Puppet MastersS


Briefcase

Trump announces new chief of staff, Mark Meadows - Mulvaney's off to Ireland

Joseph A. Wulfsohn
Fox News
Fri, 06 Mar 2020 17:01 UTC
trump meadows
© Mark Wilson/Getty ImagesRep. Mark Meadows with President Donald Trump.
President Trump made a surprise announcement on Friday night that Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., would become his new White House chief of staff, replacing acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney.

"I am pleased to announce that Congressman Mark Meadows will become White House Chief of Staff. I have long known and worked with Mark, and the relationship is a very good one," Trump tweeted.

Meadows has become one of Trump's most loyal defenders on Capitol Hill, particularly during the monthslong impeachment battle that ultimately ended with an acquittal in February.

Mulvaney became the acting White House chief of staff in January 2019, replacing Gen. John Kelly. Mulvaney was also serving as the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director.

Trump also announced that Mulvaney would become the U.S. special envoy for Northern Ireland.

"I want to thank Acting Chief Mick Mulvaney for having served the Administration so well. He will become the United States Special Envoy for Northern Ireland. Thank you!" Trump said in a second tweet.
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Star of David

Israeli defense minister's Twitter hacked: 'Freedom for Palestine'


Times of Israel
Sat, 07 Mar 2020 16:51 UTC
bennett tweets
© Screenshot/TwitterTweets issued by Defense Minister Naftali Bennett's account in an apparent hack, March 7, 2020.
Defense Minister Naftali Bennett's Twitter account was hacked early Saturday, posting an image of a Palestinian flag and the lyrics to Turkey's national anthem.

The tweets were swiftly deleted after being sent out at around 2 a.m.

"The hack lasted a number of minutes. The content was immediately erased and the account password was replaced," Bennett's office said in a statement. "The matter was brought to the authorized cyber elements in the security forces to be dealt with."

According to Channel 13 news, Israeli intelligence and cyber investigators were probing whether the hack also compromised Bennett's cellphone.

The defense establishment was working to determine if there was any security damage linked to the hacked, the report said.

The first tweet in the series posted on Bennett's account said "freedom for palestine..." with the Palestinian flag, and was followed by the entirety of Turkey's anthem in English, with images of the Turkish flag.

The last post credited the anthem's author, Turkish poet Mehmet Akif Ersoy.
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Propaganda

Wikipedia: A disinformation operation?


Swiss Propaganda Research
Sat, 07 Mar 2020 07:50 UTC
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is generally thought of as an open, transparent, and mostly reliable online encyclopedia. Yet upon closer inspection, this turns out not to be the case.

In fact, the English Wikipedia with its 9 billion worldwide page views per month is governed by just 500 active administrators, whose real identity in many cases remains unknown.

Moreover, studies have shown that 80% of all Wikipedia content is written by just 1% of all Wikipedia editors, which again amounts to just a few hundred mostly unknown people.

Obviously, such a non-transparent and hierarchical structure is susceptible to corruption and manipulation, the notorious "paid editors" hired by corporations being just one example.

Comment: See also:

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Quenelle - Golden

NOPEC! Oil prices plummet after Russia rejects new crude production cuts


RT
Fri, 06 Mar 2020 13:35 UTC
oil rig
© Reuters / Vasily Fedosenko
Cooperation between Russia and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has got to an abrupt stop after Moscow refused to back new deeper cuts on oil output. The move has sent oil prices into a downward spiral.

The OPEC and non-OPEC countries held the consultations on oil cuts consultations in Vienna on Friday, yet failed to agree on them.

The talks followed the OPEC decision to cut the output by an extra 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) in the second quarter of this year — but only if Russia joins in. The new cuts were expected to come on top of the already existing cuts of 2.1 million bpd, becoming the largest ones since the 2008 financial crisis.

Comment: See also:

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Chess

Saudi Arabia's powerful crown prince orders arrests of senior royal family members


Middle East Eye
Fri, 06 Mar 2020 06:05 UTC
bin salman
© AFPMohammed bin Nayef, right, had been first in line for the throne until 2017, when Mohammed bin Salman, left, was elevated over him
Saudi Arabia's powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) has detained three senior members of the kingdom's royal family in an attempt to remove any potential rivals in his pursuit of the throne, people familiar with the matter have said.

The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times reported that Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz, King Salman's younger brother, and Prince Mohammed bin Nayef (MBN), the king's nephew, were arrested early on Friday.

The details of the charges could not be learned, but the two Saudi royals were accused of treason, the reports said.

The two men, who had once been in line for the throne, are now under threat of lifetime imprisonment or execution, people familiar with the matter said.
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Light Sabers

Lawfare 101: Trump campaign sues CNN, NYT and WaPo for 'false and defamatory' coverage

Nebojsa Malic
RT
Sat, 07 Mar 2020 03:47 UTC
trump cnn
© Reuters / Jonathan Ernst; Reuters / Chris Aluka Berry
The Trump 2020 re-election campaign has now sued three major mainstream media outlets for defamation, in a move that seems less about legal redress than about holding self-appointed guardians of democracy actually accountable.

On Friday, the campaign filed a lawsuit against CNN for "100 percent false and defamatory" statements in a report that alleged the US president had decided to leave "on the table" the option of "again seeking Russia's help" in the 2020 election.

Jenna Ellis, the campaign's senior legal adviser, said the lawsuit - along with the complaints against The New York Times and The Washington Post, filed earlier this week - seeks "to hold the publishers accountable for their reckless false reporting and also to establish the truth."
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Vader

'White, male & 70+ years old'? DNC scorched for shifting debate rules AGAIN, after Tulsi Gabbard meets previous threshold


RT
Fri, 06 Mar 2020 03:31 UTC
biden and bernie
© Reuters / Jonathan Ernst
The DNC has changed the qualifying threshold for the next Democratic primary debate, supposedly targeting no one specifically, but ensuring Tulsi Gabbard - the last remaining woman and person of color in the race - is excluded.

DNC announced the rule change on Friday, requiring candidates for the upcoming debate in Arizona later this month to rack up 20 percent of convention delegates to qualify. While Gabbard had met the previous threshold, having won two delegates in American Samoa on Super Tuesday, the new standard guarantees that she will not make the cut - a move that was blasted far and wide across social media.
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Laptop

US & Britain again accuse Russia of cyberattacks in Georgia - provide no proof


RFE/RL
Fri, 06 Mar 2020 04:52 UTC
hacker
The United States, Britain, and Estonia have accused Russian military intelligence of conducting massive cyberattacks against the Georgian government and media websites in a bid "to sow discord and disrupt the lives of ordinary Georgians."

The three countries told the UN Security Council on March 5 that the cyberattacks "are part of Russia's long-running campaign of hostile and destabilizing activity against Georgia and are part of a wider pattern of malign activity."

The remarks came after Georgia's ambassador wrote to the Security Council in February about the large-scale attack in October.

On February 20, the United States and Britain publicly joined Georgia in blaming Russia for the coordinated cyberattack, which took thousands of Georgian websites offline and even disrupted TV broadcasts.

Comment: Is Georgia so desperate to join the failing EU and the ailing NATO as well as to appease the US that it will go along with baseless accusations against Russia in the hopes that they may get the chance to join their clubs? Attacks on Georgia benefit a number of countries but Russia isn't one of them.

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Chalkboard

UK stronger Brexit negotiating stance than EU thanks to its fishing rights - analyst


RT
Fri, 06 Mar 2020 14:57 UTC
scenery
© AFP / Pascal Pochard-Casabianca
The British negotiators have returned home from Brussels after the first week of talks with the European Union over UK's exit from the bloc. The two sides have still many disagreements to work out.

Boom Bust is joined by Hilary Fordwich of the British-American Business Association to get a closer look. Fordwich reminds about concessions that have been made in 1973, when the UK was getting into the EU.

In France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Ireland, fishing communities "depend their whole livelihoods on basically what the British consider invading the British coastal waters."

Comment: See also: Still Confused About Brexit? It's Actually Pretty Simple...

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Heart - Black

Princely protection: Is Andrew being shielded by the FBI over his paedo affair with Virginia Roberts?

Martin Jay
The Strategic Culture Foundation
Fri, 06 Mar 2020 19:58 UTC
prince andrew
© Reuters / Chris RadburnPrince Andrew
The royal family in the UK is having its very foundations shaken by both the controversial departure of Prince Harry and Meghan and now startling new revelations which compromise Prince Andrew even further, since his "car crash" interview with BBC, over his alleged relationship with a sex-trafficked child prostitute working for Jeffrey Epstein.

Andrew had always denied any link whatsoever with the then named Virginia Roberts who was in just 17 when the main allegation - that Epstein flew her to London in March 2001 for her to have sex with the British royal - was brought against him. Central to that allegation was a photo taken by Ghislaine Maxwell in her London home on the same night in question which Andrew claims is fake.

Roberts claims that she was forced into the act by Epstein and Maxwell and has gone on the record to talk about the intimate details of the incident, but her case have been light on witnesses or those who can corroborate her allegations. Until now.

Comment:

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