Welcome to Sott.net
Wed, 27 Oct 2021
The World for People who Think

Puppet Masters
Map

Light Saber

Ex-Trump defense attorney John Dowd slams 'waste of time' Mueller probe as 'one of the greatest frauds' in US history

Liam Quinn
Fox News
Wed, 13 Feb 2019 17:31 UTC
John Dowd
© news.emory.edu
John Dowd
Veteran criminal defense attorney John Dowd has savaged Robert Mueller's Russia probe as a "terrible waste of time" and questioned whether a report will ever be produced.

Dowd, who served as a member of President Donald Trump's legal team from June 2017 until March 2018, made the explosive comments during an interview with ABC News.

"I will be shocked, if anything regarding the president is made public, other than, 'we're done'," the 77-year-old said.

"I know exactly what he has. I know exactly what every witness said, what every document said. I know exactly what he asked. And I know what the conclusion or the result is."

Comment: More on John Dowd's involvement in Mueller's Russiagate "investigation":

      Read More...
Handcuffs

Drug lord El Chapo found guilty on all counts at trial

Emily Saul and Ruth Brown
New York Post
Tue, 12 Feb 2019 17:06 UTC
Joaquin El Chapo Guzman
© Associated Press
Federal authorities escort Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, center, from a plane back on Jan. 19, 2017.
Hasta la vista, Shorty.

Notorious Mexican cartel kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman was convicted Tuesday of running a massive, violent drug trafficking empire that for decades pumped billions of dollars worth of narcotics into the US.

The diminutive drug lord looked stunned as the Brooklyn federal jury handed down the verdict on its sixth day of deliberations - convicting him on all counts, including operating a continuing criminal enterprise, use of firearms and charges of conspiracy to import and distribute cocaine, heroin and marijuana.
      Read More...
Megaphone

Japan and South Korea see US as "major threat" to global security


RT
Tue, 12 Feb 2019 21:26 UTC
Trump soldier
© Reuters / Carlos Barria
FILE PHOTO: President Donald Trump salutes a US Army soldier at a base in New York
Japan and South Korea - US allies and home to a combined 82,000 US troops - see the United States as a "major threat" to global security. The Koreans fear the US more than North Korea, and more than anyone fears Russia.

The world is a fearful place, a new Pew Research survey has found. Cyberattacks, Islamic terrorism, economic instability, and climate chaos are all considered threats to global security. However, the power and influence of the United States is keeping more people than ever before up at night, even as President Trump withdraws troops from Syria and boasts of strides towards peace in North Korea.

In 2013, only one-quarter of people across 22 nations saw the US as a threat to their countries. That figure jumped to 38 percent in 2017 and rose further to 45 percent last year.

Comment: It seems there comes a time when the aggressor becomes so brazen that, despite the relentless propaganda, the truth is almost impossible to conceal: Also check out SOTT radio's: NewsReal: US Regime Change Operation in Venezuela - This Time It's Legit?

      Read More...
Bullseye

Republican senator Tom Cotton: Media was 'Stalin-like' in Ocasio-Cortez Green Deal cover up

Lukas Mikelionis
Fox News
Wed, 13 Feb 2019 17:18 UTC
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton unloaded on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Green New Deal and said the media were "complicit" in burying the most radical parts of the deal.

Cotton, a staunch Republican, appeared on The Hugh Hewitt Show on Tuesday and discussed the widely ridiculed Green New Deal that aims to implement sweeping changes across the nation.

But what particularly caught Cotton's eye was how the media became complicit in hiding the now-infamous FAQ document circulated by the Ocasio-Cortez office, which included lines such as promising a job to "all people of the United States" - including those "unwilling to work" - and making air travel industry obsolete.
      Read More...
Blackbox

Who will control Venezuela's oil refining company Citgo? Mao's defeat in U.S. 67 years ago holds clue

Davide Scigliuzzo
Bloomberg
Sun, 10 Feb 2019 17:31 UTC
oil tanker
© Eddie Seal/Bloomberg
A dispute over a $626,860 deposit at Wells Fargo & Co. during the Chinese Revolution offers a glimpse into who may eventually control Citgo Petroleum in the current Venezuelan power struggle.

Juan Guaido, the head of the National Assembly, is trying to wrest ownership of Houston-based Citgo away from the current Venezuelan regime led by the autocrat Nicolas Maduro. The move forms a key part of his strategy to topple Maduro and install an interim government that would call new elections. To obtain Citgo, Guaido has said he plans to name a new board of directors for both the state-owned oil company Petroleos de Venezuela and Citgo, its U.S. subsidiary.

That would produce a nightmarish legal situation: One company having two parallel boards of directors, each claiming to be the true management. And making it even more tortuous, Citgo is a U.S.-registered corporation but is owned, at least indirectly, by a foreign government. If that weren't complicated enough, Citgo's assets are eyed by a long list of Venezuela's creditors including bondholders, Russia's state-run oil company Rosneft, ConocoPhillips and defunct Canadian miner Crystallex.

So U.S. courts will likely be called upon to settle the matter.

Comment: Looks like Washington is engaged in some flanking moves on Venezuela:
Bulgaria freezes accounts of Venezuelan state oil firm after Washington 'tip-off'

Authorities in Bulgaria have blocked transfers out of bank accounts belonging to Venezuelan state-controlled energy corporation PDVSA, according to Bulgaria's chief prosecutor Sotir Tsatsarov.

Sofia apparently received information about transfers made by the Venezuelan oil giant, via its accounts in Bulgaria, to reportedly channel the money elsewhere. Washington was the key source of the information, according to Tsatsarov.

The top official stressed that Venezuelan funds were partially transferred to some other countries and Bulgarian law-enforcement agencies were suspicious about where the funds were headed. Caracas reportedly used the funds for backing some sports federations, purchasing food supplies, and other humanitarian projects.

Bulgarian authorities are set to decide whether to open a criminal case into money laundering after a complete inspection of transfer details.

"We have established that there were money transfers from Venezuela, namely from the state oil company of Venezuela to these accounts," the top official said during a joint press conference with US Ambassador to Bulgaria Eric Rubin, as quoted by Bulgarian news agency BTA.

"All measures have been taken so that the funds that are still in the accounts, which are not in small amounts, will be fully under our control and not leave the country on false grounds."

The mentioned transactions included several million euros, according to the chief of Bulgaria's domestic security agency DANS Dimitar Georgiev.

Last week, Bulgaria's government expressed support for its partners in the European Union, who had previously recognized Venezuela's self-declared president Juan Guaido.


      Read More...
Info

Setting the next stage of war? Acting Pentagon representative goes to Iraq for talks on US military presence

Missy Ryan and Tamer El-Ghobashy
The Washington Post
Tue, 12 Feb 2019 18:03 UTC
Patrick Shanahan
© Afghanistan Ministry Of Defense/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock
Acting U.S. defense secretary Patrick Shanahan and his Afghan counterpart, Asadullah Khalid, visit an Afghan special-forces unit outside Kabul on Feb. 11, 2019.
Acting defense secretary Patrick Shanahan highlighted the U.S. commitment to Iraqi autonomy during talks in Baghdad on Tuesday, in the wake of comments from President Trump that have jeopardized plans for an ongoing counterterrorism presence there.

Shanahan made his first-ever visit to Iraq as part of an inaugural overseas tour after being tapped in January to become acting Pentagon chief. That followed the sudden departure of Jim Mattis, who resigned over differences with Trump.

"I wanted to make clear to them that we recognize our role. We understand that we're there by invitation, that we jointly share the resources. And that we clearly recognize their sovereignty," he told reporters of his discussions in Baghdad with Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi.

Shanahan's visit occurred as the Trump administration seeks to wind down the operation against the Islamic State, the extremist group that took over large swaths of Iraq and Syria in 2014. It also follows a political outcry generated by Trump's recent suggestion that he might want to maintain a military presence in Iraq to "watch Iran," his administration's chief adversary in the Middle East.
      Read More...
Black Magic

'Collateral damage': When US bombs incinerated 408 civilians in Iraq's Amiriyah shelter


RT
Wed, 13 Feb 2019 10:28 UTC
Amiriya Shelter
© Getty Images / Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times
Iraqis visit the Amiriya Shelter on memorial day, in remembrance of those who died in the American bombing that took place there in 1991
On this day in 1991, over 400 people lost their lives when the US dropped two 2,000-pound smart bombs on a Baghdad air-raid shelter. But because it was the 'good guys' who did it, the massacre is not remembered as it should be.

'Collateral damage'. The first time I remember those words being used was in the first Gulf War. There was plenty of 'collateral damage' in that conflict. In other words, lots of innocent people were killed.

At around 4:30am on Wednesday February 13, 1991, US F-117 aircraft bombed an air raid shelter in Amiriyah, a suburb of Baghdad, incinerating 408 people, many of them women and children.

Comment: The slaughter of civilians by the West continues to this very day and so, while we can expect that the corruption plaguing their militaries will result in some errors, the sheer number points to a more nefarious intent: US-led coalition's policy of bombing 'ex-mosques' in Syria revealed, 70 civilians dead in 2 days, Kurdish militants advance in Al-Baghuz

For a list of the most recent airstrikes primarily killing civilians, and just in Syria, see: Syria alerts UN to US-led coalition's crimes against humanity in region

See also: About Those 'Nice, New, Smart' Missiles And The 'Chemical Weapons' Sites in Syria

      Read More...
Light Sabers

'Fake news': Beijing slams WSJ report on Chinese diplomats meeting with Venezuelan opposition


RT
Wed, 13 Feb 2019 16:45 UTC
Guaido
© Reuters / Carlos Garcia Rawlins
A newspaper report alleging that Chinese diplomats met in secret with Venezuelan opposition figures to ensure that Beijing's vast investments in the Latin American country are not endangered is "fake news," China has claimed.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the Chinese officials held talks in Washington with representatives of Juan Guaido, the self-appointed interim president of Venezuela who has received the full backing of the US... not so from China.

The paper suggested that Beijing was looking to safeguard its oil projects in Venezuela from the current political crisis. Caracas also owes China around US$20 billion, it is estimated.

"In fact the report is false. It's fake news," Hua Chunying, spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, told reporters when asked about the article.
      Read More...
Magic Hat

Unraveling The QAnon Hoax

Makia Freeman
The Freedom Articles
Wed, 13 Feb 2019 15:46 UTC
QAnon

"Trust the plan!..."
The QAnon, Q-Anon or Q phenomenon, which started around October 2017, managed to attract a large amount of die-hard followers who hung on to Q's every word. However, 1.5 years later, we have enough clues to see who was really behind the whole thing, which now appears to be over. There were many clues that QAnon was a psy-op, including his blatant support of regime change in Iran (right in line with the Zionist NWO agenda), his insistence that rabid warmonger and neocon John Bolton was cleaning up Washington, and his praise for current US President Donald Trump, who has dropped more bombs and fired more missiles than Obama.

QAnon Praises Neocon Warmongers

Whitney Webb wrote in this June 2018 MintPressNews article:
The reality constructed by QAnon has ultimately unfolded much like a fictitious spy novel, one that details a "secret" counter-coup by the Trump administration against the so-called "Deep State" that Trump - in reality - has dutifully served ever since winning the 2016 election. Despite QAnon's having been proven wrong repeatedly, its following remains large and the phenomenon itself remains influential.

Robert Martin, a documentary filmmaker whose series A Very Heavy Agenda delves into the nefarious political influence of the neoconservatives, told MintPress that QAnon is the "perfect wish-fulfillment conspiracy snowball" aimed at conservatives, adding that it has worked to "rehabilitate some of the most tarnished and scary neocons to all of a sudden be heroic figures."
      Read More...
Hiliter

Senate has uncovered no direct evidence of conspiracy between Trump campaign and Russia

Ken Dilanian
NBC
Tue, 12 Feb 2019 16:21 UTC
Richard Burr Mark Warner
© Joshua Roberts / Reuters
Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Richard Burr (R-NC) and vice-chairman Mark Warner (D-VA) prepare for a hearing about "worldwide threats" in Washington on Jan. 29, 2019.

"We were never going to find a contract signed in blood saying, 'Hey Vlad, we're going to collude,'" one Democratic aide said.

After two years and 200 interviews, the Senate Intelligence Committee is approaching the end of its investigation into the 2016 election, having uncovered no direct evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, according to both Democrats and Republicans on the committee.

But investigators disagree along party lines when it comes to the implications of a pattern of contacts they have documented between Trump associates and Russians - contacts that occurred before, during and after Russian intelligence operatives were seeking to help Donald Trump by leaking hacked Democratic emails and attacking his opponent, Hillary Clinton, on social media.

"If we write a report based upon the facts that we have, then we don't have anything that would suggest there was collusion by the Trump campaign and Russia," said Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, in an interview with CBS News last week.

Comment: See also:

      Read More...
Amazon Smile
Revolt! T-shirts