Puppet MastersS


Megaphone

Mixed reactions as Trump slams Pentagon chiefs for reluctance to pull out of 'endless wars'

Daria Bedenko
Sputnik
Tue, 08 Sep 2020 04:07 UTC
Donal Trump
© AP Photo / Evan Vucci
US President Donald Trump's speech was seen by many as an "unprecedented attack" on the US military leadership, while he has been facing allegations that he mocked veterans that died in war - something that he vehemently denied.

During his press conference at the White House on Monday, US President Donald Trump asserted that Pentagon chiefs probably were not "in love with me", accusing the military brass of wanting to do nothing "but fight wars" so that weapon makers "stay happy".
"I'm not saying the military's in love with me. The soldiers are. The top people in the Pentagon probably aren't because they want to do nothing but fight wars so all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy", he said during the press briefing.
He went on to say there was "one cold-hearted globalist betrayal after another", championing the withdrawal of American troops from "endless wars" and condemning NATO allies for "ripping us off".
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Attention

German FM links Nord Stream 2 to Navalny, threatens sanctions as Moscow accuses Berlin of dragging feet on alleged poisoning probe UPDATE

Bryan MacDonald
RT
Tue, 08 Sep 2020 19:40 UTC
Zakharova/Maas
© Sputnik/Russian Foreign Ministry/Getty Images/Stephanie LoosRep. of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Maria Zakharova • German FM Heiko Maas
The alleged poisoning of Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny could see Berlin cancel the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, and press the EU to consider other sanctions against Moscow, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has said.

In an interview published on Sunday by Bild, a popular pro-American Berlin tabloid, Maas said:
"I hope the Russians don't force us to change our stance on Nord Stream 2, we have high expectations of the Russian government that it will solve this serious crime."
The German diplomat claimed to have seen "a lot of evidence" that the Russian state was behind the poison attack.
"The deadly chemical weapon with which Navalny was poisoned was in the past in the possession of Russian authorities. Novichok is only accessible to a very small group of people."
He conceded that stopping the almost-completed pipeline would also harm German and broader European business interests, pointing out that the gas pipeline's construction involves "over 100 companies from 12 European countries, and about half of them come from Germany."

The minister also threatened the Kremlin with broader EU sanctions if it doesn't help to clarify what happened "in the coming days."

Comment: Is Berlin ready to bite the hand that turns on Germany's heat?

This situation is progressing from the absurd to the unacceptable according to the Kremlin, as Browder weighs in:
The Kremlin has ridiculed the suggested creation of a 'Navalny List' that would impose more sanctions on Russians, following accusations that Moscow is responsible for the alleged poison attack on opposition figure Alexey Navalny.

On Saturday, the American conservative journalist Bret Stephens wrote in the New York Times that the US should pass a 'Navalny Act,' similar to the 2012 Magnitsky Act, in order to punish Russian authorities for the poisoning of the political blogger.

According to Stephens, the proposal has been backed by vulture capitalist Bill Browder, who suggested that a long list of officials should be punished simultaneously by the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, the European Union, and Australia.

"There are many absurd initiatives, both on the right and on the left. It would be strange if a person like Browder, who is wanted by Russia for tax and other crimes, did not agree with such absurd proposals," Peskov pointed out.
Apparently the Kremlin does not currently see any risk of Germany blocking the construction of the pipeline:
After a weekend of talk in Berlin about linking the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to the alleged poisoning of Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny, the speculation was dialed down on Monday by a German government spokesman.

"I understand that your questions are formed in one direction - about the repercussions," Steffen Seibert told reporters, adding that it was "too early" for a definitive response, confirming German Chancellor Angela Merkel has not yet discussed the situation with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

On Monday, Siebert said that Merkel supported Maas' viewpoint. "The chancellor shares the opinion of the foreign minister," he confirmed.

The Kremlin does not currently see any risk of Germany blocking the construction of the pipeline. Speaking to journalists, Peskov delivered a blunt "no" when asked if Moscow was concerned that Berlin may derail the project.
UPDATE 7/9/2020 Navalny out of medically induced coma:
Alexei Navalny has regained consciousness and is reacting to stimuli, doctors announced on Monday. He has been brought out of a medically induced coma for the first time since his suspected poisoning with the nerve agent Novichok, and is starting to breathe on his own.

Mr Navalny's doctors stressed it is too early to determine whether he has suffered any long-term damage.
"The patient has been removed from his medically induced coma and is being weaned off mechanical ventilation. He is responding to verbal stimuli. It remains too early to gauge the potential long-term effects of his severe poisoning."
The news came as Dominic Raab, Britain's Foreign Secretary, said he had summoned the Russian ambassador to register the UK's "deep concern about the poisoning. It's completely unacceptable that a banned chemical weapon has been used and Russia must hold a full, transparent investigation."
See also: Novichok, Navalny, Nordstream, Nonsense

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Snakes in Suits

'Why is CNN meddling in swing races?' Republicans roast Jake Tapper for trying to 'influence' congressional election


RT
Mon, 07 Sep 2020 20:47 UTC
tapper
© REUTERS/Andrew Cullen
The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) has accused CNN of "meddling in swing races" due to a report that anchor Jake Tapper tried convincing Sean Parnell to avoid running in a district where he could flip a seat.

"So how many other districts has @jaketapper pulled this crap with? Why is CNN meddling in House swing races? This is absurd," the NRCC tweeted.

The message was in response to a Breitbart report claiming Tapper had tried on multiple occasions to convince congressional candidate and conservative author/veteran Sean Parnell to give up running in Pennsylvania's 17th district and instead run in a more traditionally Republican area in the state.
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Putin

Kamala says Russians may interfere to re-elect Trump; Pelosi says Trump is Putin's 'accomplice'

Steve Watson
Summit News
Mon, 07 Sep 2020 22:10 UTC
kamala pelosi
Despite a three plus year investigation that turned up zero evidence, Joe Biden's running mate, Kamala Harris, suggested that 2016's 'foreign interference' could be repeated in the 2020 election, with Russia at the "front of the line" when it comes to election meddling, and that "theoretically," it could cost Democrats the Presidency.

In the interview with CNN, Harris stated "We have classic voter suppression, we have what happened in 2016, which is foreign interference, we have a president who is trying to convince the American people not to believe in the integrity of our election system and compromise their belief that their vote might actually count."

"These things are all at play and I am very realistic, Joe is very realistic, that until we can win... that there will be many obstacles that people are intentionally placing in front of Americans' ability to vote."


In addition to Harris' statements Sunday, Nancy Pelosi told MSNBC she believes that President Trump is complicit in helping Russian President Vladimir Putin to undermine American democracy.

"I don't know what Putin has on the president politically, personally, or financially; we'll find out when we see the president's tax returns," Pelosi declared.

Comment: Total hacks. Laughably lazy propaganda.

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Sherlock

New data leak from the Pentagon biolaboratory in Georgia

Dilyana Gaytandzhieva
Arms Watch
Sun, 06 Sep 2020 20:56 UTC
The Lugar Center
© Dilyana GaytandzhievaThe Lugar Center is a $161 million Pentagon-funded biolaboratory in Georgia’s capital Tbilisi
Leaked e-mails between the Lugar Center, the Pentagon biolaboratory in Tbilisi, the US Embassy to Georgia and the Georgian Ministry of Health reveal new information about the $161 million secretive US Government biological research program in this former Soviet country.

The data allegedly originating from the Ministry of Health of Georgia has been published anonymously on Twitter and on a forum for database leaks - Raidforums. Among the documents there are internal memos, official letters and detailed information about US government projects at the Lugar Center, funding and foreign business trips.

Arms Watch volunteers have analyzed the leaked data and discovered very interesting facts about the Center's recent activities.

The Pentagon has planned to turn Georgia into its largest biological research center overseas, combining its military resources with the resources of the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Georgia.
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Footprints

Get out of Syria

Daniel Larison
The American Conservative
Wed, 02 Sep 2020 12:01 UTC
US troops/trucks
© AFP/Getty Images
Why are there still thousands of American troops in Syria? The government offers up an official counter-terrorism justification for maintaining an illegal military presence in the country, and the president will sometimes talk about "keeping the oil" there, but the real answer is that no one with any authority or influence in Washington wants to bring them home. The usual mix of inertia, cowardice, and ideology that defines so many of our foreign policy debates also creates perverse incentives for politicians in both parties to defend an illegal, unauthorized mission that has nothing to do with American security.

U.S. troops are in harm's way in Syria, and they are occasionally engaged in hostilities with pro-regime forces. Four American soldiers were injured in a collision last Wednesday between their armored vehicle and a Russian one. That was just the latest in a string of clashes between U.S. forces and Syrian and Russian government forces that has been going on for months. Last month, a group of American troops came under fire from Syrian government forces. The Syrians claim that a U.S. helicopter had attacked a Syrian government outpost and killed one of their soldiers. There was a bigger clash in February of this year that also resulted in at least one Syrian fatality. These have all been minor incidents, but they show how potentially dangerous it is to keep these troops there.

Comment: The US has been unequivocally black-balled from the lucrative reconstruction of a country it helped destroy. Double ouch that America's 'foes' are fielding this prize. With the recoup for military expenditures out of bounds, it defaulted to punishment with sanctions.

See also:

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X

'I judge a man by his actions': VA secretary says Trump's pro-troop policies belie media narrative that he disparaged veterans


RT
Sun, 06 Sep 2020 23:45 UTC
Trump reflection
© Reuters/Tom BrennerUS President Donald Trump is reflected in a memorial wall during a wreath laying ceremony at the Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington, US, June 25, 2020.
US Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie dismissed media reports that Donald Trump disparaged the nation's war dead as "losers," saying the president honors those who fought for the country by taking real steps to help them.

"I judge a man by his actions, and the actions have been beneficial to veterans all across this country in ways we've not seen since the end of World War II," Wilkie said Sunday in a CNN interview. Wilkie said that Trump has led a "renaissance" at the VA, ending decades of negligence in providing prompt and proper medical care to the nation's veterans. He said veterans now give the VA a 90 percent approval rating for its services, up from 37 percent under the Obama administration.


Comment: Trump has championed the cause for Veteran healthcare and access to services. CNN is uninformed, twisting facts and disrespecting veterans altogether in its hive-mind portrayal with false information. CNN's report is for one specific purpose: Undermine Trump with false perceptions.

See also:

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Bad Guys

Saving Syria's Children - Notes for editors on a BBC propaganda piece

Robert Stuart
Fabrication in BBC Panorama 'Saving Syria's Children'
Thu, 13 Aug 2020 18:27 UTC
saving syria children BBC documentary still shot
© BBC PanoramaA still from the BBC propaganda piece 'Saving Syria's Children'
Footage from the BBC Panorama programme Saving Syria's Children (SSC) was first shown on the BBC News at Ten on Thursday the 29th August 2013 as parliament was voting on whether to join a US-led military strike on Syria.

The report by Ian Pannell and cameraman Darren Conway showed adolescent victims of an alleged incendiary attack writhing and groaning in apparent agony. The scenes were harrowing, but oddly unreal. The most frequent comparisons people make upon seeing the sequences are to The Walking Dead or Michael Jackson's Thriller video.

Comment: Another producer's attempt to force the issue: BBC's anti-Syrian propaganda forces one producer to tear up his contract

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Pocket Knife

Khashoggi murder: Saudi court cancels death sentences, issues jail terms


Middle East Eye
Mon, 07 Sep 2020 13:39 UTC
Khashoggi image
© AFP 2018/Ozan KoseJournalist Jamal Khashoggi
A Saudi court on Monday overturned five death sentences previously issued against the killers of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in a final ruling that jailed eight defendants to between seven and 20 years, state media reported.

"Five of the convicts were given 20 years in prison and another three were jailed for 7-10 years," the official Saudi Press Agency said, citing a spokesman for the public prosecutor. None of the defendants were named in what was described as the final court ruling on the killing which had sparked an international outcry.

Khashoggi's Turkish fiancee on Monday dismissed the court ruling a "farce". Hatice Cengiz in a statement posted on Twitter said:
"The Saudi authorities are closing the case without the world knowing the truth of who is responsible for Jamal's murder. Who planned it, who ordered it, where is the body? These are the most important questions that remain totally unanswered."
The verdict came after Khashoggi's sons had said in May they had "pardoned" the killers, a move condemned as a "parody of justice" by a UN expert. The family's pardon spared the lives of five unnamed people sentenced to death over the 2018 murder in a December court ruling, which was lambasted by human rights groups after two top aides to the crown prince were exonerated.

Comment: See also:

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Headphones

US spying program is violating rules on protecting citizen privacy rights, but carry on, FISA court tells FBI


RT
Sun, 06 Sep 2020 23:08 UTC
Fed B of I
© The Daily Beast
The US FISA Court has authorized the FBI to continue using a warrantless surveillance program that taps conversations between Americans and noncitizens overseas despite finding that the government is still violating privacy rules.

"There still appear to be widespread violations of the querying standard by the FBI," chief FISA judge James Boasberg said in a December ruling that was declassified and made public with heavy redactions on Friday.

Those querying rules are meant to protect the privacy rights of American citizens and require that the warrantless searches of emails and telephone calls have a foreign-intelligence or law-enforcement purpose. Boasberg said the FBI last year made at least 87 queries - which are done by collecting data from Google, Verizon and other communication conduits - that "were not reasonably likely to retrieve foreign-intelligence information or evidence of a crime."

In one such incident, the FBI last August tapped communications involving about 16,000 Americans, despite only seven of those people being tied to the investigation involved. Boasberg rejected FBI claims that the searches were all likely to find foreign intelligence or evidence of a crime, saying that apart from the seven relevant suspects, the queries were "broad" and "suspicionless."

Comment: Gatekeeping: Slap wrist commentary by the FISA Court is aimed to muffle public inquiry and response, not reprimand the FBI.

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