Puppet MastersS


Snakes in Suits

Will Washington's elites give détente with Russia a chance when Trump meets Putin at G-20?

Stephen F. Cohen
The Nation
Wed, 26 Jun 2019 14:23 UTC
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin
© AP / Jorge SilvaDonald Trump and Vladimir Putin talk at the APEC Summit in Danang, Vietnam, November 11, 2017.
The Trump-Putin meeting in Japan is crucial for both leaders-and for the world.

Despite determined attempts in Washington to sabotage such a "summit," as I reported previously, President Trump and Russian President Putin are still scheduled to meet at the G-20 gathering in Japan this week. Iran will be at the top of their agenda. The Trump administration seems determined to wage cold, possibly even hot, war against the Islamic Republic, while for Moscow, as emphasized by the Kremlin's national security adviser, Nikolai Patrushev, on June 25, "Iran has been and will be an ally and partner of ours."

Indeed, the importance of Iran (along with China) to Russia can hardly be overstated. Among other reasons, as the West's military alliance encroaches ever more along Russia's western borders, Iran is a large, vital non-NATO neighbor. Still more, Tehran has done nothing to incite Russia's own millions of Muslim citizens against Moscow. Well before Trump, powerful forces in Washington have long sought to project Iran as America's primary enemy in the Middle East, but for Moscow it is a necessary "ally and partner."

In normal political circumstances, Trump and Putin could probably diminish any potential US-Russian conflict over Iran-and the one still brewing in Syria as well. But both leaders come to the summit with related political problems at home. For Trump, they are the unproven but persistent allegations of "Russiagate." For Putin, they are economic.
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TV

NBC bias on display in Dem debate, while Google searches on Tulsi Gabbard soar


RT
Thu, 27 Jun 2019 20:09 UTC
Tulsi gabbard
© Agence France-Presse / Jim WatsonTulsi Gabbard at NBC's first Democratic presidential candidate debate
Google searches for Tulsi Gabbard's name surged during the first debate of the 2020 Democratic primary - but the clear interest in the anti-war candidate was not reflected by moderators, who gave her noticeably little airtime.

A Washington Post tally of how much time each of the ten candidates were given to speak in Wednesday night's debate showed Gabbard way down in 7th place. In contrast, the NBC News moderators repeatedly called on Elizabeth Warren, who has already received plentiful coverage across the media since launching her campaign.

Comment: If the leftist media was scared of Trump, portraying him as an out-of-control buffoon, they must be absolutely terrified of an intelligent, no-nonsense candidate like Tulsi Gabbard. All the stops will be pulled out in an effort to derail her campaign

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Chart Pie

Jeremy Hunt pledges to cancel student debt for graduates who start a business, if he becomes PM

Steve Hawkes
The Sun
Thu, 27 Jun 2019 19:12 UTC
Jeremy hunt
Young graduates will have their student debt wiped out if they start a business under a new vow by wannabe PM Jeremy Hunt.

The Foreign Secretary - and former entrepreneur - vowed to "turbocharge" the economy by encouraging tens of thousands more Brits to start out on their own.

Under the plans, graduates would have their debts "waived" if they start a company and hire more than ten people for a period of at least five years.
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Yoda

Nils Melzer: Unmasking the Torture of Julian Assange

Nils Melzer, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture
Medium
Wed, 26 Jun 2019 18:01 UTC
Julian Assange
On the occasion of the International Day in Support of Torture Victims, 26 June 2019

I know, you may think I am deluded. How could life in an Embassy with a cat and a skateboard ever amount to torture? That's exactly what I thought, too, when Assange first appealed to my office for protection. Like most of the public, I had been subconsciously poisoned by the relentless smear campaign, which had been disseminated over the years. So it took a second knock on my door to get my reluctant attention. But once I looked into the facts of this case, what I found filled me with repulsion and disbelief.

Surely, I thought, Assange must be a rapist! But what I found is that he has never been charged with a sexual offence. True, soon after the US had encouraged allies to find reasons to prosecute Assange, two women made the headlines in Sweden. One of them claimed he had ripped a condom, and the other that he had failed to wear one, in both cases during consensual intercourse - not exactly scenarios that have the ring of 'rape' in any language other than Swedish. Mind you, each woman even submitted a condom as evidence. The first one, supposedly worn and torn by Assange, revealed no DNA whatsoever - neither his, nor hers, nor anybody else's. Go figure. The second one, used but intact, supposedly proved 'unprotected' intercourse. Go figure, again. The women even texted that they never intended to report a crime but were 'railroaded' into doing so by zealous Swedish police. Go figure, once more. Ever since, both Sweden and Britain have done everything to prevent Assange from confronting these allegations without simultaneously having to expose himself to US extradition and, thus, to a show-trial followed by life in jail. His last refuge had been the Ecuadorian Embassy.

Comment: And from RT:
The UN rapporteur on torture has written a scalding op-ed in support of Julian Assange, in which he says the publisher was the victim of a smear campaign. Now he claims many leading MSM outlets are snubbing the piece.

[...]

The piece ends with a list of the media's 'big guns', which Melzer says were offered the op-ed to publish but wouldn't. The list includes the Guardian, the Times, the Financial Times, the Telegraph, the Washington Post, and Reuters. The text was subsequently published on Medium, a blogging website.

Holding governments accountable by exposing their misdeeds is the job of the free press, to which those listed by Melzer supposedly belong. Some observers also note that maintaining silence on Assange's case amounts to complicity in the wrongdoings against him.

The case against Assange was aimed not only at keeping him at bay, but also at "shutting down dissent," renowned journalist John Pilger recently said.
It's mainly about shutting down investigative journalism.


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Arrow Down

US to NATO: Washington wants to avoid war with Iran, but will not tolerate further incidents

Robin Emmott, Sabine Siebold
Reuters
Thu, 27 Jun 2019 13:02 UTC
Mark Esper
© JOE GROMELSKI/STARS AND STRIPESActing Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper
Acting U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper told NATO allies on Thursday that Washington did not want to go to war with Iran but also could not tolerate any further incidents, according to allied diplomats present.

Speaking to NATO defence ministers in a closed-door session, Esper said the United States held Iran responsible for attacks on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman but did not want the situation to escalate.

"His first words were: we don't want to go to war with Iran," one diplomat said. "Esper also made clear that this is about the limit (of what the United States will tolerate from Iran), that nothing more should happen now," a second diplomat said.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told a news conference after the meeting: "One important message is that the United States has so clearly stated that they don't want a war. They actually said very clearly that they are ready to talk with Iran without a precondition."

A week after U.S. President Donald Trump called off air strikes on Iran minutes before impact, European defence ministers led by France sought to use their first formal NATO meeting with Esper to cool the confrontation between Washington and Tehran, diplomats said.

Comment: More from RT:
Blatantly threatening to launch a nuclear war against another country is not only illegal under international law, Iranian FM explained, but proves that President Trump does not think through the ramifications of his rhetoric.

"There is a United Nations charter, and threat of wars is illegal," Javad Zarif told CNN paraphrasing Article 2.4 of the UN Charter, a day after President Trump spoke menacingly about "obliterating" Iran if the Islamic Republic endangers "anything American." "That statement indicates that US intentions are certainly illegal. The United States is not in a position to obliterate Iran, they do not have the capability other than using prohibited weapons to do this."

Reminding the American commander-in-chief "that we don't live in the 18th century," Zarif suggested Trump to hire new advisers, people who can fully understand the Iranian position and who can offer viable solutions to the crisis. Trump receives "wrong information, wrong analysis, and now President Trump finds himself in a situation where he believes that he needs to get out," Zarif said.
And this from Twitter:


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Shopping Bag

Pompeo arrives in India with bag full of 'freedom offers' not to be refused


RT
Wed, 26 Jun 2019 00:32 UTC
Pompeo India
© AFP/ONEY SHARMAPompeo's arrival in India
The top US diplomat has landed in New Delhi, aiming to pressure the Indian government into rejecting Russian S-400 air defense systems and China's Huawei mobile tech in favor of "better" military and trade deals with Washington.

Expanding cooperation in energy, aviation, space, and defense fields will top Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's agenda during his three-day visit to India, the State Department said just as their boss landed in New Delhi on Tuesday evening.

Pompeo is expected to pressure India into compliance on a number of issues, including the S-400 missile defense deal with Russia, the purchase of Iranian and Venezuelan crude oil, and limiting Huawei's access to the massive South Asian market that Washington is now keen to capture.

But while Pompeo is bringing a bag full of American goodies to the discussion table, India has made it explicitly clear over the last few months that it will not bow to US pressure at the expense of its own strategic goals, regardless of how tempting the offers might be.

Comment: More from RT: We will do what's in our national interest, says India
New Delhi will have nothing but its own interests in mind, when following on the deal to purchase S-400 air defense missile systems from Moscow, the deal the US is strongly opposed to. [India's FM] Subrahmanyam Jaishankar made his comments while responding to a question about the S-400 at a presser with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during his visit to New Delhi. "We have relationships with several countries, many of which are of some standing. They have a history. We will do what is in our national interest."

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Vladimir Putin signed the $5 billion defense contract in October. US officials tried to dissuade India from acquiring the state-of-the-art Russian missile defense systems, warning that buying weapons from Moscow can impact future arms deals with Washington. The Pentagon also promised to offer India "potential alternatives" to the S-400s.

Pompeo, for his part, hailed US-India relations, adding that "great friends are bound to have differences."


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Blue Planet

Former Italian FM: US needs European support to attack Iran


RT
Wed, 26 Jun 2019 20:53 UTC
Franco Frattini
© OSCE/Estella MarcheggianoFranco Frattini, former Italian FM, President of Italian Society for International Organizations
President Trump will be unable to launch a war against Iran if European allies continue to oppose the move, Franco Frattini told RT. Нowever, Europe's influence is waning due to internal divisions, the Italian diplomat added.

A united European Union could serve as a bulwark against US attempts to seek regime change in Iran, believes Frattini, a former Italian foreign minister, now the president of the Italian Society for International Organizations. "I think America cannot do it [while] having [a stance] against the whole of European Union and, I would add, NATO would be strongly against [it, as well]," he told RT's Eunan O'Neill on Wednesday.

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Cell Phone

NSA caught illegally collecting Americans' phone data...yet again!


RT
Thu, 27 Jun 2019 00:22 UTC
cellphone data
© Stanford University
The NSA has been caught improperly collecting Americans' phone data yet again, just months after a similar incident forced them to (supposedly) purge hundreds of millions of records captured without FISA authorization.

The agency unlawfully slurped up a "larger than expected" volume of call and text records from one US telecom provider under the metadata-collection program known as Section 215, according to a document obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union as part of its ongoing lawsuit against the agency. The heavily redacted file does not reveal which company was affected, or how many of its "call detail records" were illegally collected between October 3 and 12, 2018.

"These documents further confirm that this surveillance program is beyond redemption and a privacy and civil liberties disaster," ACLU National Security Project staff attorney Patrick Toomey told the AP. "There is no justification for leaving this surveillance power in the NSA's hands."


Comment: See also:

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Attention

Venezuela intel claims it foiled a 'Maduro assassination and military coup' plot


RT
Thu, 27 Jun 2019 00:20 UTC
Maduro
© Reuters/Miraflores PalaceVenezuelan President Nicolas Maduro at Miraflores Palace
Venezuelan intelligence says it has foiled an assassination attempt against President Nicolas Maduro, which envisioned a group of rogue officers storming the presidential palace and installing an imprisoned general in his stead.

The plot by current and former military officers involved breaking retired General Raúl Isaías Baduel out from a maximum security prison in Fuerte Tiuna, where he is kept since 2017 for wanting to overthrow the government, and seizing state-run Venezolana de Televisió where he would be pronounced president. Intelligence agencies said they had been unraveling the plot for 14 months.

The main part of the plan that was scheduled for June 23-24, involved assassinating Maduro and leader of the National Constituent Assembly Diosdado Cabello, while seizing the Miraflores presidential palace as well as the Carlota military base in Caracas.

"140,000 seized cartridges for machine guns and several combat groups were predetermined to be used to capture president Nicolas Maduro," Minister of Communications and Culture Jorge Rodriguez told the nation on Wednesday, announcing the arrests of conspirators.

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Network

US-Israeli cyber firm: China is prime suspect in global espionage campaign (maybe)


Sputnik
Wed, 26 Jun 2019 00:50 UTC
Chinese flag/Cyberspy
© PBANN/Ransomware NK FINAL Wired/KJN
All eyes are on Beijing after a Tuesday release from a US-Israeli cybersecurity company said that state-sponsored spying and other cyber crimes were committed by state-supported hackers in China with the hopes of obtaining data pertinent to a number of high profile persons worldwide.

Following a nearly year-long cyber investigation, US-Israeli cyber firm Cybereason announced on June 25 that a number of "state-sponsored adversaries" had been utilizing private infrastructure companies around the world to carry out "state-sponsored espionage and cyber war."

The investigation found that hackers were able to infiltrate cellular providers' IT networks and lift a number of records, including usernames, passwords, billing information and call records. According to the Times of Israel, targeted persons included individuals in government positions, law enforcement and politics.

This isn't one breach, but a series of sophisticated and targeted breaches. What is really troubling is this is an example of being hacked and not knowing it because the victims aren't aware and have no way to trace the attack," Mor Levi, Cybereason's vice president of global security services, said in the release.

With said information, Cybereason claims hackers could even track the so-called high profile individuals' meetings, mobile messages and active locations. Though only a select few are said to be targets of the attack, entire directories of information and credentials were allegedly stolen in these attacks.

The US-Israeli cybersecurity company claims China's government may be behind the series of attacks, as the unknown hackers' tactics, techniques and procedures (TTP) can be traced back to APT10, a Chinese cyberespionage group. "There's an asterisk, though," Amit Serper, head of Cybereason's Nocturnus security research team, informed SC Media. "All the tools are associated with APT10, but since they are all available online, someone else can get them, modify them and pretend to be APT10."

Comment: See also: New hacker attempt to break into US Democratic voter files thwarted

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