Puppet MastersS


Arrow Up

Trump wins: Addressing the lessons and lies surrounding the Iran peace deal

Brandon Smith
Alt-Market.us
Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00 UTC
Pezeshkian
© Screenshot/TWIran's President Masoud Pezeshkian and signed deal
There are two primary obstacles to finding the truth in any given situation: Cognitive dissonance and propaganda. One always feeds into the other. Effective propaganda works because it caters to the biases or fears of its target audience. Cognitive dissonance is the open door through which propaganda enters the mind and controls it.

When it comes to Donald Trump and his administration, there is a LOT of propaganda and cognitive dissonance, and the vast majority of it is weaponized against him rather than for him. If you are unbiased, this is blatantly obvious. If you are hoping for his administration to fail, then you won't see it at all; you'll simply find a reason to see the worst.

For those reading this in the expectation that I am going to fuel their hobby of Trump hate, sorry to disappoint. I only care about facts and evidence, I don't care about the concerns of foreign or domestic movements seeking to engineer public opinion, and there's a lot of them.
Read More...
Attention

The EU can't fix Europe - but it can fund Kiev forever

Tarik Cyril Amar
RT.com
Wed, 01 Jul 2026 19:02 UTC
While railways stall, hospitals fail and scandals spread, Brussels still finds endless billions for its pet proxy war.
Psychos
© Antonio Masiello / Getty ImagesVladimir Zelensky and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at the 2025 Ukraine Recovery Conference in Rome, Italy.
NATO-EU Europe, that tense, unhappy realm of deeply unpopular yet aggressively doctrinaire centrist regimes, has many grifts.

Its elites, whether national or EU, in business, politics, and the mainstream media and think-tank sinecure system are stunningly inept when it comes to addressing the urgent, even vital problems of their subjects. They could not care less about critical economic decline and general impoverishment, crumbling infrastructure, withering education, and scarce, unequal health care, to name only a few.

But the same elites are endlessly creative and tirelessly busy when looking after themselves, from top to bottom. Recent and countless examples of this ever more shameless divergence between not doing their job of looking after the public interest, on one side, and extensive as well as exclusive "self-care," on the other, are easy to come by.

Concerning the self-care, we have, for instance, just entered the umpteenth iteration of Ursula von der Leyen - the German boss of the EU doing double duty as US viceroy - illegally deleting the evidence of her very shady deals, from the Corona pandemic ('Pfizergate') to the Mercosur trade scheme to Ukraine and handling US President Donald Trump (the 'Washington Group').

In Germany, the second-most powerful man in the ruling (if barely) mainstream conservative party, Jens Spahn, has just been exposed as a long-time associate of a secretive network linked to US oligarch - and Antichrist obsessive - Peter Thiel. That's a new one. Before that, Spahn was mostly known for his extremely suspect and certainly enormously wasteful wheeling and dealing during the pandemic.

Across the Channel, meanwhile, Great Britain is still one of the largest money laundries in the world. According to a fresh report, it is handling a whopping £325 billion of dirty money per year, equivalent to 10% of its GDP.
Read More...
Bomb

Investigators looking at Zelensky's secret police for Monaco bomb attack on Ukrainian oligarch

Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge
Wed, 01 Jul 2026 18:58 UTC
bomb suspect monaco Iermolaiev
©
L: Vadym Iermolaiev, 58
R: After placing a package at the door of Iermolaiev's building the suspect fled on foot.
The manhunt continues, chiefly focused in France or also nearby Italy, for the culprit who committed a Monday parcel bomb attack on an exiled Ukrainian oligarch and his family at their luxury apartment building in Monaco.

The victims - Vadym Iermolaiev, his 'partner' (or wife, according to contradictory reports) and his 13-year-old child, all survived the bombing, with Iermolaiev and his partner having sustained serious injuries and in critical condition. The suspected would-be assassin was seen fleeing to the French border, after which "Dozens of officers were deployed in Monaco, while two helicopters and some 30 gendarmes scoured neighboring France for a man who left a package in a residential building near the border, according to the police and gendarmerie."

Given that Iermolaiev had long ago been declared an enemy of the Ukrainian state, and has been under sanctions for years for his extensive business dealings in Crimea, Ukrainian intelligence is coming under the spotlight for possible involvement in the Monaco bomb attack - a first of its kind in the small, wealthy principality.
Read More...
Cowboy Hat

RFK Jr. Announces He's Ending Emergency Liability Protection For COVID-19 Vaccine Makers

Zachary Stieber
The Epoch Times
Tue, 30 Jun 2026 15:50 UTC
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
© David Berding/Getty ImagesHealth Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in Minneapolis on May 21, 2026.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is ending emergency declarations for COVID-19 vaccines, treatments, and medical devices, after determining that the circumstances that resulted in the declarations are no longer in place.

The health secretary in office in early 2020 issued emergency declarations, providing liability protections for companies that made products for COVID-19 and enabling regulators to issue emergency authorizations, which have a lower evidentiary threshold than regular approval.

The declarations were extended multiple times, most recently in 2024 by then-Health Secretary Xavier Becerra through the end of 2029.

They provided broad immunity to manufacturers of the products, as well as people who administered them to others.

Comment: Que up the lawsuits.

Read More...
Dollars

The toxic effects of fraudulent money

Alex Krainer
Alex Krainer's Substack
Wed, 01 Jul 2026 18:25 UTC
A simple parable on the creation of money shows the many ways in which a fraudulent money system turns humanity into a radical perversion of itself.

Perhaps the most powerful defining feature of modern societies is the monetary system at their foundation. To convey some of the absurdities of this system, economist and former hedge fund manager Bernard Lietaer wrote a parable titled, "The Eleventh Round" in his book, The Future of Money.

fraudulent money
© Alex Krainer's Substack
From barter to money

Once upon a time, in a small village in the Outback, people used barter for all their transactions. On every market day, they brought their chickens, eggs, hams, breads and other produce to the market to exchange them for other items they needed. One day, a prosperous-looking stranger came by and proposed the villagers a helpful innovation: he rolled out a large cowhide, cut perfect leather rounds out of it, and put an elaborate stamp on each round.

He then gave ten rounds to each family and explained that each round represented the value of one chicken. "Now you can trade and bargain with the rounds instead of bartering the stuff," he explained. That seemed to make sense, and it made the villagers' lives easier. Everybody was impressed with the wealthy stranger's solution.

However, his service wasn't free. He told the villagers that, in a year's time, he would return, and wanted the villagers to repay him 11 cowhide rounds. The 11th round was a token of appreciation for the technological improvement he just made possible in their community. The wealthy stranger was, in fact, a moneychanger - a banker. The villagers wondered where that 11th round could possibly come from, but the banker reassured them: "don't worry, you'll see..."
Read More...
Brick Wall

Russia closes border crossings with several NATO states after crazy Finland lifts its nuclear ban

Tyler Durden
ZeroHege
Wed, 01 Jul 2026 18:08 UTC
finland nato flag nuclear missile nuke graphic
Finland's parliament has finally followed through with a previously threatened move to reverse its decades-long ban on nuclear weapons. The June 17 vote to lift the ban in effect legally authorizes the Nordic country to receive, transport, and facilitate the movement of nuclear weapons on its territory as part of allied operations, with the representatives' final tally at 125 to 61.

Finland officially became the 31st member of NATO in April 2023 - having abandoned its historic neutrality in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in what was among the fastest accession processes in the Western military alliance's history. Now it is already willing to host allied nukes on its territory, making it a target of Russian retaliation.

Moscow has long warned against such an ultra-provocative move. The Kremlin said Monday that this requires a response - given also the fact that Russia and Finland share an over 800-mile long border, which is made up largely of Arctic frontier.

Comment: Little Napoleon would love to be able to brag about being the 'protector of Europe'.

Read More...
Mr. Potato

The Kitschification of America

Simplicius
Simplicius76 Substack
Wed, 01 Jul 2026 08:39 UTC
Two days ago, Trump posted this painting on his official "Truth Social" account:
Trump AI painting
This single post struck me with a realization: That what President Trump truly exemplifies, at the heart of it all, is the kitschification of America.

For those unfamiliar with the term, kitsch represents a kind of cheap, low effort aesthetic that is often a mishmash of pop-culture sediment scraped lazily together and popularized in the 50s and 60s for the sake of consumerist memorabilia in the form of little gewgaws and cheap souvenir shop trinkets.
Kitsch definition
Not to get too pedantic or pretentiously sciolistic, but kitsch is in some ways the embodiment of a culture of excess, a culture that has reached its zenith, its peak flowering phase, and has begun to wilt, shedding its invasive spores haphazardly over the once-virgin garden. It is the exaltation of "memeified" cultural tokens to the point of parody, which had come long before the invention of internet 'memes'. It purposely calls attention to itself, to become a kind of self-mockery in the way "irony" had become a modus vivendi under the thankfully-brief 'hipster rule' of the aughts. It resonates even in the chosen names: Golden Dome, Golden Age, Make America Great Again, a strange kind of spiritually inert alchemy in reverse — turning what was once real gold, into fool's gold and other debased byproducts.

Considering these facts forces you into an understanding of how Trump's aesthetic vision for America reimagines the nation as a kind of Potemkin village of kitsch memetics long unbound from the core cultural groundings that had actually once given these ideas life.

Comment: Kitschification is a good word befitting to America and where Trump embodies that stage of the American empire.

Read More...
Target

The new Baghdad railway: Why China is America's ultimate target

Mats Nilsson
21st Century Wire
Tue, 30 Jun 2026 13:52 UTC
Depiction of transport to come
© UnknownFrom there to here to there...China has the answer
Why does China's quest for prosperity mark it as America's ultimate geopolitical target? The assertion is provocative, especially in a period marked by renewed diplomacy between China and the United States. However, it must be said: Iran is an intermediate target. The ultimate target is China. This claim, echoing an older European tradition of geopolitical analysis, reframes not only contemporary tensions in the Middle East, but the entire structure of 21st-century global competition. It posits that American-led pressure on Iran is not merely a contained crisis over nuclear proliferation or regional hegemony, but a flanking manoeuvre in a much larger, epoch-defining struggle against Beijing.

The historical parallel is equally striking, reaching back to the early 20th century, when the British Empire, then the reigning maritime hegemon, viewed Imperial Germany not merely as a rival, but as an existential threat. The cause of that threat was not a hot war, but a railway: the Berlin-Baghdad-Basra line.

To the British strategic mind in the years 1905-1910, this iron ribbon stretching from the heart of Europe to the Persian Gulf was a dagger pointed at the jugular of the British Empire, because it promised to connect Germany's industrial might directly to the resources and markets of the East, bypassing the British-controlled sea lanes of the Suez Canal and the Cape of Good Hope. This wasn't just competition; it was a perceived lethal threat to the maritime dominance upon which British global power was built. The narrative argues that this land-based challenge to sea-based supremacy was a primary catalyst for the First World War, a war Britain initiated to smother a peaceful, innovative, and economically ascendant competitor. In this article, a sweeping historical analogy casts the United States as the anxious British hegemon, while China is the new Germany, a nation peacefully focused on innovation and economic prosperity, building up a trade surplus, thereby being considered a threat to powers that want to dominate.
Read More...
Pills

Ukraine in bed with Mexican drug lords - Moscow


RT
Mon, 29 Jun 2026 12:56 UTC
Special Forces on guard
© Félix Márquez/picture alliance/Getty ImagesMembers of Mexico's National Guard Special Forces guard the transfer of a forensic ambulance in Mexico • February 22, 2026
Cash-strapped Kiev is seeking to make money by turning the country into a drug haven, Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service says.

Ukraine is deepening its cooperation with Mexican drug cartels to profit from the flow of narcotics, including fentanyl, into the EU, Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has said. US President Donald Trump has made combating fentanyl exports to the US one of his priorities, designating it as a 'weapon of mass destruction'.

In a statement on Monday, the SVR said the Ukrainian security agencies are deliberately showing leniency toward the growing flow of drugs from Latin America to Europe, adding that Kiev is facilitating the trade due to financial strain.

"The corruption-ridden regime of Vladimir Zelensky seeks to get additional profit, especially in the situation of the inability of Western sponsors to satisfy all of its insatiable demands," the agency said, adding that Kiev also values cartel help in recruiting mercenaries for the military.
Read More...
Arrow Down

Here comes the KIDS Act: USA joins the 'age verification' club

Kit Knightly
Off-Guardian Org
Tue, 30 Jun 2026 18:31 UTC
Age Verification ID
© Off-Guardian Org
Yesterday, the US House of Representatives quietly passed a bundle of "digital protections" collectively labelled the Kids Internet ​and Digital Safety Act (KIDS Act).

You might not have heard, because the US news was focused on other things, like the Supreme Court refusing to review the civil verdict that Donald Trump sexually assaulted E Jean Carroll, or that they would continue to count mail-in ballots that arrive after election day.

As is usually the case, the truly important news found itself buried behind things that never happened and things that don't matter.

So what's in the USA's online safety act?

The same things that are in everyone else's, obviously.

Digital ID this, age verification that.
Read More...