Puppet MastersS


Attention

The insider outsider

Rod Dreher
Rod Dreher's Diary
Fri, 28 Apr 2023 00:00 UTC
Carlson
© 'Tucker Carlson Tonight'Tucker Carlson's first post-'Tucker Carlson Tonight' appearance
The meaning of Tucker Carlson for the present and future of US politics...

I know at least some of y'all must be wo' slap out from my focus on Tucker Carlson this week, but I really do think this is a moment of serious symbolic importance — even if you are no fan of Carlson's. Let me explain.

First, have a look at the 2 min, 15 sec video message Tucker put out on Twitter a day or so ago. In just over 24 hours, as I write this, it has been viewed by over 21 million people. As usual these days, Twitter won't let me embed in Substack, but if you follow the link, you can see it. In it, Tucker doesn't mention Fox, but he points out that the Cathedral includes both progressives and conservatives. That is to say, the commoners may strongly disagree, but the elites are more united than people think. Here's Mollie Hemingway trying to enlighten:
tweet
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Stop

BBC chief quits amid furor over role in Boris Johnson loan

Jill Lawless
AP
Fri, 28 Apr 2023 00:00 UTC
screen
© Jordan Pettitt/PA via APA screen showing a news report through the windows of the BBC, after chairman Richard Sharp announced he was quitting as BBC chairman • London April 28, 2023
The chairman of the BBC quit Friday after a report found that he failed to disclose a potential conflict of interest over his role in arranging a loan more than two years ago for Boris Johnson, as scandals from the former prime minister's turbulent term continue to rattle U.K. public life.

The publicly funded national broadcaster has been under political pressure after it was revealed that Richard Sharp helped arrange the line of credit weeks before he was appointed to the BBC post on the government's recommendation.

The guarantor for the 800,000-pound ($1 million) line of credit was businessman Sam Blyth, a distant cousin of Johnson's who founded a chain of private schools in Canada. The deal was facilitated by Sharp, a former Goldman Sachs banker and Conservative Party donor, who arranged a meeting between Blyth and the U.K.'s top civil servant to discuss Blyth's offer of financial help. It's unclear who actually loaned the money.

Johnson was then Conservative Party leader as well as British prime minister.

A report on the episode by senior lawyer Adam Heppinstall published Friday found Sharp "failed to disclose potential perceived conflicts of interest."
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Magnify

How the FBI helps Ukrainian intelligence hunt 'disinformation' on social media

Lee Fang
Lee Fang
Fri, 28 Apr 2023 00:00 UTC
Fang and vitiuk
© Lee FangIlia Vitiuk, chief of the SSU Cyber Security Department
Timothy Langen, Exec. Asst. Director of the FBI's Criminal, Cyber, Response Services Branch
RSA Conference in San Francisco, April 26th, 2023
The Federal Bureau of Investigation pressures Facebook to take down alleged Russian "disinformation" at the behest of Ukrainian intelligence, according to a senior Ukrainian official who corresponds regularly with the FBI. The same official said that Ukrainian authorities define "disinformation" broadly, flagging many social media accounts and posts that he suggested may simply contradict the Ukrainian government's narrative.

llia Vitiuk, head of the Department of Cyber Information Security in the Security Service of Ukraine, said:
"Once we have a trace or evidence of disinformation campaigns via Facebook or other resources that are from the U.S., we pass this information to the FBI, along with writing directly to Facebook. We asked FBI for support to help us with Meta, to help us with others, and sometimes we get good results with that. We say, 'Okay, this was the person who was probably Russia's influence.'"
Vitiuk, in an interview, said that he is a proponent of free speech and understands concerns around social media censorship. But he also admitted that he and his colleagues take a deliberately expansive view of what counts as "Russian disinformation."
"When people ask me, 'How do you differentiate whether it is fake or true?' Indeed it is very difficult in such an informational flow. I say, 'Everything that is against our country, consider it a fake, even if it's not.' Right now, for our victory, it is important to have that kind of understanding, not to be fooled."
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SOTT Logo Radio

SOTT Focus: NewsReal: Regime Fires Tucker Carlson, Pentagon All Set For 'Total Victory' in Ukraine


Sott.net
Sun, 30 Apr 2023 09:11 UTC
tucker fox newsreal
© Sott.net
The last prominent anti-war voice in US mainstream media has been taken 'off air'. For now anyway, Tucker Carlson has been silenced, another clear signal that freedom of speech in the US is no more. Meanwhile Bobby Kennedy Jr's popularity is growing as he seeks to do the impossible by becoming president and pulling the US out of terminal decline.

Also on this NewsReal, Joe & Niall prepare to swear allegiance to 'King Charles III', join St. Fauci in avoiding 'the blame game' over Covid, watch the Pentagon... er, Ukraine, make final preparations for 'the big push' against the Russians, pillory EU leaders for buying vast amounts of Russian oil at higher cost from third parties, and revisit revelations that the CIA swung the 2020 election for the Bidens, and thwarted FBI investigations into Saudi spies 'handling' some of the 9/11 'hijackers'.


Running Time: 01:36:42

Download: MP3 — 66.4 MB

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Pirates

Russian ambassador: Poland used bogus charges to seize Russian funds


RT
Fri, 28 Apr 2023 18:17 UTC
Sergey Andreyev ambassador russia poland
© RT(L) The Russian Embassy in Poland; (R) Sergey Andreyev, Russian ambassador to Poland
Authorities never actually bothered to investigate their claims, Sergey Andreyev told RT

Polish prosecutors confiscated the Russian embassy's bank account, supposedly as part of a money laundering and terrorism investigation, without presenting any actual charges or speaking to any Russian diplomats, Moscow's ambassador to Warsaw, Sergey Andreyev has claimed.

"We were asked no questions," Andreyev told RT on Thursday.

He explained that Warsaw froze the embassy's account at the Santander Bank in February 2022, when the Ukraine conflict escalated. When the freeze order expired on March 2 this year, "immediately all the money was transferred to the prosecutor's office [account] in another bank - of course, without consent - on suspicion that it was used for money-laundering and funding terrorism," the diplomat added.

Comment: Poland is merely one vassal among several imitating their master, They forget such a weapon can also be wielded by your opponent:

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Attention

What China is really playing at in Ukraine

Pepe Escobar
Strategic Culture
Sun, 30 Apr 2023 17:22 UTC
Xi and Ze
© Public Domain
Imagine President Xi Jinping mustering undiluted Taoist patience to suffer through a phone call with that warmongering actor in a sweaty T-shirt in Kiev while attempting to teach him a few facts of life - complete with the promise of sending a high-level Chinese delegation to Ukraine to discuss "peace".

There's way more than meets the discerning eye obscured by this spun-to-death diplomatic "victory" - at least from the point of view of NATOstan.

The question is inevitable: what's the point of this phone call? Very simple: just business.

The Beijing leadership is fully aware the NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine is the un-dissociable double of an American direct war against the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Until recently, and since 2019, Beijing was the top trade partner for Kiev (14.4% of imports, 15.3% of exports). China essentially exported machinery, equipment, cars and chemical products, importing food products, metals and also some machinery.

Very few in the West know that Ukraine joined BRI way back in 2014, and a BRI trade and investment center was operating in Kiev since 2018. BRI projects include a 2017 drive to build the fourth line of the Kiev metro system as well as 4G installed by Huawei. Everything is stalled since 2022.

Noble Agri, a subsidiary of COFCO (China National Cereals, Oils and Foodstuffs Corporation), invested in a sunflower seed processing complex in Mariupol and the recently built Mykolaiv grain port terminal. The next step will necessarily feature cooperation between Donbass authorities and the Chinese when it comes to rebuilding their assets that may have been damaged during the war.

Beijing also tried to become heavily involved in the Ukraine defense sector and even buy Motor Sich; that was blocked by Kiev.
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Newspaper

Polish authorities storm school at Russian Embassy, Russia calls the move another 'provocation'


Sputnik
Sat, 29 Apr 2023 23:00 UTC
poland russia

Warsaw mayor's office officials, accompanied by Polish police, arrived on Saturday morning at the school at the Russian embassy and stormed the premises after being denied entry, a Sputnik correspondent reports from the scene.

The Polish officials and police arrived at the school on Kielecka Street in Warsaw on Saturday morning and were soon joined by Russian embassy officials, including minister-counselor Andrey Ordash.

When one of the Polish officials demanded that the gates to the school be opened, his request was turned down. Ordash said that Russia deems the decision to seize the property illegal and warned of retaliatory diplomatic steps.

Comment: TASS reports:
Russian senior diplomat says seizure of Russian embassy school in Warsaw a provocation

According to the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Warsaw has been violating international law and bilateral agreements for many years

The seizure of the Russian embassy school in Warsaw can be defined as a provocation, as Poland has been violating international law and bilateral agreements for years, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on her Telegram channel on Saturday.

"Official Warsaw has been breaking the law for many years: international law, bilateral agreements and national legislation. It behaves a defiant and unlawful manner, which can be characterized with one word - provocation," the diplomat said commenting on the seizure of the Russian embassy school in Warsaw.

Andrey Ordash, Minister-Councilor at the Russian embassy in Poland, told TASS earlier that the Polish authorities had demanded that the staff of the Russian school at the embassy in Warsaw vacate the building by 7 p.m. He said that there were 29 people, including children in the school. The Russian councilor added that the Polish authorities allowed the embassy staff to take the equipment out within a week.
Poland's pathological establishment has indeed been escalating its already provocative moves against Russia, and in the process they're alientating themselves from their own citizens, as well as the multipolar alliance:

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Arrow Down

One of the largest banks in the United States is on the verge of going under

Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse
Wed, 26 Apr 2023 00:00 UTC
hand help
© Pixabay'Going Under'
Is another domino about to fall? Our system was greatly shaken when Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank suddenly collapsed, but we seem to have weathered that storm. But what will happen if an even larger bank goes under? As of March 31st, First Republic had approximately 290 billion dollars in assets, and that makes it much larger than Silicon Valley Bank was when it finally imploded. A 30 billion dollar rescue plan that was hastily put together last month was supposed to stabilize First Republic, but that hasn't worked. On Tuesday, First Republic shares fell by about 50 percent after the public learned that "customers withdrew more than $100 billion during last month's crisis"...
First Republic Bank's shares plunged 50 percent after a 'troubling' earnings call where company executives refused to answer questions. The stock dropped Tuesday after it emerged that customers withdrew more than $100 billion during last month's crisis, with fears swirling that it could be the third bank to fail in quick succession after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.
Unfortunately for First Republic, the carnage continued on Wednesday. Shares of First Republic were down another 29.75 percent, and so far this year the stock price has fallen by a total of more than 95 percent. Let me try to put this into perspective.

On February 2nd, First Republic stock closed at $147.00
Today, it closed at $5.69.

That is what a collapse looks like.
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V

On wars and wars

James Howard Kunstler
Clusterfuck Nation
Fri, 28 Apr 2023 00:00 UTC
TruthTeller
© Ethnic Village'How far we've come'
"When we see the few truth-tellers who are the stars of their organizations jettisoned - Tucker Carlson from Fox News, Matt Taibbi from Rolling Stone, Glenn Greenwald from The Intercept, James O'Keefe from Project Veritas... we must face the fact that there is an organized conspiracy to suppress truth."
— Paul Craig Roberts
The weird part the news media isn't telling you about World War Three is that America's main enemy in this struggle is... the US Government itself! America is looking like that crazy person on the street, punching himself in the head. How else do you explain this epic act of national self-destruction?

The "Joe Biden" regime is "standing up for our democracy" by trying to silence all and any public speech about what it does in the world and how it treats its own citizens. Meanwhile, the entire scaffold of American life crumbles and you are supposed to not notice it's happening. The funny part is that the Democratic Party thinks this is an election strategy. The funniest part of the funny part is that we bother holding elections at all.

You understand, "Joe Biden" is only pretending to run for president again, in the same way that he's only pretended to be president the past two years. Are we to believe, for instance, that the old zombie has become a fervent Maoist? Or that he follows any known structured political philosophy at all, other than cashing checks from favor-seekers from all over the world? "Joe Biden" is pretending to run — no matter how preposterous it seems — because his handlers know that only a titanic pretense of political strength can stave off the reveal of his family's awesome criminality and the fall of everyone hitched to that broke-down wagon.
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Clock

Eleven minutes of media falsehoods, just on one subject, just on one station

Matt Orfalea, Matt Taibbi
Racket News
Tue, 25 Apr 2023 00:00 UTC
censor
© Unknown
This special report hoped to make a list of all the editors' notes and retractions that would be needed because of the #TwitterFiles. The problem turned out to be too big to count...

The plan was a comprehensive count. With a sizable team of smart temporary hires, each looking into a different area of the #TwitterFiles, we thought counting all the mainstream news stories that would need retracting or correcting in light of information found in Twitter documents would make for an easy little sidebar, something simple for the public to digest.

The idea seemed easy. We would take a Twitter doc raising questions about a news story and write a suggested note for the story's editor. In a lot of cases it wasn't clear the piece was wrong exactly, but that new information might require a call or two to clear up a quote, add an update about a source, correct a fact or two, etc.


Comment: We should all examine the sources that influence our beliefs.

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