Puppet MastersS


Bad Guys

On Lenin 'Judas' Moreno - Ecuador's story of betrayal and resistance

El presidente de Ecuador, Lenín Moreno.
The President of Ecuador, Lenín Moreno.
On October 3rd, countless tens of thousands of Ecuadorian citizens began a general strike and occupation of public spaces, throughout the country but targeting the capital of Quito. President Lenin Moreno has made himself one of the most hated men in the history of the country in the course of his rule, and was forced to flee as a consequence, and re-establish the capital in Guayaquil. In addition, facing a larger and wider revolution all together, Moreno was forced to rescind Decree 883 - the new law which appears to have been the straw that broke the camel's back in Ecuador.

But this is far from over, and Moreno's continued existence as head of government threatens to see the expansion of this newly awakened movement. Internationally too - for it is Moreno who also betrayed Julian Assange, after Raphael Correa offered him protection.

Comment:


Footprints

Russia's military police: Exodus of Kurdish forces underway from Syrian-Turkish border

Russian Military Police
© Russian Military Police in Syria, Sputnik/Mikhail AleyedoinRussian Military Police in Syria
The formerly US-backed militia previously struck a deal with Damascus, handing control over several cities to the Syrian Arab Army, but Ankara insisted that they could not remain near the Turkish border.

Russian military police will assist in the withdrawal of the Kurdish militia from the Syrian-Turkish border, the Russian Reconciliation Centre for Syria stated on Monday, adding that the militants are also expected to leave Manbij and Tell Rifaat. The pullout is expected to end at 18:00 on Tuesday.

According to Moscow, Russian and Turkish forces will start patrolling the border after the end of the operation.

Comment: See also:


Star of David

Mobster behavior: Israel warns Jordan to 'go thirsty' if land returned to Amman

Israeli soldiers
© AFPIsraeli soldiers patrol the border fence in Naharayim, known in Arabic as Baqoura, an area set to return to Jordanian control next month
If Israeli farmers go, Jordanians 'will feel the thirst'

The son of former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon says Jordanians will go thirsty if King Abdullah II and the Jordanian government go ahead with their decision to stop leasing two fertile areas to Israel after 25 years.

Writing in an opinion piece for Ynet, Gilad Sharon said: "Diplomacy is a delicate matter, so the Jordanian king should be told very gently: If you push Israeli farmers out of Naharayim and Tzofar, you will remain thirsty.

Eye 2

SOTT Focus: They Live, We Sleep

"You see them on the street. You watch them on TV. You might even vote for one this fall. You think they're people just like you. You're wrong. Dead wrong." — They Live
They Live
© The LiveWired
We're living in two worlds, you and I.

There's the world we see (or are made to see) and then there's the one we sense (and occasionally catch a glimpse of), the latter of which is a far cry from the propaganda-driven reality manufactured by the government and its corporate sponsors, including the media.

Indeed, what most Americans perceive as life in America — privileged, progressive and free — is a far cry from reality, where economic inequality is growing, real agendas and real power are buried beneath layers of Orwellian doublespeak and corporate obfuscation, and "freedom," such that it is, is meted out in small, legalistic doses by militarized police armed to the teeth.

All is not as it seems.

This is the premise of John Carpenter's film They Live, which was released more than 30 years ago, and remains unnervingly, chillingly appropriate for our modern age.

Best known for his horror film Halloween, which assumes that there is a form of evil so dark that it can't be killed, Carpenter's larger body of work is infused with a strong anti-authoritarian, anti-establishment, laconic bent that speaks to the filmmaker's concerns about the unraveling of our society, particularly our government.

Time and again, Carpenter portrays the government working against its own citizens, a populace out of touch with reality, technology run amok, and a future more horrific than any horror film.

In Escape from New York, Carpenter presents fascism as the future of America.

In The Thing, a remake of the 1951 sci-fi classic of the same name, Carpenter presupposes that increasingly we are all becoming dehumanized.

In Christine, the film adaptation of Stephen King's novel about a demon-possessed car, technology exhibits a will and consciousness of its own and goes on a murderous rampage.

In In the Mouth of Madness, Carpenter notes that evil grows when people lose "the ability to know the difference between reality and fantasy."

And then there is Carpenter's They Live, in which two migrant workers discover that the world is not as it seems. In fact, the population is actually being controlled and exploited by aliens working in partnership with an oligarchic elite. All the while, the populace — blissfully unaware of the real agenda at work in their lives — has been lulled into complacency, indoctrinated into compliance, bombarded with media distractions, and hypnotized by subliminal messages beamed out of television and various electronic devices, billboards and the like.

Chess

Trump: US-China trade deal's phase one ahead of schedule

Trump
© The TelegraphUS President Donald Trump
President Trump says the first phase of a trade deal with China looks to be ahead of schedule.

"We are looking probably to be ahead of schedule to sign a very big portion of the China deal, we'll call it Phase One but it's a very big portion,'' he told reporters before leaving for Chicago. "That would take care of the farmers. It would take care of some of the other things. It'll also take care of a lot of the banking needs."

The president's comments come after Beijing said on Saturday that phase one was "basically complete." Trade representatives from the two countries held a phone call on Friday as they continued to iron out a deal.

The tentative U.S.-China deal is said to include Beijing making concessions on intellectual property, financial services and agriculture. In return, the U.S. agreed not to implement new tariffs on Chinese goods on Oct. 15. A decision has not yet been made about the new tariffs that are scheduled to hit goods made in China beginning Dec. 15.

Pirates

How corrupt American Democrats plundered Ukraine

Oleg Tsarev
Oleg Tsarev
A talk with Oleg Tsarev reveals the alleged identity of the "Trump/Ukraine Whistleblower"

Top Dems are involved in the plundering of the Ukraine: new names, mind-boggling accounts. The mysterious 'whistleblower' whose report had unleashed the impeachment is named in the exclusive interview given to the Unz Review by a prominent Ukrainian politician, an ex-Member of Parliament of four terms, a candidate for Ukraine's presidency, Oleg Tsarev.

Mr Tsarev, a tall, agile and graceful man, a good speaker and a prolific writer, had been a leading and popular Ukrainian politician before the 2014 putsch; he stayed in the Ukraine after President Yanukovych's flight; ran for the Presidency against Mr Poroshenko, and eventually had to go to exile due to multiple threats to his life. During the failed attempt to secede, he was elected the speaker of the Parliament of Novorossia (South-Eastern Ukraine). I spoke to him in Crimea, where he lives in the pleasant seaside town of Yalta. Tsarev still has many supporters in the Ukraine, and is a leader of the opposition to the Kiev regime.

Comment: Accusations, without proof, are accusations. Can Tsarev provide evidence to validate his claims? If factual, these backstories, combined with the full court press by Democrats to unseat Trump, take on a broader, deeper and alarming perspective. It suggests the intensity of the rally for impeachment is but a grand scheme of deflection to mask the magnitude of heinous crimes (allegedly) committed by Biden and a cadre of insider Democrats.

So Ukraine really is the cesspool of corruption it appears to be. No wonder the Democrats fit right in there.


Gift 2

Former Clinton adviser: 'Hillary thinks God put her on Earth to be president'


Comment: Lots of noises out there suggesting she's planning to run again...

Do it, Killary!


HRClinton
© Reuters/Brian Snyder"In her zeal!" Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail in 2016.
Former adviser to President Clinton Dick Morris said Sunday that Hillary Clinton most likely wants to get into the 2020 presidential race because she thinks "God put her on the Earth" to be president.

Morris told John Catsimatidis on his radio show that the major question revolving around the 2020 election is whether "the ghost of Hillary Clinton" will enter the election.

"My feeling is that she wants to," Morris said. "She feels entitled to do it. She feels compelled to do it. She feels that God put her on the Earth to do it. But she's hesitant because she realizes the timing is bad."

The former adviser said he thinks Hillary Clinton is waiting for an opportunity to jump into the race and particularly for former Vice President Joe Biden to drop out.

Comment: Elsewhere, Slick Willy himself is also putting out feelers...


She has also been appearing for interviews on lots of evening TV shows...

Over at The Graun, they're wetting themselves at the prospect:

hillary 2020
Killary is delusional if she thinks she stands a chance. She must REALLY want to bomb some countries. Her bloodlust is not getting quenched.


Network

Russia, China & India to set up alternative to SWIFT payment system to connect 3 billion people

shanghai
© Getty Images
Members of the BRICS trade bloc Russia, India, and China have decided to connect their financial messaging systems to bypass the SWIFT international money transfer network.

Russia's financial messaging system SPFS will be linked with the Chinese cross-border interbank payment system CIPS. While India does not have a domestic financial messaging system yet, it plans to combine the Central Bank of Russia's platform with a domestic service that is in development.

The new system is expected to work as a "gateway" model when messages on payments are transcoded in accordance with a certain financial system.

Sherlock

Best of the Web: Inside 'Objective Medusa', Devin Nunes' historic investigation into Spygate scandal

nunes
© NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty
The following is an excerpt from Lee Smith's forthcoming book, The Plot Against the President: The True Story of How Congressman Devin Nunes Uncovered the Biggest Political Scandal in U.S. History, which will be released October 29.

In mid-March 2017, California congressman Devin Nunes, then Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), found out the FBI had obtained a warrant to spy on Donald Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. And they'd used the Steele dossier, opposition research paid for by the Clinton campaign, as evidence.

But Nunes and his committee couldn't say anything, not to the U.S. public, not even to fellow members of Congress. The FBI and DOJ had buried the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant, like so much of the anti-Trump operation, under the heading of classified intelligence.

It marked a low point for Nunes' team. Shortly after, former DOJ prosecutor Kashyap Patel joined them. At first Patel's new colleagues didn't know what to make of him. As a New Yorker, Patel's style sometimes clashed with those of the easygoing Californians, southerners, and midwesterners who made up the HPSCI staff.

Russian Flag

Putin Derangement Syndrome: Craziester and More Craziester

Putin and Trump nested dolls
© Global Look Press / Zamir UsmanovA nested doll with the image of the Russian President Vladimir Putin and the US President Donald Trump
Remember the Spinal Tap scene where the witless band member explains that because their numbers go to 11 they can always get that little bit extra? Putin Derangement Syndrome went past 11 a long time ago: we need a whole new set of superlatives, "craziest" just won't do anymore.

After writing this compendium of nonsense about Putin from Western sources in 2015, I ran a short series on Putin Derangement Syndrome; I gave up when Putin Derangement Syndrome and Trump Derangement Syndrome merged into a crescendo of craziness, far past what I could have imagined. (And Trump Derangement Syndrome is also passed 11 - "Why Ivanka Trump's new haircut should make us very afraid".)

In the past, American hysteria campaigns against the enemy-of-the-moment ended when their target did. Noriega went to jail, Milosevic died in jail, Hussein and Qadaffi were killed, bin Laden was killed, Aidid - but who remembers him? The frenzy built up and up and stopped at the end before it got to 11. But Putin is still there and growing stronger by the moment. And the frenzy therefore has to go past 10, past 11 and ever upwards. One of the craziest (to say nothing of disgusting) things was this absurd cartoon from the (formerly) staid NYT. But that was a whole year ago.

No longer bare chests, Aspergers, big fish, gunslinger walks - in 2015 they were laughing; today Putin has super powers. Two events sent it past 11. Somebody leaked e-mails from the DNC showing that it was rigging the nomination for Clinton and she lost a 99% certain election. Immediately, her campaign settled on blaming Russia for both.
That strategy had been set within twenty-four hours of her concession speech. [9 November 2016] Mook and Podesta assembled her communications team at the Brooklyn headquarters to engineer the case that the election wasn't entirely on the up-and-up. For a couple of hours, with Shake Shack containers littering the room, they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument. (From Shattered, quoted here.)
The bogus - bogus because most of the people on his team were part of the conspiracy and knew there was no collusion - Mueller investigation dragged on until - despite the endless "bombshells" - it finally stopped. But the crazies insist... not guilty but... not exonerated! And Trumputin's principal conspiracist rants on.