Puppet MastersS


Binoculars

Billions of euros confirmed missing from Germany's Wirecard

Patricia Uhlig
Reuters
Mon, 22 Jun 2020 04:12 UTC
wirecard
© REUTERS/Michael DalderFILE PHOTO: The headquarters of Wirecard AG, an independent provider of outsourcing and white label solutions for electronic payment transactions is seen in Aschheim near Munich, Germany April 25, 2019.
Wirecard said on Monday that 1.9 billion euros ($2.1 billion) it had booked in its accounts likely never existed, a black hole that threatens to engulf the payments company and tarnish the reputation of Germany's financial watchdog.

The one-time investor darling is holding emergency talks with its banks, which are owed roughly 1.75 billion euros, to avert a looming cash crunch triggered by the missing money.

The episode marks a dramatic turn in the fortunes of a homegrown tech firm that attracted some of the world's biggest investors before a whistleblower alleged that it owed its success in part to a web of sham transactions.

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Document

KT McFarland: Trump and Bolton - this is when I knew it wasn't going to end well

K.T. McFarland
Fox News
Mon, 22 Jun 2020 21:19 UTC
trump bolton
On Election Day 2016 I was in the green room at Fox News in midtown Manhattan waiting to go on the air, as was Ambassador John Bolton.

I asked John if he had already voted, to which he replied, "Yes, for Trump. He's an idiot, but anybody is better than Hillary Clinton."

That's why I had my doubts when Bolton lobbied so aggressively for and became President Trump's national security adviser less than two years later.

I figured it would be a rocky ride for them both and predicted it wouldn't end well.

First, they had very different approaches to foreign policy. Trump's first priority was to rebuild the economy, then use it as leverage to renegotiate trade deals. He would use the bully pulpit to get our security allies to increase their contributions to our mutual defense.

What he would not do was get us bogged down in more forever wars. Trump was an outspoken critic of Bush's Iraq war, Bolton one of its architects. I once asked Bolton whether his child had considered military service. He looked at me dismissively and said, "No, of course not." So, it was all right for other people's children to fight in his forever wars, just not his own.

Comment: Sarah Sanders has her own book coming out soon. She recently posted an excerpt on Bolton on Twitter in which she calls him "a man drunk on power":
The excerpt claimed Bolton on many foreign trips "had a separate agenda and often arrived and departed on a different plane because he didn't want to travel on Air Force One with the rest of us."

"Bolton apparently felt too important to travel with the rest of us. It was a running joke in the White House," the excerpt said.

Sanders went on to detail one instance when the administration visited the United Kingdom, noting that multiple members of the president's Cabinet boarded a bus, including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, then-acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Walsh and other senior advisers.

"Based on US protocol, Mnuchin, Mulvaney and Walsh all outranked Bolton. Mnuchin, one of the highest ranking officials in government, far outranked him," she wrote. "We waited at the hotel but there was no sign of Bolton or his motorcade. After a while we gave up and headed to the Winfield House to meet the president.

"While en route, UK police directed us to pull to the side of the road because someone was coming through...we looked over to see who it was and sure enough here came Bolton and his motorcade," she wrote. "We waited and watched as Bolton sped by us and left us in the dust.

"The discussion on the bus quickly moved from casual chit chat to how arrogant and selfish Bolton could be, not just in this moment but on a regular basis," she continued. "If anyone on the team should have merited a motorcade it was Mnuchin, but he was a team player.

She added: "Bolton was a classic case of a senior White House official drunk on power, who had forgotten that nobody elected him to anything."

Sanders wrote that Bolton often "acted like he was the president, pushing an agenda contrary to President Trump's."

Meanwhile, Sanders went on to say that Mulvaney, upon arriving at the Winfield House, confronted Bolton and "unleashed a full Irish explosion on him."

"He lit into him in a way I hadn't seen him do to anyone before," she wrote. "Mick made clear he was the chief of staff and Bolton's total disregard for his colleagues and common decency was unacceptable and would no longer be tolerated. 'Let's face it John,' Mick said. 'You're a f — — self-righteous, self-centered son of a b — — !'"

She added: "That epithet really didn't have much to do with the motorcade, but was the culmination of months of Bolton thinking he was more important and could play by a different set of rules than the rest of the team. Bolton backed down and stormed off."

"The rest of us looked on and nodded in approval, proud of Mick for standing up for us. Mick even got a few high fives from officials thrilled someone had put Bolton in his place," she wrote.
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War Whore

The Caesar Act: The latest Western attack on Syria didn't drop from a plane

Eva Bartlett
Mint Press News
Fri, 19 Jun 2020 20:15 UTC
Syrian soldier helps comrade
© Hassan Ammar | APA Syrian soldier who lost his legs while fighting in Syria’s war, helps his comrade after a physical therapy session, at the Ahmad Hamish Martyr hospital in Damascus, Syria.
Talib Mu'alla served as a soldier in the Syrian Arab Army before he was wounded in Aleppo in 2014. As he described the multiple shots he took to his body, I thought it remarkable that he survived.

"A shot (bullet) to my chest, a shot to my stomach, three shots in my spine. My chest, stomach, and intestines ruptured, and I lost a kidney. I was also shot in the right side of my face," he recounted. "I fell into a coma for 25 days, then woke for a few days and fell back into a coma for another 16 or 17 days. It took two years for me to be able to walk again."

Talib was discharged from the army after his injuries and has since joined an auxiliary of the army. "From 2011 until now, I haven't taken off my uniform. And I won't take it off until the war is finished," he said.

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Binoculars

John 'Psycho' Bolton on Skripal Affair - and Trump's latest jab at the moustache of death

John Helmer
johnhelmer.net
Sun, 21 Jun 2020 20:51 UTC
bolton cartoon
A politician becomes a psychopath when he or she acts without calculating the consequences for approval rating and voter support. The same thing goes for ministers and their advisers who urge military operations abroad which make voters feel unsafe at home. Fear and insecurity aren't good for incumbents; at least not the ones who can't rig elections.

In the case of John Bolton (lead image, left), he took the National Security Advisor's post from President Donald Trump in order to make as many wars outside the US as he could. He has now published a book about all the wars he wanted when he got his best chance to make them; and about those who got in the way to stop him, especially Trump.

After seventeen months, Bolton lost his job on September 10, 2019, because fear and insecurity weren't good for Trump's re-election (then). Bolton's objective, along with his publisher Simon & Schuster and everyone now endorsing the book, is to make war on Trump and defeat him at the election on November 3.

This is as obvious as Bolton's diagnosis as a psychopath - or to be clinically precise, an adrenal hyperplasiac. He himself is unusually sensitive to the diagnosis of his symptoms, beginning with his moustache. Displacement of violence is a classic symptom of moustache wearers — everybody has understood this since Sigmund Freud's case study of Little Hans and his father's moustache, as Bolton knows only too well. So he starts his book making sure no one believes, as Bolton purposefully investigated for himself, Trump's "purported dislike of my moustache. For what it's worth, he told me it was never a factor, noting that his father also had one. Other than shrinks and those deeply interested in Sigmund Freud, which I assuredly am not, I don't really believe my looks played a role in Trump's thinking."

Comment: Another revealing excerpt - revealing in the sense that you can really get a feel for how deranged Bolton is:


And Trump's assessment of Bolton, delivered as only Trump can deliver:




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Map

Trump unveils sweeping immigration changes

Amber Athey
Spectator
Mon, 22 Jun 2020 15:47 UTC
President Trump
President Trump
Ken Cuccinelli calls it the 'America first recovery'

President Trump will be signing an executive order and implementing a series of new regulations that will temporarily halt specific types of guest worker visas and make permanent changes to the H-1B visa program.

In April, Trump signed an executive order preventing the issuance of new green cards for 60 days. The new order extends that guidance through December 31, 2020 and also temporarily suspends the issuance of new visas through the H-1B and H-2B programs, as well as some visas through the J-1 and L-1 programs. The order intends to lower foreign competition for the tens of millions of newly unemployed Americans during the economic shutdown resulting from the COVID-19 outbreak. The May unemployment rate dropped slightly to 13.3 percent from 14.7 percent in April, but is still significantly higher than the February rate of 3.5 percent.

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Megaphone

Screaming BLM protesters swarm Mitch McConnell's house at 6 AM, bang pots, honk horns

Tal Axelrod
The Hill
Fri, 19 Jun 2020 16:02 UTC
BLM protest mitch mcconnell
Protesters descended on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) Kentucky home to demonstrate on an array of issues to commemorate Juneteenth.

Activists with the progressive Sunrise Movement, an environmental group that advocates for a slate of left-leaning issues, were seen making noise and holding signs reading, "No justice, no sleep."

"No justice, no sleep Mitch. You let our economy tumble into free-fall, our people be gunned down in the streets by killer cops, & our planet be ravaged by your oil CEO friends. This #Juneteenth, we're wide awake. In November when we vote you out, maybe you'll wake up, too," the group tweeted.

Comment: Apparently this isn't the first time McConnell's home has been targeted by protesters, and they've also confronted him in a restaurant. Might be time to call the real estate agent, Mitch.

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Bizarro Earth

The global reset unplugged: Welcome to "The Deep State"

Peter Koenig
Global Research
Thu, 18 Jun 2020 00:00 UTC
USCapitoldeepstate
© Unknown
Imagine, you are living in a world that you are told is a democracy - and you may even believe it - but in fact your life and fate is in the hands of a few ultra-rich, ultra-powerful and ultra-inhuman oligarchs. They may be called Deep State, or simply the Beast, or anything else obscure or untraceable - it doesn't matter. They are less than the 0.0001%.

For lack of a better expression, let's call them for now "obscure individuals".

These obscure individuals who pretend running our world have never been elected. We don't need to name them. You will figure out who they are, and why they are famous, and some of them totally invisible. They have created structures, or organisms without any legal format. They are fully out of international legality. They are a forefront for the Beast. Maybe there are several competing Beasts. But they have the same objective: A New or One World Order (NWO, or OWO).
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Arrow Up

Rising tensions in Lebanon point to money, Israel and war

Vladimir Platov
New Eastern Outlook
Mon, 22 Jun 2020 00:00 UTC
scene from lebanon
© Unknown
Protests, stemming from an internal crisis, have once again erupted in Lebanon. In light of worsening corruption throughout the country, prices of staple foods are rising despite the government's attempts to stop the Lebanese pound from decreasing in value. Demonstrations are taking place in Beirut, Tripoli as well as other towns and cities. Protesters have been blocking roads with burning tires while police and army forces have been trying to drive them out. Activists have set local bank branches on fire and are demanding the government step down.

Some observers have pointed out that the main reason for the protests, which restarted after an interlude caused by the Coronavirus pandemic, was a rumor about a record fall in the value of the Lebanese pound (to 7,000 LL to $1.00) despite the fact that the news was subsequently proven false (the national currency rate, in fact, remained the same - about 1,500 LL to $1.00).

Riad Salamé, the Governor of Banque du Liban (the central bank of Lebanon) since 1993, who the demonstrators hold primarily responsible for the crisis and the purported fall in the value of the Lebanese pound, has said he was not to blame for the country's economic woes and has alleged that a systematic campaign to discredit him was being waged.

In reality, there are a number of reasons for the renewed demonstrations in Lebanon.
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Star of David

IDF chief claims Iran is the 'most dangerous country in the ME


Sputnik
Sun, 21 Jun 2020 18:17 UTC
kochavi
© Flash 90Lieutenant General Aviv Kochavi
Earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that the whole world is coming to realize that Iran has been "lying" about its nuclear activities, and called for "paralyzing sanctions" to be imposed on the Islamic Republic over its alleged breach of the 2015 nuclear deal.

Iran has "become the most dangerous country in the Middle East," Lieut. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, Israel Defence Forces' Chief of General Staff said Sunday, the Jerusalem Post reports.

"[Iran] is located in the third circle [in relation to Israel]," Kochavi said, referring to the country's geographic proximity, "but is highly effective in influencing the first and second circles," he added, referring to Iran's alleged cooperation with a range of militias stretching from Lebanon and Syria to Yemen. According to the officer, although Iran has "made significant progress in its nuclear weapons program, the nuclear threat is no longer the only threat. Iran also has conventional weapons."

Kochavi accused Iran of funding 'terrorist' organizations like Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Palestinian territories, and of trying to carry out terrorist attacks against Israel. Although Israel, the US and many US allies recognize groups like Hezbollah and Hamas as terrorist groups, many other countries do not.

Comment: What would Israel do with all its free time if it didn't have to repetitiously convince itself it has a manufactured enemy? If Iran was going to bomb Israel, there have been decades past in which it could have done so. Would it make a bit of difference to its treatment of the Palestinians? Curtail its land grabs and demolition derby? Change its politics? Find new relevance? Keep its hands out of the USA and not demand $3B+ per year to increase its armament? Ditch the spread of anti-Semitism virus around the globe? Answer is 'No'. Israel is a country driven by fear and for that you have to have a long-lasting and ultimate enemy - truth or fiction.

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No Entry

Libya: LNA introduces no-fly zone for Sirte


Sputnik
Mon, 22 Jun 2020 03:48 UTC
Khalifa Haftar
© Reuters/Costas BaltasLibyan Commander Khalifa Haftar
The east-based Libyan National Army (LNA) has introduced a no-fly zone around the city of Sirte on Sunday, LNA spokesperson Maj. Gen. Ahmed Mismari said, also welcoming Cairo's announcement of being prepared to send in its forces.

"The area from the As Sultan settlement east of Sirte until the al-Heesa village in the west is being declared a no-fly zone where the flights of any aviation, except for LNA aircraft, are prohibited," Mismari said in a statement obtained by Sputnik.

According to the LNA spokesperson, the no-fly zone stretches across 200 kilometers (124 miles).

On Saturday, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi said that Egypt had an internationally legitimate right to intervene in Libya and told the army to be prepared to fight abroad, should the need arise. The Egyptian president also said that the Libyan east-based House of Representatives was the only legitimately elected one among Libya's power entities and offered to help Libyan tribes resist foreign intervention by training and equipping them.

Sisi stressed that if the city of Sirte, which he called the "red line" for Egypt, fell into the hands of the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA), Egypt would be legitimized in sending in its military on defense grounds.
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