Puppet MastersS


Alarm Clock

Trump says trade deal with China to be signed 'very shortly'

Alexandra Alper
Reuters
Sat, 21 Dec 2019 17:47 UTC
trump xi
© AFP / Brendan Smialowski
President Donald Trump on Saturday said the United States and China would "very shortly" sign their so-called Phase One trade pact.

"We just achieved a breakthrough on the trade deal and we will be signing it very shortly," Trump said at a Turning Point USA event in Florida.

The Phase One deal was announced earlier this month as part of a bid to end the months-long tit-for-tat trade war between the world's two largest economies, which has roiled markets and hit global growth.

Under the deal, the United States would agree to reduce some tariffs in exchange for a big jump in Chinese purchases of American farm products.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said last week the pact would be signed in early January, saying that the deal had already been translated and was just undergoing a technical "scrub."
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Sherlock

The agents: Hidden evidence regarding Ukrainegate

Eric Zuesse
Strategic Culture
Wed, 18 Dec 2019 12:00 UTC
ukrainegate
© Strategic Culture
On November 22nd, a 100-page Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) data-dump was made by the U.S. Department of State, to the Democratic-Party-aligned nonprofit "American Oversight," which had been founded in March 2017 by liberals (really by the main billionaires who fund the Democratic Party) after the 2016 Democratic electoral defeat (to Republican billionaires). The now Republican-headed U.S. State Department made as difficult as possible for news-media to pick up on and report about the contents of this dump; they did this by providing only a photographic image of each page, impossible on most systems to do any "Edit" "Find"; and also impossible to perform any "Edit" "Copy" "Paste" of any quotation from the document. Consequently, I made the first copy of that document to the Web Archive, in order to expedite its coming onscreen, and I am herewith pasting below an extended passage in the document, which I then manually transcribed from it, where President Trump's lawyer Rudolphe Giuliani, on January 23, 25, and 26, took depositions from both Viktor Shokin, whom Joe Biden had forced in April 2016 to be fired as Ukraine's Prosecutor General, and also from Yuriy Lutsenko, who replaced Shokin and thereby freed-up from the Obama Administration in 2016 a one-billion-dollar donation from America's taxpayers to the then-recently-installed-by-Obama anti-Russian Government of Ukraine.

—

Comment: See also:

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Light Sabers

Sleeping dragon no more: China about to replace US as strongest naval power and Washington is too late to stop it


RT
Sat, 21 Dec 2019 08:46 UTC
china navy
© Global Look Press / Li GangFILE PHOTO: Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with representatives of the aircraft carrier unit and the manufacturer at a naval port in Sanya, south China's Hainan Province on December 17, 2019.
China might soon shift the world naval balance and unseat the US as the modern master of the seas. The process appears to already be under way, and there is little that Washington can do about stopping it.

Visibly shaken by what it has seen on a photo showing just one of China's military shipyards near Shanghai, the business magazine Forbes recently told its readers an alarming story about the "impressive rate" and "vast scale" of Chinese naval modernization.

The shipyard in question indeed appears to be an impressive sight to behold. There, one can see a total of nine newly constructed destroyers lined along the quay and docked in an inner shipyard basin. By contrast, the entire UK Royal Navy has a total of just six similar-class vessels, Forbes notes.

Comment: Sputnik reports that China may be lacking in trained pilots for its fighter jets and provides more details on the aircraft carrier:
The Shandong, China's first domestically-built aircraft carrier, entered into service on December 17 in South China's Hainan Province city of Sanya.
"The vessel, a souped up version of a Soviet-era Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier, was originally purported by Chinese state media to come equipped with 36 J-15 fighter jets, or three squadrons, and was touted to have a capacity which far surpassed that of Liaoning, China's first aircraft carrier, a Kuznetsov-class ship which Beijing purchased from Ukraine and then modified."
"Internally, Chinese sources claim, the ship is capable of handling up to 36 fighter jets, 12 more than Liaoning," science and technology magazine Popular Mechanics previously reported.

However, military experts who examined a recent public television broadcast of the Shandong say there were only enough PLAN fighter pilots in attendance to make up two complete J-15 squadrons.

"The standard ratio of carrier-based fighter jets to pilots is [2:3]," Beijing-based naval expert Li Jie told the South China Morning Post earlier this week. "The Shandong won't have many fighter jets because it is just entering its initial commissioning period."

An estimated 30 fighter jet pilots for the carrier's air wing were seen on the Tuesday China Central Television broadcast of Chinese President Xi Jinping commissioning the Shandong.

While Li appeared optimistic regarding the future of fighter jet numbers on the Shandong, military expert Zhou Chenming, also based out of Beijing, said the original estimate of three J-15 squadrons is not realistic. "The J-15 is quite big, and it's impossible for an aircraft carrier to only carry fighter jets," he expressed to the outlet.
In addition to the 24 J-15 fighters, the Shandong, also known as the Type 001A, is expected to carry an additional 24 aircraft that range from a J-15 electronic jamming variant to several different helicopters.

Zhou explained to the SCMP that "helicopters play a key role in alerting and watching take-off and launches of carrier-based fighter jets. They are also needed for rescues and other missions like transporting troops and equipment."
Additionally, the J-15 is regarded as the heaviest carrier-based fighter jet in active use - which possibly explains why PLAN's sole fighter jet has a much longer takeoff time on the Liaoning and Shandong than similar aircraft on US counterparts.
Measuring in at 24 meters long, the J-15 is longer by two meters when compared to the J-20, a proven plane that entered Chinese service in 2017. The practicality of the aircraft has long been questioned even by the Chinese media, which has in the past referred to the J-15 as a "flopping fish" due to it's limited usefulness to the service.

"The steam catapults on the US Nimitz-class aircraft carrier take about 45 seconds to launch an aircraft, but the ski-jump ramp takes 1½ to two minutes," Li told the SCMP. According to an unnamed source close to the Chinese Navy, a Nimitz-class ship can launch an estimated 40 jets in the time it takes 14 J-15 jets to take off from the Liaoning.


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Target

Indian intelligence: Modi target of assassination plot at upcoming rally - Pakistan-based terror groups accused


Zee News
Fri, 20 Dec 2019 00:00 UTC
PM Narendra Modi is scheduled to address a huge gathering organised by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on December 22 at Delhi's Ramlila Maidan, where he will speak about the Centre's move to regularise unauthorised colonies in the national capital.
Narendra Modi
Pakistan-based terror groups may be conspiring to target a rally of big political leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, later this week in New Delhi, an intelligence input on Friday suggested. The input states that Pakistan's Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) operatives are on the move to target the venue to hit PM Modi at Ramlila Maidan, where he is scheduled to address a huge gathering organised by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on December 22, about the Centre's move to regularise unauthorised colonies in Delhi.

In the wake of the terror threat, Special Protection Group (SPG) and the Delhi Police have been informed for fullproof security arrangements. Both the SPG and Delhi Police are responsible for the security at the Ramlila Maidan. The Prime Minister along with BJP Chief Ministers and cabinet ministers will be present at the rally.

Comment: See also:

From planning attacks in the Valley to execute killings, Pakistan and ISI designate specific tasks to top three terrorist organisations

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Star of David

Not content with crippling Palestinian protesters, Israeli snipers now target Gazans' eyes - Over 50 permanently blinded

Tareq Hajjaj and Pam Bailey
The New Arab
Fri, 20 Dec 2019 18:33 UTC
israel children shot eye blind
© GettyTwelve-year-old Mohammed Al-Najar was shot in his eye by Israeli soldiers [Getty]
To date, Gaza's Ministry of Health reports that 50 protesters have been shot in the eye by Israeli soldiers since the demonstrations began last March leaving them permanently blind.

Media coverage and social media posts went wild when Palestinian photojournalist Muath Amarneh was blinded in his left eye after he was hit by a rubber bullet while covering a protest in the West Bank.

However, Amarneh was far from unique; Israeli snipers targeting participants in Gaza's weekly Great Return March protests have aimed for the legs - and eyes. To date, Gaza's Ministry of Health reports that 50 protesters have been shot in the eye since the demonstrations began March 30, 2018 - leaving them permanently blind.
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Sherlock

Latvian government says it flagged 'suspicious' Hunter Biden payments in 2016


JohnSolomonReports.com
Tue, 17 Dec 2019 12:00 UTC
Obama Biden
Obama and Biden
As the U.S. presidential race began roaring to life in 2016, authorities in the former Soviet republic of Latvia flagged a series of " suspicious" financial transactions to Hunter Biden and other colleagues at a Ukrainian natural gas company and sought Kiev's help investigating, according to documents and interviews.

The Feb. 18, 2016 alert to Ukraine came from the Latvian prosecutorial agency responsible for investigating money laundering, and it specifically questioned whether Vice President Joe Biden's younger son and three other officials at Burisma Holdings were the potential beneficiaries of suspect funds.

"The Office for Prevention of Laundering of Proceeds Derived from Criminal Activity ... is currently investigating suspicious activity of Burisma Holdings Limited," the Latvian agency also known as the FIU wrote Ukraine's financial authorities.

Comment: See also:

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Arrow Down

EU extends sanctions against Russia for another 6 months


RT
Sat, 21 Dec 2019 08:21 UTC
Kremlin
© Global Look Press / Konstantin KokoshkinFILE PHOTO: The Moscow Kremlin
The extension of EU sanctions against Russia came into force on Saturday. The penalties target specific sectors of the Russian economy, including financial, energy and defence sectors, and will run until 31 July 2020.

The European Council said that the decision was taken unanimously over alleged "incomplete implementation" of the Minsk agreements on the settlement of the conflict in eastern Ukraine.


Comment: Suitably warped reasoning when it's Ukraine that has consistently violated the Minsk agreements: Under fire from a Western-backed Ukraine: The people of the DPR share their stories


The extension comes despite the ongoing talks between Moscow and Kiev to settle the conflict.

Comment: See also: 4-month countdown to NATO's largest exercise in 25 years, Normandy Four meeting, and another false-flag in Syria?

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Network

Twitter removes over 88,000 accounts linked to Saudi-backed disinformation campaign


Sputnik
Fri, 20 Dec 2019 20:59 UTC
twitter
© Pixabay/CC0
Tens of thousands of accounts participating in "platform manipulation" have been banned by Twitter after the site discovered the profiles were part of a "significant state-backed information operation" with Saudi origins.

Twitter announced Friday that at least 88,000 accounts "engaged in spammy behavior across a wide range of topics" were permanently suspended from the social media platform.

The site disclosed comprehensive data on 5,929 accounts, but did not provide information pertaining to the rest of the accounts believed to be within the network out of concern for the privacy of users whose profiles were potentially hijacked and involuntarily included in the scheme.

According to the release, the operation was traced back to Saudi Arabia, and most accounts within the network amplified favorable messages pertaining to the Middle Eastern country's authorities through "aggressive liking, retweeting and replying." Though the accounts primarily engaged with Arabic-language content, Twitter revealed the network also magnified events relevant to Western users - such as the "discussion around sanctions in Iran and appearances by Saudi government officials in Western media."
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Light Sabers

Trump impeached: Now the coup becomes a civil war

Tom Luongo
Gold Goats 'n Guns
Thu, 19 Dec 2019 00:00 UTC
death of a nation
© newslocker.com
The Democrats declared war yesterday. Not on Donald Trump but on the United States and the Constitution.

What started as a coup to overturn the 2016 election has now morphed into a Civil War as Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Fran-feces) presided over the passage of a bill which creates a clear Constitutional Crisis. And that means we have multiple factions vying for control of our government, the definition of a Civil War.

In passing these articles of impeachment against President Trump, Congress has arrogated to itself powers it does not have.

The first article asserts a motive to Trump's actions to invalidate his role as chief law enforcement officer for the country. It doesn't matter if you like him or any President having this power, he does have it.

Read that first article and then apply it to a country other than Ukraine where Trump didn't have 'probable cause' for investigation into corruption and malfeasance there.

That could be Abuse of Power. But this happened in Ukraine where Trump clearly has probable cause.

Comment: The disintegration of the American society began decades ago. What we now see is a clear correlation: the systematic ebbing of rights and the rot manifesting in government. Will this manufactured travesty of justice be a rude wake up call? Or will the American public underestimate the true extent and vile purpose of this blatant exhibition of injustice?

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Star of David

Best of the Web: Bolivia: How it was a coup for Israel too

Belen Fernandez
Middle East Eye
Thu, 19 Dec 2019 12:48 UTC
Pic Evo
© AFPDemonstration in support of Bolivia's overthrown president Evo Morales, in Buenos Aires.
The right wing seeks to reconquer Bolivia, dismantling solidarity with Palestine and bringing in Israeli advisors to help crush protests

Shortly after left-wing Bolivian President Evo Morales was ousted in a US-supported coup in November - disguised as a noble reaction to alleged electoral fraud - the self-appointed, fanatically right-wing Bolivian "interim" government announced the renewal of diplomatic relations with Israel.

These had been severed by Morales in 2009 during Israel's Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip, which killed some 1,400 Palestinians, including more than 300 children. Though Israel naturally cast itself as the singular victim of the affair, the ratio of Palestinian civilian to Israeli civilian deaths was 400:1.

During a subsequent Israeli-inflicted bloodbath in Gaza in 2014, this one by the name of Operation Protective Edge and entailing the slaughter of 2,251 Palestinians (including 299 women and 551 children), Morales denounced Israel as a "terrorist state" - a perfectly accurate assessment, given the circumstances and Israel's track record.

Comment: Beware the tendrils of Israel and all it reprehensibly represents! The speed at which the usurpers of the Morales government called upon Israeli expertise leaves no doubt as to who collaborated in the coup and what they anticipate to gain by adding Bolivia to their collection.

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