Puppet MastersS


Yoda

'The Nation' speaks with Oliver Stone about his latest documentary 'The Putin Interviews'

stone putin interviews
© Komandir / Courtesy of ShowtimeOliver Stone, interpreter Sergei Chudinov, and Russian President Vladimir Putin in a scene from the Showtime documentary.
As the intelligence community, Congress, and the press investigate alleged Russian tampering with the US presidential election, Stone shows Putin's side of the story.

Three-time Academy Award winner Oliver Stone—the Vietnam veteran and Purple Heart recipient who made some of Hollywood's greatest antiwar movies—was interviewed on the anniversary of D-Day at his Santa Monica office. The hallmark of Stone's cinematic oeuvre has been artistically creating counternarratives, which has pitted him against not only government forces but also the mainstream media. In 1986, when President Ronald Reagan pursued the Iran-Contra covert operation Stone showed the other side of the story in Central America in the riveting Salvador. Later that year and in 1989, with the Vietnam-set Best Picture Oscar winner Platoon and Best Picture nominee Born on the Fourth of July, Stone took on militarism with his war-is-hell classics. While Reagan ballyhooed unbridled capitalism, in 1987's Wall Street Stone questioned the "greed is good" ethos. Perhaps most memorable is Stone's demolishing of the Warren Commission Report in 1991's JFK, implicating US intelligence agents in the Kennedy assassination. And in his colossal 796-minute 2012 documentary series, Untold History of the United States, Stone compellingly presented an alternative view of the Cold War and more.

Info

Military source says SAS troops posing as homeless people to counter terrorist attacks

homeless person
© Dylan Martinez / Reuters
SAS troopers have been deployed on British streets disguised as road sweepers and homeless people to guard against terrorist attacks, according to reports.

Their deployment is aimed at preventing another attack like those in Manchester and on London Bridge in recent weeks, a source told the Daily Mirror newspaper.
"The view is there are so many homeless people out there undercover operators will remain safe and anonymous," the unnamed military source told the newspaper.

"Anyone trying to pick on them would be extremely foolish and the public should feel reassured that a lot is being done to minimize the effect of another attack."

Handcuffs

William Binney: Comey could face 35 years in jail for leaking talks with Trump

James Comey
© AP Photo/ Carolyn Kaster
Former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director James Comey could legally be jailed for up to 35 years for admitting in a congressional testimony last week that he had deliberately leaked a confidential conversation with President Donald Trump, ex-National Security Agency (NSA) senior analyst and whistleblower William Binney told Sputnik.
"That's something that whistleblowers are in jail for between five and 35 years,"
Binney noted about Comey's testimony last week to the US Senate Intelligence Committee in which he admitted to leaking a memo of his conversation with Trump.

Bad Guys

Politico spouts ridiculous propaganda, says Russian 5th column infiltrating all aspects of US political life including military

American propaganda
Politico has published an exposé about how 'Russian propaganda' is destroying the US military from the inside out and turning servicemembers and veterans into a dangerous 'fifth column'. Speaking to Radio Sputnik, political observer Valery Korovin said that the truth is that US military leaders are just afraid of alternative sources of information.

The Politico piece, coming out the same day that Secretary of Defense James Mattis issued his own letter to Congress about the challenges Russia and China pose to US military dominance, consists of a series of paranoid anecdotes about how the Kremlin appears to be infiltrating all aspects of US political life, including the military.

For example, the article finds it highly suspicious that Veterans Today, an independent news site that offers ex-service members help finding jobs and paying medical bills, occasionally reposts content from Russian-based English-language resources.

Snakes in Suits

Useless bickering: Democrats squabble behind closed doors over Trump impeachment plan

anti-Trump protesters
© Patrick T. Fallon / Reuters
Democrats in Congress almost always unite when it comes to opposing President Donald Trump, but strategy sessions are reportedly blowing up over California Representative Brad Sherman's controversial plan to bring articles of impeachment.

During a weekly meeting of House Democrats, many of Sherman's colleagues protested his decision, according to The Hill. Sherman's articles of impeachment were circulated through the House of Representatives on Monday.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-California) urged her party to steer their energy toward issues such as the economy. Others took issue with other possible consequences of focusing on impeachment.

Light Saber

Trump argues for more generous healthcare during closed-door meeting with senators - calls ACHA bill 'mean, mean, mean'

Trump
© Carlos Barria / ReutersUS President Donald Trump
President Donald Trump has reportedly asked Republican senators to draft a "more generous" healthcare bill than the "mean, mean, mean" American Health Care Act (AHCA) recently passed by the House.

During a private White House lunch with 15 GOP senators on Tuesday, Trump reportedly told his guests that the House bill was "mean, mean, mean," adding that the new bill needs to be "more generous, more kind," Congressional sources told the Associated Press and CNN.

"He made pretty clear that he thinks the House bill leaves people - many of which probably make up his base - in a bad place," one source told CNN.


Bizarro Earth

Get ready for the World Truth Ministry and the unimaginable

Theresa May
What began as Germany's so-called "Ministry of Truth", has now expanded to include spying, censoring, and vetting of citizens worldwide. If "Big Brother" is pulling all the levers of power out there, he's missed his best chance ever to run the entire show. Here's the latest pieces in the zigsaw puzzle of civic control George Orwell prophesied.

When I wrote about Facebook testing new censoring tools before, during, and after the French election process, only a few thousand readers took notice. The main reason the public seems so disinterested is that the sensational news and events, fake and real, over the past four or five years have left them numb. When Edward Snowden revealed the NSA is spying on everybody, the news cycle quickly diverted our attention away from the reality the Obama White House tore up the US Constitution.

Vader

Warmongering liars who lie about nearly everything

trump saudis sword dance
Terrorism supporters in Washington and Riyadh close ranks against Qatar

The United States has been using lies to go to war since 1846, when Americans who believed in manifest destiny sought to expand to the Pacific Ocean at the expense of Mexico, acquiring by force of arms California and what were to become the southwestern states. In 1898 the U.S. picked up the pieces of a dying Spanish Empire in a war that was driven by American imperialists and the yellow dog reporting of the Hearst Newspaper chain. And then came World War 1, World War 2, and Korea, all avoidable and all enabled by deliberate lying coming out of Washington.

More recently, we have seen Vietnam with its Gulf of Tonkin fabrication, Granada and Panama with palpably ridiculous pretexts for war, Iraq with its nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, Afghanistan with its lies about bin Laden, Libya and its false claims about Gaddafi, and most recently Syria and Iran with allegations of an Iranian threat to the United States and lies about Syrian use of barrel bombs and chemical weapons. And if one adds in the warnings to Russia over Ukraine, a conflict generated by Washington when it brought about regime change in Kiev, you have a tissue of lies that span the globe and bring with them never-ending conflict to advance the American imperium.

Black Cat

Obama's former Attorney General Lynch pressured Comey to not investigate Killary

lynch comey
Former FBI Director, James Comey had a second meeting with Barack Obama's former Attorney General Loretta Lynch where he confronted her about her election interference.

According to a breaking report by Circa News, when confronted, Loretta Lynch stared at Comey with a "steely silence that lasted for some time" before she asked him to leave her office.

Comment: Perhaps Trey Gowdy's assessment of Comey's actions will be proven out.

Trey Gowdy: Hillary Clinton's crimes are much worse than we first thought
"I've had plenty of differences with Jim Comey, I want to be really clear about that, but I think history is going to be much kinder to Comey over his July press conference [in which he declined to prosecute Hillary] than the Democrats were when he had it," Gowdy told Fox News. "I think he had access to information that, because he's a stand-up guy who's not going to decimate classified information although God knows everyone else is, he's not going to [release] it even if it casts him in a negative light."

"...Comey had access to additional [classified] information that I am convinced that left him with no other choice than to make the decision he made in July." And right after that decision, an FBI insider with "intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the Clinton case" revealed the agency's investigation into Clinton's private email servers pointed towards greater crimes involving the Clinton Foundation.



Info

UAE envoy says US should consider moving airbase from Qatar as it gives Doha 'nice insurance'

Al-Udeid air base
© Rabih Moghrabi / AFPAl-Udeid air base
Washington should consider relocating its Al Udeid airbase from Qatar as it gives the gas-rich state "a nice insurance policy" against pressure from Arab neighbors, the UAE ambassador to the US argued as the Gulf political crisis enters its second week.

As the all-out political crisis among Persian Gulf states enters its second week, the United Arab Emirates Ambassador to the US Yousef al-Otaiba threatened Qatar with more punitive actions. He also complained about Washington's massive military presence in the monarchy.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Otaiba said the US and his own country had allowed "bad behavior" by Qatar to continue for "a very long time," as cited by AP.
"If I want to be honest, I think the reason action hasn't been taken against Qatar is because of the airbase," he said, referring to the base near the capital, Doha. "The airbase is a very nice insurance policy against any additional pressure."