Puppet MastersS


Target

"Coup" Means Whatever the Regime Wants It to Mean

Ryan McMaken
Mises Institute
Tue, 09 Aug 2022 00:00 UTC
Trump Jan6
© Reuters/Jim BourgUS President Donald Trump addressing crowd near the White House
In the immediate aftermath of the January 6 riot at the US Capitol, many pundits and politicians were eager to describe the events of that day as a coup d'état in which the nation was "this close" to having some sort of junta void the 2020 election and take power in Washington.

The headlines at the time were unambiguous in their assertions that the riot was a coup or attempted coup. For example, the riot was "A Very American Coup," according to a headline at the New Republic. "This Is a Coup," insisted a writer at Foreign Policy. The Atlantic presented photos purported to be "Scenes from an American Coup."

This general tactic has not changed since then. Just this month, for example, Vanity Fair referred to the January 6 riots as "Trump's Attempted Coup" Last month, Vox called it "Trump's Cuckoo Coup." Moreover, anti-Trump politicians have repeatedly referred to the riot as a coup, and "attempted coup" has become the standard the January 6 panel's standard term of choice.

Comment: Words matter. Definition comprehension matters more.

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Arrow Down

FBI's Trump raid reinforces deep-state G-Men as the bad guys

Margot Cleveland
The Federalist
Wed, 10 Aug 2022 00:00 UTC
Mar-a-Lago
© Trump White House/FlickrMar-a-Lago
With Monday's raid of Trump's Florida home, FBI headquarters has made clear it still sees Trump and conservatives as the enemy.

The FBI's unprecedented raid of former president Donald Trump's home has angered Americans much beyond his loyalists. Nonetheless, watch for the bureau to exploit the backlash to target conservative organizations and to find some isolated extremists to entrap Whitmer-style.

The raid at Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence on Monday raised the volume of voices on the right who have been criticizing the politicization of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigations for six-plus years. But the overreach seen in the search of the former president's home proved even too great for some Trump critics and even a few Democrats who joined the choir to condemn the raid. Notwithstanding the broad base of the pushback, however, conservatives should ready themselves for further moves by FBI headquarters to target the right, using outrage over the raid of Trump's home as an excuse.

FBI headquarters has made clear its view of conservatives such as Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, which were exposed last week when Christopher Wray testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. During the three-hour-plus hearing that the FBI director cut short to catch a plane, Cruz marched through the most extreme examples of the FBI's targeting of conservatives.
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Attention

Samarkand at the crossroads: from Timur to the BRI and SCO

Pepe Escobar
The Cradle
Thu, 11 Aug 2022 18:42 UTC
From its ancient Silk Road role to China's BRI project, Uzbekistan is set to remain an important geoeconomic hub in Central Asia.
New Silk Route
© The Cradle
SAMARKAND - The ultimate Silk Road city, set at an unrivaled Eurasian trade crossroads, is the ideal spot from which to examine where the New Silk Roads adventure is heading next. For starters, the upcoming summit of heads of state of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) will take place in Samarkand in mid-September.

The ancient city dazzled Alexander the Great in 329 BC and made the Tang dynasty crazy for its golden peaches. This was a cosmopolitan hub that embraced Zoroastrian fire-worship and even flirted with Nestorian Christianity, until Arab conquerors under the banner of the Prophet arrived in 712 and changed everything forever.

In the 13th century, the Mongols irrupted on the scene with the proverbial bang. But then Timur, the Turco-Mongol conqueror who founded the Timurid Dynasty in the late 14th century, set to embellish Samarkand into a resplendent diamond, drawing artists from across his vast empire - Persia, Syria, India - to make it "less a home than a marvelous trophy."

And yet, ever the quintessential nomad, Timur lived in swank tents and gardens on the outskirts of his urban jewel.

The Silk Road trade frenzy died down in the 16th century after the Europeans finally "discovered" their own Maritime Silk Road.

Russia conquered Samarkand in 1868. It was, briefly, the capital of the Socialist Republic of Uzbekistan before the transfer to Tashkent and then, up to 1991, mired into invisibility. Now the city is all set to revive its ancient glory, as a key hub of the Eurasian Century.

What would Timur make of all this?
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Eye 2

WEF playbook: Collapse Sri Lanka today, tomorrow the West?

Brn Bartee
The Daily Bell
Thu, 11 Aug 2022 18:30 UTC
empty shelves
© Flickr/Gilbert MercierThe Great Reset takes hold?
Unless you're reading this from Belarus or North Korea, safely outside of the WEF clutches (for now), your state is losing its sovereignty right in front of your eyes.

Here's a perfect case study from Sri Lanka.

You might've seen sensationalist coverage of the riots in Western media, but likely none that deeply explores the underlying cancer that's metastasized on the island.

Social unrest is the symptom; technocratic social engineering is the disease.
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Light Saber

Best of the Web: Moscow slams West's hypocrisy over Ukrainian grain, which is going to EU, not Africa


RT
Thu, 11 Aug 2022 18:11 UTC
Ivan Nechaev russia ministry
© RuptlyIvan Nechaev, Deputy Director of Russian Foreign Ministry’s Information and Press Department
Not a single ship with Ukrainian grain has reached starving African or Asian countries, the Russian foreign ministry said

Russia's Foreign Ministry has expressed doubt about the sincerity of Western countries' global food security concerns, noting that grain-loaded ships from Ukrainian Black Sea ports are mostly heading to the West, rather than to starving African or Asian countries.

Speaking at a press briefing on Thursday, Ivan Nechaev, the deputy director of the ministry's information and press department, said that "so far not a single ship with grain has reached the shores of the starving countries of Africa or South Asia."

"They go mainly to Western ports, and the range of exported goods is mainly not wheat, but corn grain and sunflower oil, which casts doubt on the sincerity of these voices in the West that world food security depends on the 'grain deal'," Nechaev said, referring to the recent deal between Moscow and Kiev which allowed the resumption of grain exports from Ukrainian ports.

Comment:

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Russian Flag

In the developing new world order, Russia's weapons will point West, and trade will flow East

Glenn Diesen
RT
Thu, 11 Aug 2022 17:22 UTC
border guard russia
© Sputnik / Aleksandr KondratukA serviceman of the Russian Border Guard Service of the Federal Security Service.
The US and its top allies have destroyed trust in the international organizations created from the ashes of the Second World War

Cross border institutions in Eurasia were previously tasked with diversifying economic connectivity as the emerging multipolar world demanded reduced dependence on Western-centric institutions reluctant to adapt to new realities.

However, the current European crisis has destabilized the world and discredited the West's ability to facilitate economic cooperation. Subsequently, these bodies are now asserting a central role in organizing economic recovery and pragmatic cooperation.

Comment: And the West, led by the hubris of the U.S. will be left out in the economic cold. Fitting.

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Eye 1

Australia's central bank working with BIS to launch digital currency system


Zerohedge
Tue, 09 Aug 2022 19:05 UTC
Austrailia CBDCs
Australia's Reserve Bank is launching a pilot program over the course of the next year in collaboration with the Bank for International Settlements (the central bank of central banks) to test the "benefits" of a blockchain ledger based digital currency system. The central bank is added to a long list of participants in BIS efforts to introduce CBDCs (central bank digital currencies) with the target goal of launching them globally by 2025-2030.

It's important to note that substantial economic changes would have to occur within the next few years in order to make CBDC a viable option for the general public. Though many people use electronic transactions as a matter of convenience, a large portion of the population still prefers cash. In the US, surveys within the last few years show that at least 37% of Americans still choose cash over other methods of payment like credit and debit cards. In Australia, the number stands at around 32%.

The usage of digital payment systems also does not necessarily denote a societal shift away from the idea of cash, it only shows a preference for convenience. People still like to know that cash exists as an option if they need it or want it, but central banks are working diligently to remove physical cash as a choice within the next 8 years.

Comment: The "introduction" of CBDC's to scores of countries internationally will likely be coming much sooner rather than later. As the article states, all the banking elites need is a crisis that they think will fit their narrative. And there are any number of ways in which the fragile, financialized, over-leveraged, money-pumped, interdependent, and corrupted economies of the world can incur - or be induced - to collapse.

See also:

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USA

Questions grow about Trump raid after revelation of grand jury subpoena, extensive cooperation

John Solomon
Just the News
Thu, 11 Aug 2022 01:29 UTC
trump fbi raid
Trump got spring grand jury subpoena, gathered documents, turned them over and allowed agents to search storage locker the FBI later raided.

Two months before his Florida home was raided by the FBI, former President Donald Trump secretly received a grand jury subpoena for classified documents belonging to the National Archives, and voluntarily cooperated by turning over responsive evidence, surrendering security surveillance footage and allowing federal agents and a senior Justice Department lawyer to tour his private storage locker, according to a half dozen people familiar with the incident.

While the cooperation was mostly arranged by his lawyers, Trump personally surprised the DOJ National Security Division prosecutor and three FBI agents who came to his Mar-a-Lago compound on June 3, greeting them as they came to pick up a small number of documents compliant with the subpoena, the sources told Just the News, speaking only on condition of anonymity because the visit was covered by grand jury secrecy.

Comment: See also:

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Dollar

Biden increases IRS agents to almost 170,000—70,000 will be armed—to target middle class Americans, UPDATE: Agency releases job posting

Libby Emmons
The Post Millennial
Mon, 08 Aug 2022 17:11 UTC
mtg marjorie taylor greene tweet
The poorly named Inflation Reduction Act, passed over the weekend by Senate Democrats, is slated to create positions for nearly 87,000 new IRS agents, 70,000 of whom will be armed.

This brings the total to nearly 170,000 under the bureau of tax collection. The cost of this new initiative will be about $80 billion, and it's all part of a bill meant to lower costs to Americans.

This was noted as well by Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who told The Post Millennial that "The bill is terrible. It's basically Joe Biden Build Back Better agenda, that a lot of Republicans called 'build that broke."

Comment: UPDATE: A job description for the armed IRS agents has been released. From Washington Examiner:
Among the job requirements listed: "Carry a firearm and be willing to use deadly force, if necessary."

Special agents, who can be placed around the nation and world, have an interesting job, according to the IRS description. They are financial analysts and armed officers ready for a shootout.


"SAs are known for their financial investigative expertise in areas, such as, tax fraud, public corruption, cybercrimes, narcotics, terrorism, and much more. Today's sophisticated schemes demand the analytical ability of financial investigators to trace transactions through complex financial records," said the agency.

Once on the trail, they must "be willing and able to participate in arrests, execution of search warrants, and other dangerous assignments."

They have to work a minimum of 50 hours and be on call 24/7. And they have to look good.

And all for a salary of $50,704-$89,636 and 24 days off.
See also: Senate passes Inflation Reduction Act — Kamala casts tie-breaking vote

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Binoculars

Former Twitter employee convicted of spying for Saudi Arabia


New York Post
Tue, 09 Aug 2022 19:05 UTC
Ahmad Abouammo
© REUTERSAhmad Abouammo, shown in 2019, was accused of accessing confidential Twitter data about users, their email addresses, phone numbers and IP addresses.
A former Twitter employee has been convicted of failing to register as an agent for Saudi Arabia and other charges after accessing private data on users critical of the kingdom's government in a spy case that spanned from Silicon Valley to the Middle East.

Ahmad Abouammo, a US citizen and former media partnership manager for Twitter's Middle East region, was charged in 2019 with acting as an agent of Saudi Arabia without registering with the US government. A jury found him guilty on six counts, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering. The jury acquitted him on another five charges involving wire fraud.

The case marked the first time the kingdom, long linked to the US through its massive oil reserves and regional security arrangements, has been accused of spying in America.

Comment: See also:

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