Puppet Masters

Shutdown standoff: Trump prepares emergency declaration after Senate push fails

RT
Thu, 24 Jan 2019 00:30 UTC

With Democrats in Congress adamantly against any funding for the border wall, US President Donald Trump may be inching towards declaring a national emergency in order to end the record-breaking 34-day government shutdown.

The White House has drafted an emergency declaration that would direct the Pentagon to build the border barrier and use $7 billion in various unallocated government funds to that purpose, CNN reported on Thursday claiming to have seen "internal documents" to that effect.

Comment: A logical decision considering the Pentagon admits it stashes billions: "Astonishing fraud": Pentagon stashes billions, spends it later to avoid accountability

"The massive amount of aliens who unlawfully enter the United States each day is a direct threat to the safety and security of our nation and constitutes a national emergency," the draft of the proclamation reportedly says.

The draft was updated last week, CNN reported, citing an unnamed US official. According to the same source, the declaration would use $681 million from Treasury forfeiture funds, $3.6 billion from military construction projects, $3 billion in Pentagon civil works funding and $200 million from the Department of Homeland Security.

Comment: See also:

'Let them have payday loans': Commerce Secretary Ross baffled why unpaid workers can't afford food

RT
Fri, 25 Jan 2019 07:18 UTC

As the longest government shutdown on record drags on, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross pondered the seemingly obvious question of why unpaid federal workers might need to visit food banks.

33 days into the shutdown, most of the 800,000 federal workers affected have missed their first paychecks of the year. While they will be compensated once the government reopens, some of these workers have had to turn to charity, including food banks, to make ends meet in the meantime.

Comment: Following Christmas and New Year the average person's budget is already tight.

Speaking on CNBC Wednesday night, Ross was pressed on these reports.

"I don't really understand why," he replied. "Because, as I mentioned before, the obligations that they would undertake, say borrowing from a bank or a credit union are in effect federally guaranteed."

Comment: Regardless of the government shutdown, or of bipartisan politics, this just further highlights how the out of touch the establishment really is, because most don't actually seem to care that a great many workers are living paycheck to paycheck:

Also check out SOTT radio's: NewsReal #23: It's a Trap! The Left vs Right Paradigm

May's Brexit plan B is to call Remainers' bluff

Tom Luongo
Source
Wed, 23 Jan 2019 12:00 UTC

Earlier this week I did something I never thought I'd ever do. I watched over two hours of British Parliament. This was the session wherein Prime Minister Theresa May outlined her so-called Plan B deal for Brexit.

Needless to say, it wasn't warmly received.

But a funny thing has happened on the way to Brexit. And I am as shocked to type this as anyone who follows me will be shocked to read it.

Theresa May has risen to become Brexit's main champion.

As I said in my last article here:

Theresa "The Gypsum Lady" May went through an extraordinary twenty-four hours. First, seeing her truly horrific Brexit deal go down in historic defeat and then, somehow, surviving a 'No-Confidence' vote which left her in a stronger position than before it.

It looks like May rightly calculated that the twenty or so Tory Remainers would put party before the European Union as their personal political positions would be terminally weakened if they voted her out of office.

Comment: One hopes that the British public will begin to see that all this political maneuvering comes at the expense of their democracy.

See also:

Also check out SOTT radio's:

An appeal to Russia, China and all unaligned countries for support of sovereign Venezuela

Peter Koenig
Global Research
Fri, 25 Jan 2019 10:33 UTC

On 23 January 2018, the United States has initiated a coup against President Nicolás Maduro and his Government, by encouraging and fully supporting the "self-proclaimed" opposition leader, Juan Guaido, as interim President. Already days ago he had received the full support of President Trump, and today, in a special televised speech, US Vice-president Mike Pence declared that Venezuela's Freedom begins with the new interim president, Juan Guaído.

RT reports that

"the Venezuelan military will not accept a president imposed by 'dark interests', Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino said after Washington and a number of its allies recognized a lawmaker [Juan Guaído] as the new leader in Caracas."

"The army will continue to defend the constitution and national sovereignty, Padrino said on Wednesday afternoon, hours after opposition lawmaker Juan Guaido was proclaimed interim president by the National Assembly, in a direct challenge to President Nicolas Maduro."

Comment: See also:

Will Trump's Syrian withdrawal erode Russia-Turkey axis?

M. K. Bhadrakumar
Indian Punchline
Sat, 19 Jan 2019 00:00 UTC

Turkish tank convoy moving to Syrian border, Jan 14.

Through the past month since US President Donald Trump tweeted his fateful decision to withdraw troops from Syria, a familiar pattern began appearing - no sooner than Trump makes a foreign-policy decision, those around him scramble to try to delay that decision.

However, in the Syrian case, signs are that the delay suits Trump. The visit by US Senator Lindsey Graham to Ankara on Friday and his meeting with President Recep Erdogan most certainly had Trump's blessing. Graham had a lengthy discussion with Trump recently to persuade the latter to take a hard look at the Syrian withdrawal decision.

Graham used to be the best buddy of late Sen. John McCain (an inveterate Russophobe) and a maverick who broke party stereotypes and was among the loudest Republican critics of the president, but today he's perceived as a leading Trump ally.

US releases detained Iranian journalist Marzieh Hashemi after federal grand jury appearance

npr
Thu, 24 Jan 2019 04:17 UTC

An Iranian broadcast journalist who was detained by U.S. authorities as a material witness for 10 days, is with her U.S. family, according to an attorney for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

Marzieh Hashemi, a news anchor for Iran's English-language Press TV, had been held in jail to make sure she would appear to testify before a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C. And on Wednesday, the 59-year-old fulfilled her obligation as a material witness and was released from any further obligation, Abed Ayoud, a lawyer for the ADC told NPR.

"She is relieved that this is over but the family is pretty angry and upset at the way that this happened," Ayoud said.

Hashemi holds dual citizenship in the U.S. and Iran. She was born Melanie Franklin in Louisiana, and moved to the Mideast and changed her name after marrying an Iranian man and converting to Islam. Since then she has become a prominent reporter in that country.

Comment: Her crime is that she worked for an information service the US doesn't like. Even though PressTV's audience reach in the US is tiny, they feel compelled to harass its staff because, after all, this is an information war (and they take the war part a tad literally).

Hashemi spoke with RT UK today. Full interview available is available tomorrow, Saturday Jan 26th, on Going Underground.

See also:

Russia ties with US in list ranking countries 'contributing to humanity'

RT
Thu, 24 Jan 2019 19:54 UTC

On the annual list ranking the "goodest" countries in the world by their contribution to humanity, the US has slid to the 40th place, barely ahead Russia and behind much of Europe.

"Because we live in a massively interconnected, interdependent age, an age of advanced globalization, it made a lot of sense to look at how countries affect each other and affect the whole system," said Simon Anholt, the project's co-founder.

Finland led the list, with Ireland, Sweden, Germany and Denmark rounding out the top five. The US slid down to 40 - down from 25th place two years ago - while Russia ranked just one spot below, rising by 54 ranks from a previous survey.

Comment: That's odd, because the US has been a fairly tyrannical regime in terms of its global impact for much longer.

Comment: See also:

The Integrity Initiative And The British Roots of The Deep State: How The Round Table Infiltrated America

Matthew J.L. Ehret
Sott.net
Thu, 24 Jan 2019 22:53 UTC

With the near weekly revelations that the British Foreign Office, MI6, and GCHQ have been behind the long standing agenda to undermine the Presidency of Donald Trump and undo the peaceful alliance between nationalist leaders in America, Russia, China and elsewhere, a new focus on the British hand in undermining the United States has become a serious thought for many citizens. In the first week of the new year, fuel was added to this fire when internal memos were leaked from the British-run Integrity Initiative featuring a startling account of the techniques deployed by the anti-Russian British operation to infiltrate American intelligence institutions, think tanks and media.

For those who may not know, the Integrity Initiative is an anti-Russian propaganda outfit funded to the tune of $140 million by the British Foreign office. The January 2019 leak, featuring documents dated to the early period of Trump's election, demonstrate that this organization, already active across Europe promoting anti-Russian PR and smearing nationalist leaders such as Jeremy Corbyn, was intent on spreading deeply into the State Department and setting up "clusters" of anti-Trump operatives. The documents reveal high level meetings that Integrity Initiative Director Chris Donnelly had with former Trump Advisor Sebastien Gorka, McCain Foundation director Kurt Volker, Pentagon PR guru John Rendon among many others.

Trump's Coronation of Guaido as President an Attack on Venezuelan Sovereignty

John Wight
RT
Thu, 24 Jan 2019 21:33 UTC

Scour the history books and you will struggle to find an act of imperialism more brazen than US President Donald Trump's de-recognition of Nicolas Maduro as Venezuela's president.

In a scathing denouncement of the Mexican-American War of 1846-48, famed US Civil War General (and later president) Ulysses S Grant told a reporter,

"We had no claim on Mexico. Texas had no claim beyond the Nueces River, and yet we pushed on to the Rio Grande and crossed it. I am always ashamed of my country when I think of that invasion."

The Mexican-American War was a war of plunder and conquest on the part of a US ruling class for whom every country south of the Rio Grande was then, as if by divine right, deemed subservient to Washington. From then to now the US has regarded Latin America as a wholly owned subsidiary, its primary function to serve Washington's economic interests.

Venezuelan coup must be resisted

Craig Murray
craigmurray.org.uk
Thu, 24 Jan 2019 00:00 UTC

Venezuela has elections. Juan Guaido has never even been a Presidential candidate. Despite massive CIA opposition funding and interference over years as Big Oil tries to regain control of the World's largest oil reserves, Nicolas Maduro was democratically re-elected in 2018 as President of Venezuela.

The coup now under way is illegitimate. I opposed Maduro's move to replace the elected National Assembly. Sometimes I read back things I wrote in the past and decide I was wrong. Sometimes I think the article was right, but a bit of a potboiler. Occasionally I am proud, and I am proud of my analysis on Venezuela written on 3 August 2017. I believe it is still valid.

Winternights3 There's probs a good connection! Just think about it.

sbc

Moving the goalposts. and people are too shit stupid to notice or care

sbc

Hang em... All the jab pushers. At this point they are trying very hard to continue blatant bullshit lies in a bid for total societal control

sbc

It was interesting when the brothers (their family owns the dealerships/service center that were vandalized - something of like 130+ cars burned...

Scoot Over

I ain't going to watch any more than I didn't watch the OJ trial, which ended exactly as I predicted. The thing is that the state should have...

Rowan Cocoan

Puppet Masters

Shutdown standoff: Trump prepares emergency declaration after Senate push fails

'Let them have payday loans': Commerce Secretary Ross baffled why unpaid workers can't afford food

May's Brexit plan B is to call Remainers' bluff

An appeal to Russia, China and all unaligned countries for support of sovereign Venezuela

Will Trump's Syrian withdrawal erode Russia-Turkey axis?

US releases detained Iranian journalist Marzieh Hashemi after federal grand jury appearance

Russia ties with US in list ranking countries 'contributing to humanity'

The Integrity Initiative And The British Roots of The Deep State: How The Round Table Infiltrated America

Trump's Coronation of Guaido as President an Attack on Venezuelan Sovereignty

Venezuelan coup must be resisted

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