Puppet Masters
A "stride towards progress"?
Women now occupy the three top positions of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). They also manage four of the country's five largest arms contractors. And they oversee the country's nuclear stockpile.
NowThis described the CIA's new appointments as "another stride towards progress". MSNBC ran with the headline The military-industrial complex is now run by women while asking "who runs the world?" with an apparent sense of pride. Politico, meanwhile, called women taking over of the "military-industrial complex" a "watershed" moment.
Russia's ditching of the dollar in favour of the rouble and other currencies is a result of the nature of US economic policies, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev stated, as he took the floor at the Gaidar economic forum.
"As is known, we are also widening the use of roubles and other currencies in foreign trade transactions; we have drastically cut down other investments in US Treasury securities. Incidentally, a recent batch of Russian euro-securities has been issued in euros - all of this is a result of aggressive, and frankly speaking, often stupid economic policies pursued by the United States", the prime minister noted.
American-born Hashemi, most famous for anchoring news programs and presenting shows for Press TV, was detained upon arrival at St. Louis Lambert International Airport in St. Louis, Missouri, on Sunday, her family and friends said.
Press TV has learned that she was transferred by the FBI to a detention facility in Washington, D.C. The US officials have so far refused to provide any reasons for her apprehension either to her or her family.
Hashemi, born Melanie Franklin, had arrived in the US to visit her ill brother and other family members.
Her relatives were unable to contact her, and she was allowed to contact her daughter only two days after her arrest.
Comment: This case is eerily similar to the dubious arrests of Russian citizen Maria Butina in the US, and that of top Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou by Canada's officials, on behalf of the US, both women, and both of whom appear to have been mistreated while in prison, and on blatantly trumped up charges. In turn, China retaliated by arresting 2 provably sketchy American citizens, and Russia recently arrested a US spy. Evidently some in the US are so desperate to exert any influence on the international stage that they have to resort to playing dirty:
- US court documents in 'foreign agent' Butina case suggest deal made - UPDATE - Putin says she was jailed for nothing, has no ties to Russian intel
- Engdahl: Is Canada's Huawei arrest an attempt to sabotage Trump-Xi talks?
- American accused of spying in Moscow had plenty of 'friends' with Russian military ties
The US Embassy in Havana re-opened in July 2015. About a year later, it was reported that some American diplomats complained about strange noises. The Guardian reported the story using numerous variations on the word "attack". Crickets are mentioned, but only to be dismissed; "But this is Cuba", wink, wink, nudge, nudge; Russia peeps above the horizon:
I'm not interested in defending Gabbard from the criticisms that have been leveled at her at this time; many articles have been written toward that end already, and if she's going to run for the most powerful elected office on the planet it's fair to scrutinize and question what kind of person she is. I'm also not interested in endorsing anyone for the presidency. What I am interested in is the way Gabbard's presence in the Democratic presidential primary race is already in January 2019 upsetting the standard establishment script and forcing foreign policy debates that need to happen.
Comment: Tulsi has shown a refreshing consistency in her policy stances. The MSM smear machine will be going into high gear if her candidacy shows real promise.
- Tulsi Gabbard's tour of Aleppo shames Western media
- Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard smokes CNN shill: 'US is funding terrorists' in Syria
- Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard Accuses Trump, Pence of Shielding Al-Qaeda in Idlib
- US congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard: 'How is Russia bombing terrorists a bad thing?'
- Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has a bill to stop the U.S. arming ISIS
- Rep. Tulsi Gabbard calls out Democrats for 'religious bigotry' in Knights of Columbus flap
- Blunt Gabbard shocks MSM interviewer: North Korea has nukes because they saw what the US did to Libya
- Tulsi Gabbard's 'screw the neocons' meeting with Trump sparks outrage from neocons and media lapdogs
- Tulsi Gabbard, True Maverick
It has emerged that the PM has been given fresh hope of eventual success from a last minute offer of help from Angela Merkel.
Theresa May will attempt to implement a second vote on her Brexit deal if it's voted down by MPs
She will tell her divided Cabinet when it meets for a fiery discussion on Plan B this morning that the German leader suggested the EU could grant extra concessions once the troubled agreement is shot down.
And that could include persuading Taoiseach Leo Varadkar to agree to an end date to the hated Irish backstop - which the DUP and dozens of Tory MPs have demanded as their price.
Comment: Reactions to May's Parliamentary defeat:
From NBC
Moments after Theresa May lost by 432 votes to 202, Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the opposition Labour Party, announced he would seek to oust May's ruling Conservatives by bringing a motion of no-confidence in the government.RT reports Germany may open the door to new talks:
Corbyn said the result was "a catastrophic defeat" for May, with 118 of the prime minister's own Conservative lawmakers voting against her plan.
May was widely anticipated to lose Tuesday's vote, but her defeat was bigger than even the most extreme predictions. Before this week, the biggest government loss in Parliament was by a margin of 166 votes and came in 1926. May smashed that record, losing by a margin of 230.
The consequences are complex and uncharted. May's government will face Corbyn's no-confidence motion Wednesday, but it isn't clear whether the opposition leader has the numbers to make that work.
The wider picture is that more than 30 months after Britain voted in a referendum to leave the E.U. - by a vote of 17.4 million to 16.1 million - the politicians have still not agreed how this should work.
"Every day that passes without this issue being resolved means more uncertainty, more bitterness and more rancor," May warned lawmakers after her defeat Tuesday.
Some in Parliament want a "softer" Brexit or even another referendum - dubbed "the people's vote" - which might give the public the choice between May's deal, no deal, or no Brexit at all.
The German foreign minister has signaled the EU's readiness for new talks with the UK on Brexit if Theresa May's plan is rejected by Parliament. No significant changes to the deal, however, are expected.Pre-vote speculation:
"The agreement stands, as it is. I doubt very much that the agreement can be fundamentally reopened. If there were a better solution, it would already have been put forward," German FM Heiko Maas told reporters at the European Parliament on Tuesday.
Maas expressed hope that UK Prime Minister Theresa May will manage to push the Brexit deal through Parliament, which would be a good way to avoid a disorderly divorce. But if the plan fails to pass the legislators, the EU is ready for further talks.
The vote on the Brexit plan was originally due to take place in December, but Theresa May made a last-minute decision to postpone it for five weeks. Opponents of the PM accused her of doing so out of fear that the plan would fail in parliament. The delay has also triggered a no-confidence vote against May, which she survived.
Maas' remarks might be deemed reassuring - to a certain extent - for the embattled May's cabinet. Earlier on Tuesday, however, Berlin denied that Chancellor Angela Merkel offered any concessions to London. The alleged secret negotiations between May and Merkel were reported earlier by the Sun tabloid, which claimed the German leader floated certain proposals to sweeten the UK-EU divorce deal.
Britain faces a Game of Thrones-style apocalypse if Tuesday night's vote on Prime Minister Theresa May's crucial Brexit deal is unsuccessful, according to the grim forecasts by Environment Secretary Michael Gove.But all is not lost! With Merkel extending a life-preserver to May, it seems the Brexit circus will continue for even longer, likely ending in a fig-leaf "agreement" with the EU that fundamentally changes nothing.
Gove, a 'stark' supporter of the leave campaign in 2016, quoted the HBO series when discussing the potential consequences if May's EU Withdrawal Bill is defeated in the House of Commons.
"I think if we don't vote for the deal tonight we will do damage to our democracy by saying to people we are not going to implement a Brexit, and the opportunity that all of us have to live up to our democratic obligations is clear."
May is expected to be voted down by her own MPs in the House of Commons on Tuesday night. Early predictions estimate that more than 100 of her own backbenchers will vote against the deal, giving way to the biggest defeat in 95 years.
Gove himself refused to predict a victory for May, saying the real risk is that a defeat could mean Brexit won't be delivered.
"We know there are people in the House of Commons and outside who have never made their peace with this decision, who want to overturn it," the minister said.

Juan Guaido, President of the Venezuelan National Assembly speaks at an opposition rally in La Guaira, January 13, 2019.
Pence's phone call to Guaido was meant as expression of US support for the National Assembly as the "only legitimate body in the country," Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing an unnamed White House official.
News of the phone call comes after a tweet by Pence declaring Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro a "dictator with no legitimate claim to power." Maduro won the May 2018 presidential election with over 67 percent of the vote, but the US has refused to recognize the results.
Comment: 1/15/2019 More from the Miami Herald:
President Donald Trump is mulling whether to recognize the president of Venezuela's opposition-controlled National Assembly as the de facto leader of Venezuela instead of President Nicolás Maduro, according to two people familiar with the discussions.See also:
The administration initially did not plan to take major steps after Maduro's inauguration last week, not wanting to give Maduro more attention, but ended up scrambling over the weekend to come up with a response following the outcry by international groups, Venezuelan emigrés in Miami and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, who has spoken repeatedly to Trump about the matter.
"Under the Venezuelan constitution, in absence of a president, the leader of the National Assembly assumes the presidency until there's a new election. Recognizing Juan Guaidó is the next logical step," said Rubio.
Fernando Cutz, who served as director for South America and acting senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs at the National Security Council in the Trump administration, said "We're all recognizing this [the National Assembly] as the only legitimate democratic body in the country. And the constitution says that if the president is unavailable and the vice president unavailable, then essentially their speaker of the House becomes president."
The Trump administration is already taking steps to cut off some international ties with the Maduro government. Maduro was sworn in last week for a second six-year term, but the international community has largely questioned his legitimacy following what it sees as a fraudulent election. More than 21 former presidents and heads of government of Latin America and Spain said they recognized Guaidó as "the president in charge of Venezuela."
Guaidó was briefly arrested on Sunday, two days after declaring that he was prepared to take over temporarily as the country's leader.
- 'Time for a new government': US endorses Venezuelan opposition seeking to depose Maduro
- Has Maduro really dissolved the National Assembly in Venezuela?
- US-backed opposition leader Juan Guaido, ready to depose President Maduro in 'democratic' coup
For those who remember, on October 11, 2018, Facebook and Twitter - without warning or justification - deleted the pages of Free Thought Project and Police the Police which had over 5 million followers. During this purge, they also removed hundreds of other pages who had massive followings like the Antimedia, Cop Block, and Filming Cops.
The owners of these pages would eventually find out that the secret hand behind this massive purge was tied to government via the Atlantic Council.
As we previously reported, the Atlantic Council is the group that NATO uses to whitewash wars and foster hatred toward Russia, which in turn allows them to continue to justify themselves. It's funded by arms manufacturers like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing. It is also funded by billionaire oligarchs like the Ukraine's Victor Pinchuk and Saudi billionaire Bahaa Hariri and the US government.
Instead of taking this censorship move lying down, TFTP co-founder, Jason Bassler and Conscious Resistance founder, Derick Broze organized the United for Common Ground summit in Houston to plan a strategy to fight back.
Comment: The situation for alt news is not going to get better. It is time to pro-actively create safeguards that allow those who seek unadulterated news to have that choice, and the providers of such the unhindered ability to serve the public.

JNF Canada turned the land of three demolished Palestinian villages into a recreational area, Canada Park, with an adjacent settlement for Jews only.
Uses of charitable donations to fund foreign militaries contravenes Canadian law.
JNF Canada's parent organization, the Jewish National Fund (JNF), predates the establishment of Israel and uses tree-planting as a cover to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their land.
After Israel's establishment in 1948, the JNF took control of most of the land which had been confiscated from Palestinian refugees. In the 1950s, the JNF became a quasi-state organization, with a policy to lease land only to Jews on an openly discriminatory basis.
Documents show that the JNF has repeatedly used JNF Canada as a conduit to collect funds for its illegal projects, activists say. JNF Canada recently told public broadcaster CBC that it stopped funneling money to the Israeli military in 2016. However, acting as a conduit for its parent organization, funds continue to flow into projects connected to the Israeli military.
MPs voted by 432 votes to 202 to reject the deal, which sets out the terms of Britain's exit from the EU on 29 March.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has now tabled a vote of no confidence in the government, which could trigger a general election.
The confidence vote is expected to be held at about 1900 GMT on Wednesday.
The defeat is a huge blow for Mrs May - who has spent more than two years hammering out a deal with the EU.
The plan was aimed at bringing about an orderly departure from the EU on 29 March, and setting up a 21-month transition period to negotiate a free trade deal.
The UK is still on course to leave on 29 March but the defeat throws the manner of that departure - and the timing of it - into further doubt.
Comment: As promised, Jeremy Corbyn has tabled a motion for a no-confidence vote to the Tory government which is to take place at 7pm on Wednesday. If her government is defeated, which requires a majority of one in the house of commons, the UK prime minister will have 14 days to stay in office. A second confidence vote will then take place - failure to win such a vote would automatically trigger a general election.
Corbyn said May had repeatedly failed the British people and failed to deliver on her promise to secure a good Brexit deal.See: Brexit: A Political Farce Based on a Public Lie
"She cannot seriously believe that after two years of failure, she is capable of negotiating a good deal for the people of this country," he said, adding that the "most important issue" facing the country is that the government has lost the confidence "of this House and this country."
[..]
The main sticking point for May on the Brexit deal has been the contentious Irish backstop - a guarantee Dublin sought and won from Brussels that there will be no 'hard' border imposed on the island of Ireland when the UK leaves the EU. May had attempted to gain concessions from Brussels to assuage the fears of pro-Brexit Tories and Northern Irish DUP MPs who were unhappy with the backstop deal, but did not secure any legal changes.
After May's deal was defeated on Tuesday evening, DUP MPs said they would still support her government in the no confidence vote on Wednesday, saying they never sought a change of government, but urged May once again to return to Brussels to get a better deal.
Scotland's first minister Nicola Sturgeon said that the Scottish National Party supported Corbyn's tabling of a no confidence motion, describing the vote as "a defeat of historic proportions" for May. Sturgeon accused the prime minister of wasting "valuable time" by delaying the vote in December when it was clear she did not have the support needed.













Comment: It's not just economic policies that are forcing Russia, China and much of the planet to move away from the US, it's their unrelenting pursuit of "World domination" and, seemingly, at any cost: Russian Deputy FM doubts full US withdrawal from Syria.
See also:
- America's nightmare: The Sino-Russian entente
- Pepe Escobar: Currency chaos, gold, oil, cryptocurrencies and dumping the dollar
- Press TV anchor Marzieh Hashemi jailed in US on unspecified charges
- Sanctions And Tariffs Have Turned American Exceptionalism Into Isolationism
- "Consider the danger": US ambassador threatens to sanction German Nord Stream 2 companies
Also check out SOTT radio's: Behind the Headlines: Trump Ditches Europe, Europe Bluffs, Russia and China Carry on With Eurasian Integration