Puppet Masters

The shape of Trump to come

Raul Ilargi Meijer
The Automatic Earth
Mon, 20 Aug 2018 01:05 UTC

I thought I'd make list of things we can expect to emanate from the White House over the coming year or so. I'm sure you will agree, wherever you stand on the political roller coaster, that there's little chance things are going to be boring going forward. Here goes:

Trump will end the 'monopolies' of Facebook, Google, Twitter et al. The intelligence community will hate this, but they already hate him anyway, so why bother? And besides, it's the only thing to do that makes any sense. The AT&T model might be useful, essentially creating Baby Bells, though the international reach of the companies may add a layer or two of complications.

But you simply can't have a few roomfuls of boys and girls ban and shadowban people with impunity from networks that span the globe and reach half of the world's population on the basis of opaque 'Terms and Conditions' that in effect trump the US constitution the way they are used and interpreted. Whether they are private companies or not will make no difference in the end.

Comment: Interesting times ahead, no matter how the various controversies unfold. The president, it seems, has many upcoming opportunities to pull the rug out from under the feet of his adversaries. Will he?

Has North Korea been fulfilling its Singapore Summit commitments?

Konstantin Asmolov
New Eastern Outlook
Tue, 21 Aug 2018 00:00 UTC

Against the background of a number of high-profile statements by the Western press that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) is secretly developing a nuclear missile program, thereby violating the Singapore Declaration and deceiving the world community at large and Donald Trump personally, the author would like to present a detailed answer to the matter in question.

As you may recall, the joint statement of the leaders of the United States and North Korea consisted of four main parts. The first two were full of noble intentions: the parties "undertake to establish new relations" and "will join efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula". In the third, North Korea confirmed the Panmunjom Declaration of April 27, 2018 and agreed to "work towards the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," without, however, any deadlines, clarifications, and further explanations. Only the last paragraph contained some specifics: "The United States and North Korea undertake to return the remains of missing prisoners of war, including the immediate return of already identified persons".

Since the Korean war, about 8 thousand American soldiers have been considered missing. According to the Pentagon, the remains of about 5,600 U.S. soldiers are still located on North Korean territory. In the period from 1990 to 2005, the DPRK returned the remains of over six hundred American soldiers to the U.S.

Comment: Has the US increased the parameters of the commitments? Or is this just another example of brazen rhetoric to bolster the belligerent stance of certain advisors in Trump's administration? Some have no sense as to when to leave something, in positive development, just be.

Pope Francis promises zero tolerance for pedophile priests after revelations of the Pennsylvania Grand jury report

RT
Mon, 20 Aug 2018 19:13 UTC

"I acknowledge once more the suffering endured by many minors due to sexual abuse, the abuse of power and the abuse of conscience perpetrated by a significant number of clerics and consecrated persons," read a letter from the Pope released on Monday.

The Pontiff then promised to treat future cases with "zero tolerance."

After a Pennsylvania Grand Jury report laid bare decades of sexual abuse, involving at least 1,000 victims and 300 "predator priests," the Pope had been under fire for remaining silent, until today, when he called cases of sex abuse by his own organization "atrocities."

The report makes for sobering reading. In it are "credible allegations" that priests repeatedly and sadistically abused at least 1,000 boys and girls in six of Pennsylvania's eight dioceses. Allegations from the other two dioceses, Philadelphia and Altoona-Johnstown, were subjects of an earlier report.

The jury claims that due to lost records and victims who were afraid to come forward, the real number of victims stretched into the thousands.

"Some were teens; many were pre-pubescent," the report states. "Some were manipulated with alcohol and pornography. Some were made to masturbate their assailants, or were groped by them. Some were raped orally, some vaginally, some anally. But all of them were brushed aside, in every part of the state, by church leaders who preferred to protect the abusers and their institution above all."'

In one incidence, a priest in the Diocese of Erie who had confessed to raping at least 15 boys was commended by his bishop as a "person of candor and sincerity." When the priest was finally removed from his position, the bishop instructed his parish not to say why. Some of his victims were as young as seven years old.

Comment: Surely he was not the last to know. Surely there is some overarching judiciary body somewhere to advocate for children and prosecute priestly perpetrators beyond defrocking, even to the ranks of the Vatican!

Jury has still not reached Manafort verdict in first Russigate showtrial

RT
Tue, 21 Aug 2018 16:59 UTC

After a bizarre trial that saw no mention of Russia, the jury in former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort's fraud trial is still deliberating, spelling bad news for Robert Mueller's "Russiagate" prosecutors.

Holed up on the ninth floor of a federal district courthouse in Virginia, jurors began deliberating on Manafort's case last Thursday. Manafort, the former chairman of President Trump's 2016 election campaign, is charged with bank and tax fraud offenses from over a decade ago, when he lobbied for former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych. If found guilty, he could face a maximum sentence of more than 300 years in prison.

His was the first trial to stem from White House Special Counsel Robert Mueller's 'Russiagate' investigation, despite the fact that his charges are in no way related to Russia or to alleged 'Russian collusion.'

The deliberation process in high-profile cases can be as short as four hours - as was the case in OJ Simpson's 1995 murder trial; or as long as six days - as was the case when Bill Cosby's first trial for sexual assault ended in mistrial. Generally speaking, the longer the deliberation, the better the chance of a not guilty verdict.

Comment: Pass the popcorn!

US Treasury: Washington freezes Russian assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars

RT
Tue, 21 Aug 2018 14:33 UTC

Russian-owned assets in the United States worth hundreds of millions of dollars have been frozen as part of Washington's sanctions against Moscow, US Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Sigal Mandelker said on Tuesday.

"The actions of the US Treasury have had significant consequences for the financial interests of individuals and businesses that were affected, including the blocking of hundreds of millions of dollars of Russian assets in the United States," Mandelker said.

The statement was published shortly before her speech in Congress.

Mandelker, who is responsible for sanctions by the US Treasury, added that "Russia is taking note of these impacts." Foreign direct investment into Russia has fallen five percent since 2013, with direct investment from the US falling 80 percent, according to her statement.

The Trump administration has sanctioned 217 Russian-related individuals and entities, including oil company Surgutneftegaz and power company EuroSibEnergo, since January 2017. Targets include heads of major state-owned banks and energy firms, and some of President Putin's closest associates.

Comment: A new political/financial 'Ice Age' - right in synch with earth changes.

Brennan cites fake news date for Russia 'collusion'

Joel B. Pollak
Breitbart
Sun, 19 Aug 2018 00:00 UTC

Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director John Brennan told NBC News' Chuck Todd on Sunday's Meet the Press that he learned since retiring that Russians began hacking Hillary Clinton's emails on the day Donald Trump joked about it in July 2016.

The problem: that widely-cited claim is untrue - a piece of "fake news" evidence, drawn from one of the indictments by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, that has fueled unfounded theories that Trump colluded with the Russians during the presidential election.

Last week, Brennan wrote an op-ed in the New York Times in which he confirmed Trump's joke at a July 27, 2016 press conference about inviting the Russians to find the 33,000 emails missing from Clinton's illicit private server had prompted him to start a large counter-intelligence investigation into the Trump campaign. In addition, Brennan suggested that he had learned from media reports, since leaving his post in 2017, that there was further evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian hackers.

Comment: Not only has Brennan become unhinged, he is infusing his narratives with delusions and fake news.

Russia, China, Mongolia to hold largest military drills since the Soviet era

RT
Mon, 20 Aug 2018 21:04 UTC

Russia is preparing to hold the largest military exercises in decades. The drills, in which China and Mongolia will participate as well, will be of an "unprecedented" scale, the Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said.

A series of drills, which will hold a joint title 'Vostok-2018' will take place in Russia's Siberia and Far East and will be "of unprecedented scale when it comes both to geographical coverage and to the total number of troops and forces taking part in it," the Russian defense minister added.

Shoigu said that the drills will be bigger than the biggest training exercise in Soviet history, held back in 1981 on the territory of Belarus, Ukraine, three Baltic republics as well as some countries of the Warsaw Pact.

The total number of troops that are expected to take part in the drills has not been revealed yet. China has already confirmed that it will send over 3,000 troops to join the Russian forces during the drills, however. More than 900 pieces of military hardware as well as 30 warplanes and helicopters will also be deployed to Russia as part of the exercise, the Chinese Defense Ministry said.

The forthcoming drills are apparently poised to exceed the scale of the Zapad-2017 exercises, which Russia staged last year, provoking an excessively nervous reaction in the West. Those drills - which involved some 12,700 troops, 70 military aircraft, 10 ships and some 680 ground vehicles - sparked accusations that Russia had surpassed the declared number of troops participating, and even more alarming claims that the drills were cover for an "invasion" of neighboring countries.

Comment: Military advertising at its scariest best. A ferociously spiraling circle of ability, technology and delivery compactly packaged into successive demonstrations of might, fright and one-upmanship - at best signaling a stalemate - at worst creating a never-ending escalation in war toys and lethal capabilities.

US sanctions Russian vessels, companies and individuals for prohibited ties with North Korea

RT
Tue, 21 Aug 2018 13:56 UTC

The US Treasury Department has imposed sanctions on two Russian individuals, three companies and six Russian-flagged ships over alleged business ties with North Korea - in violation of international sanctions.

The US government also tied the measure to Russia's alleged activity in global cyberspace, according to a release published on the Treasury website on Tuesday.

The individuals added to the sanctions list are Anton Nagibin, who was included over his ties to the Saint-Petersburg-based design and manufacture company DiveTechnoService, and Marina Tsareva over her connection to the same firm as well as to the corporation Vela-Marine.

The updated list also includes Russian cargo ship operator Gudzon Shipping, Primorye Maritime Logistics, Vela-Marine and a Slovakian firm, Lacno.

The new sanctions target six Russian-flagged ships, including Bella, Bogatyr, Neptun, Patriot, Partizan, and Sevastopol over their alleged ties to the sanctioned shipping firm Gudzon.

The penalties have been imposed over the Russian companies' alleged involvement in the banned ship-to-ship transfer of refined petroleum products to North Korea-flagged vessels.

Comment: See also:

Russian Filmmaker Nekrasov Demolishes Bill Browder's Magnitsky Fiction

Andrei Nekrasov and Vetta Kirillova
andreinekrasov.livejournal.com
Mon, 20 Aug 2018 17:37 UTC

Filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov

On June 27, 2018 Bill Browder tweeted enthusiastically that he had just told his story of Sergei Magnitsky to a young Berlin audience and everyone was fascinated. When he announced that he was heading straight to the Bundestag after the speech to start the campaign for a German "Magnitsky Act", the audience broke into a "rapturous standing ovation".

Who's Bill Browder? What story has he been telling with such success for eight years all over the world? What law does he lobby for so persistently in different countries and why?

We tried to answer these questions in a film. We have concluded that the Browder case reflects today's transformation of society in an essential way. That's what our film is about. But so far it has been withheld from the public. According to our lawyer, this case is unprecedented.

Despite having approved it editorially and technically, ARTE removed this important investigative documentary from its schedule shortly before its planned broadcast on 3 May 2016. Before April 27, 2017, it had been advertised on the ARTE website with trailers. Today, one can only find some sorry traces of that in the Internet archives.

One of the trailers has since been hosted by the Norwegian film festival "Movies on War" on its YouTube channel. German film title is "Der Fall Magnizki". We worked closely with the editors of ZDF/ARTE on this film. Andrei Nekrasov knew one of them from his work on the documentary series "Farewell, comrades!", for which he received a Grimme Prize. While working on "The Magnitsky case" we did not experience any major differences of opinion, had no political arguments with the ZDF/ARTE editorial staff. The editor, who was directly responsible for the film, even demanded that Andrei use more "direct language" in his voice-over narration in the film, and say, for example, that such self-serving stories as Browder's should not be made an instrument of international politics. Everything should be called by its name.

Comment: Nekrasov's film isn't the only piece of critical media that Browder and his lawyer Jonathan Winer have had banned. They strong-armed Amazon into removing Alex Krainer's expose... twice! They did so on nothing else than Winer's word that the book was "defamatory". Apparently these hacks and thieves think it's defamatory to expose their lies and crimes. But that's just how crooks operate. And Browder is a crook, make no mistake.

Nekrasov's film, while banned from appearing in theaters, is available to rent on Vimeo:

The ongoing war on the American people

John W. Whitehead
The Rutherford Institute
Tue, 21 Aug 2018 18:34 UTC

"A government which will turn its tanks upon its people, for any reason, is a government with a taste of blood and a thirst for power and must either be smartly rebuked, or blindly obeyed in deadly fear."-John Salter

Police in a small Georgia town tasered a 5-foot-2, 87-year-old woman who was using a kitchen knife to cut dandelions for use in a recipe. Police claim they had no choice but to taser the old woman, who does not speak English but was smiling at police to indicate she was friendly, because she failed to comply with orders to put down the knife.

Police in California are being sued for using excessive force against a deaf 76-year-old woman who was allegedly jaywalking and failed to halt when police yelled at her. According to the lawsuit, police searched the woman and her grocery bags. She was then slammed to the ground, had a foot or knee placed behind her neck or back, handcuffed, arrested and cited for jaywalking and resisting arrest.

In Alabama, police first tasered then shot and killed an unarmed man who refused to show his driver's license after attempting to turn in a stray dog he'd found to the local dog shelter. The man's girlfriend and their three children, all under the age of 10, witnessed the shooting.

In New York, Customs and Border Protection officers have come under fire for subjecting female travelers (including minors) to random body searches that include strip searches while menstruating, genital probing, and forced pelvic exams, X-rays and intravenous drugs at area hospitals.

At a California gas station, ICE agents surrounded a man who was taking his pregnant wife to the hospital to deliver their baby, demanding that he show identification. Having forgotten his documents at home in the rush to get to the hospital, the husband offered to go get them. Refusing to allow him to do so, ICE agents handcuffed and arrested the man for not having an ID with him, leaving his wife to find her way alone to the hospital. The father of five, including the newborn, has lived and worked in the U.S. for 12 years with his wife.

These are not isolated incidents.

These cases are legion.

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Good Optics

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Steve S

Puppet Masters

The shape of Trump to come

Has North Korea been fulfilling its Singapore Summit commitments?

Pope Francis promises zero tolerance for pedophile priests after revelations of the Pennsylvania Grand jury report

Jury has still not reached Manafort verdict in first Russigate showtrial

US Treasury: Washington freezes Russian assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars

Brennan cites fake news date for Russia 'collusion'

Russia, China, Mongolia to hold largest military drills since the Soviet era

US sanctions Russian vessels, companies and individuals for prohibited ties with North Korea

Russian Filmmaker Nekrasov Demolishes Bill Browder's Magnitsky Fiction

The ongoing war on the American people

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