew up Dugin's daughter" and called for attacks against the "decision-making centres" in Kyiv.

The head of the self-proclaimed, Russian-controlled Donetsk People's Republic, Denis Pushilin, wrote on his Telegram channel that Dugina had been killed and blamed the Ukrainian government.

"Vile villains! The terrorists of the Ukrainian regime, trying to eliminate Alexander Dugin, blew up his daughter ... In a car. Blessed memory of Daria, she is a real Russian girl!"

Investigators said they had opened a murder case and would be carrying out forensic examinations to try to determine exactly what had happened. They said they were considering "all versions" when it came to working out who was responsible.

The influence of Dugin over Putin has been a subject for speculation, with some Russia watchers asserting that his sway is significant and others calling it minimal.

Dugin and his daughter have been sanctioned by the UK and US for acting to destabilise Ukraine. In its filing, the UK Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation called Dugina a "frequent and high-profile contributor of disinformation in relation to Ukraine and the Russian invasion of Ukraine on various online platforms".


Ukraine had Alexander on what amounts to their 'most wanted' list:



The US Treasury sanctioned her as the chief editor for the website United World International, which it claimed was owned by the Putin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin.
TASS reports:
Investigators have opened a criminal case

The press service added that at the moment, forensic experts, investigators and experts in explosive engineering continue to inspect the incident site. "Based on the results of the inspection, a number of examinations will be appointed, including forensic, explosive engineering and molecular-genetic. All possible versions of the crime are being probed into," the press service noted.

Darya Dugina was born in 1992. She graduated from the Philosophy Department of Lomonosov Moscow State University. She was a PhD.
RT reports:
A journalist and political commentator, Platonova was the daughter of philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, who is often painted in the West as the ideologist of President Vladimir Putin's foreign policy over the past decade.

However, in Russia, Dugin is viewed as a relatively marginal figure due to his often extreme anti-Western and 'neo-Eurasian' views. The 60-year-old has never been officially endorsed by the Kremlin.

Russian writer and political activist Zakhar Prilepin, who also attended the festival, hinted that Ukraine could be behind the bombing.

"They do things like this. They've crossed the line long ago," he wrote on Telegram, noting the assassination of the head of the Donetsk People's Republic, Aleksandr Zakharchenko, in 2018, which was blamed on Kiev, and other high-profile bomb attacks in Donbass in recent years.

"This comedy idol, this sleepy man in a T-shirt - he greenlights such actions," Prilepin said in an apparent reference to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, who was a comedian before turning to politics.

Judging from his post, the writer believes that Dugin, not his daughter, was the real target of the attackers. No evidence of Kiev's role in the bombing has been made public so far.
Political analysis Andrew Korybko provides his analysis on the incident:
The Assassination Of Alexander Dugin's Daughter Darya Was A Dastardly Terrorist Attack

Darya's assassination represents a crossing of the Rubicon in the Ukrainian Conflict whereby Kiev has escalated its terrorist attacks to the point of targeting the family members of civilians who they were duped by fake news into falsely thinking are unofficially very influential policymakers like they seem to have believed that her father is. This targeted assassination that was indisputably influenced by half a decade's worth of fake news about that philosopher shows the deadly consequences of America's information warfare campaign.

Darya Dugina, the daughter of Russian philosopher and professor Alexander Dugin, was assassinated Saturday evening when the jeep she was driving exploded on a Moscow highway due to what investigators believe was a bomb that had earlier been placed within it. Suspicion is also swirling that her father was the intended target after sources revealed that he was supposed to have also been in the vehicle but decided to return home from the Tradition and History family festival through alternative means at the very last minute. Although no related evidence has yet to be made public, many are beginning to believe that Kiev was behind this dastardly terrorist attack.

Professor Dugin is perhaps the second most "infamous" Russian behind President Putin in the Western imagination after falsely being accused of being akin to a modern-day version of "Rasputin". According to this artificially manufactured information warfare narrative that's been spun for over the past half-decade already, that philosopher's prior works supposedly convinced the Russian leader to restore his former superpower's influence over the countries that used to comprise the Soviet Union. The reality, however, is that this geostrategic trend was the natural result of his Great Power gradually recovering from its post-Soviet collapse and more confidently defending its national security red lines in Eurasia.

Nevertheless, it serves Western perception managers' narrative interests to concoct a dramatic conspiracy theory in order to more easily manipulate their targeted audience. Instead of purely remaining in the media realm, however, this false interpretation of geostrategic events ultimately had deadly consequences insofar as successfully convincing the Neo-Nazi regime in Kiev that Professor Dugin supposedly constituted a so-called "threat" that they were therefore felt had to be eliminated no matter what, ergo the assassination attempt against him that ended up killing his daughter instead. This sequence of events leads to several very important conclusions.

First, unsubstantiated allegations like those against Professor Dugin can spread like wildfire if they creatively appeal to their targeted audience's imagination. Second, this fake news can have very real consequences if it influences folks to carry out acts of violence against the subject being smeared. Third, civilians like he and his daughter who go about their everyday lives are so-called "soft targets" that can be harmed more easily than government figures because they don't have full-time security services to protect them. Fourth, the Ukrainian intelligence services were obviously monitoring their movements, attempting to penetrate their circles, and thus preparing to strike at a future time.

And fifth, Professor Dugin and his daughter are public figures who accordingly share their event schedules on social media, which in hindsight contributed to this so-called "crime of opportunity" that was planned to be committed through indirect means via the car bomb that was ultimately employed as part of this assassination plot. From this, it can be speculated that the culprit either planted the device while those two were at Saturday's festival or sometime prior, with it being unclear whether it was detonated via a timer that couldn't be stopped (hence why it blew up despite the philosopher changing his plans at the last minute) or if it was manually done to deliberately kill his daughter.

The fact that she was still killed despite their presumably intended target unexpectedly deciding to go home in a different vehicle suggests that the perpetrators still decided to go through with their plot in order to at the very least send a message to him and Moscow more broadly that they've decided to escalate their US-backed Hybrid War on Russia.

It also confirms that the declining unipolar hegemon's proxies in Kiev are truly state sponsors of terrorism who must accordingly be treated as such by the international community. This dastardly terrorist attack threatens the legitimate rules-based order enshrined in the UN Charter and thus confirms that the US is deliberately sowing the seeds of chaos in a desperate last-ditch attempt to erode Russian morale after the slow but steady advance of its forces over the past half-year of its special military operation.

Tens of billions of dollars' worth of US-led Western military equipment to Kiev haven't succeeded in shaping the course of the conflict, which continues to trend in the direction of an inevitable Russian victory despite uncertainty about the exact moment when that outcome will be officially recognized by its opponents. Only the side that's losing would resort to such acts of terrorism since they clearly lack the conventional capabilities to alter on-the-ground events in their favor. Objective observers can therefore conclude that the US-led NATO proxy war on Russia through Ukraine has failed to achieve its grand strategic objective of crippling that Great Power and might thus be in its final conventional stage.
More footage of the incident from Twitter:




Umbrella

No longer a pariah? Russia and China could be about to 'normalize' North Korea, leave the US with another Asian headache

Kim and Putin
© Yuri Kadobnov/AP/FileRussian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un • Vladivostok, 2019
At beginning of this week the North Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin had exchanged letters with Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un.

The report stated both countries had agreed to "expand the(ir) comprehensive and constructive bilateral relations with common efforts".

Matching the anniversary of Korean independence on August 15th, Putin's outreach comes as Russia seeks new partners away from the West. It also follows reports that North Korean expatriate workers would be assisting in the reconstruction of liberated territories in the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, to which it recently granted diplomatic recognition.

But it's also an indication that the world has changed, significantly. Only a few years ago Russia, as well as China, were at least somewhat willing to cooperate with the United States in imposing sanctions on the DPRK in the bid to curb its nuclear and missile development.

That situation no longer exists.

Comment: Perhaps Kim Jong Un is thanking his lucky stars a permanent relationship between the US and Korea did not materialize.


Propaganda

This media empire leads the charge in the US-China propaganda war

Murdoch
© AP/Mary AltafferRupert Murdoch, the opinion that matters
Australian-born American billionaire, Rupert Murdoch's global media empire has consistently led the charge in pushing anti-China narratives in the Western media. Encompassing a long list of highly influential media, including both television and print media in the liberal and conservative camps, the list of talking points aimed at Beijing is immense.

For example, The Wall Street Journal's Editorial Board argued on Monday that China "is paying for the Communist Party chief's policy mistakes," referring to Chinese President Xi Jinping. The editorial argues that the world economy, including China's, is slowing down and that "the latest data released Monday on China's ebbing growth will echo around the world" because "the response from Beijing suggests its leaders are running out of ideas to arrest the decline."

The piece goes on to bemoan China's "dynamic zero-Covid" policy, which has objectively saved millions of lives and made China's supply chains resilient and reliable for global investors.

It did not mention, for example, a January report by Citigroup, based on three surveys conducted by the American Chamber of Commerce China, the EU Chamber of Commerce China and the Japan External Trade Organization, that found that all three put China as their favorite investment spot specifically because of its COVID-19 containment strategy.

Comment: When power controls the message, truth does not matter.


Nuke

Putin, Macron call for IAEA inspection of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Plant

PutinMacron
© Odd Andersen/Stephanie Mahe/AFP/KJNRussian President Vladimir Putin • French President Emmanuel Macron
Zaporizhzhia Complex
French President Emmanuel Macron has expressed concern to Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin about safety risks at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant in Ukraine, Macron's office said, adding that Putin had agreed to send a mission of experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to the site.

A statement also said that the two presidents -- who discussed the situation in Ukraine in a phone call on August 19 -- agreed to continue their talks in the coming days.

The Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant was captured by Russia in March, shortly after it invaded Ukraine on February 24.

The plant -- Europe's largest -- has repeatedly come under fire in recent weeks, sparking fears of a nuclear disaster. Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of shelling the plant. The Kremlin quoted Putin as saying that the shelling of the Russian-controlled nuclear site, which he blamed on Kyiv, created the risk of "large-scale catastrophe."

According to the Kremlin, both leaders called for IAEA experts to inspect the plant "as soon as possible" and "assess the real situation on the ground."

Red Flag

US on verge of becoming party to Ukrainian conflict, Moscow warns

howitzer
© Sputnik/Evgeny BiyatovA US-supplied M777 howitzer, seized by Russian forces in Ukraine.
Washington's continued support for Kiev during Moscow's military operation has put the US on the verge of becoming party to the Ukrainian conflict, Russia's deputy Foreign Minister, Sergey Ryabkov has said. He told Rossiya 1 TV channel on Friday:
"We don't want escalation. We'd like to avoid a situation, in which the US becomes a party to the conflict, but so far we don't see any readiness of the other side to take these warnings seriously."
Moscow rejects Washington's explanation, that providing Ukraine with weapons and other aid is justified by Kiev's right to self-defense, he pointed out.
"Excuse me, what kind of self-defense is it if they are already openly talking about the possibility of attacking targets deep in the Russian territory, in Crimea?"
According to Ryabkov, such statements are being made by the Ukrainian side
"not just under the blind eye of the US and NATO, but with the encouragement of this kind of sentiment, approaches, plans and ideas directly from Washington.

"The ever more obvious and deeper involvement in Ukraine in terms of countering our military operation, in fact, puts this country, the US, on the verge of turning into a party to the conflict."

Comment: Another $800 million lethal aid reasons to throw Biden out of office.


Light Sabers

Malaysia's Mahathir says US seeking to provoke war in Taiwan

Mohamad
© AP/Vincent ThianFormer Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad
Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad on Friday accused the U.S. of trying to provoke a war in Taiwan, and in a wide-ranging interview also said he expects Malaysia's graft-tainted ruling party to hold general elections in the coming months.

Mahathir, a two-time prime minister long known as a critic of the West and its geopolitics, warned that the U.S. was antagonizing China through recent visits to Taiwan by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others. China considers the self-ruled island democracy part of its territory and regards such visits as meddling in its affairs.

The 97-year-old Mahathir said:
"China has allowed Taiwan to remain by itself. No problem. They didn't invade. If they wanted to invade, they could have invaded. They didn't. But America is provoking (them) so that there can be a war, so that the Chinese will make the mistake of trying to occupy Taiwan. Then there is an excuse ... for the U.S. to help Taiwan, even fight against China and sell a lot of arms to Taiwan."
Following Pelosi's visit, China launched large-scale military drills surrounding the island and fired ballistic missiles into the sea. Beijing also warned Washington not to encourage Taiwan to try to make its de facto independence permanent, a step China says would lead to war.

There was no immediate U.S. response to Mahathir's comments.

Comment: Mahathir proves his age doesn't matter. He is smart, savvy and calls the shots.


Stop

Ukraine conflict could end Western hegemony - Hungary

Orban
© AP/Thresa WeyHungarian PM Viktor Orban
The deadly conflict in Ukraine has the potential to "demonstratively" put an end to Western hegemony globally, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has claimed.

In an interview with German online magazine Tichys Einblick, published on Thursday, Orban said he expects the European Union to emerge weaker in the global arena once the fighting in Ukraine is over.

The Hungarian leader argued that the West is incapable of winning the conflict militarily, and that the sanctions it has imposed on Moscow have failed to destabilize Russia. To make matters worse, the punitive measures have spectacularly backfired on the EU, he said.

Orban also noted that a "large part of the world" is clearly not getting behind the US when it comes to Ukraine. He pointed to "the Chinese, Indians, Brazilians, South Africa, the Arab world, Africa" as regions not supporting the Western line on the conflict.

"It is quite possible that it will be this war that will demonstratively put an end to Western supremacy," Orban said.