Puppet MastersS


Stock Down

Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau resigns, will not seek re-election

Harry Miller
Canada News Media
Mon, 17 Aug 2020 00:01 UTC
Bill Morneau
Bill Morneau, Canada's finance minister, is stepping down amid the ongoing scandal of accepting gifts from WE Charity and rumours of a growing rift with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Morneau, who has held the post for five years, announced his resignation Monday evening in a press conference from Ottawa. He will give up both his cabinet role and his seat as member of Parliament for Toronto Centre.

He announced he will make a bid to become secretary general of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Comment: See also:

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Vader

Best of the Web: Fascism on the march: Ireland put back into lockdown

Philip Ryan, Senan Molony & Aoife Walsh
Independent.ie
Wed, 19 Aug 2020 09:05 UTC
leo varadkar micheal martin
"We've got them where we want them now, Leo."
The country is in a battle to stop a slide back to lockdown after Covid-19 restrictions were introduced to limit the movement of young and old.


Comment: "A slide back into..."

Help, we're sliding! We can't stop ourselves imprisoning everyone over a benign virus. Send money, muzzles, and vaccines...


Vulnerable people and those over 70 will feel the brunt of the new rules but families and those involved in sports will also be reassessing their plans today.


Comment: I.e., they're not SAYING it's 'full lockdown', but the subliminal message you're very much meant to receive is: THIS IS FULL LOCKDOWN.


"We are acting to try and stop a national lockdown," Health Minister Stephen Donnelly said last night. He also admitted there was "robust debate" at Cabinet about whether or not the measures went too far.


Comment: It's a national lockdown. They're just covering their a**es with weasel-words in the event of major public backlash.


Family gatherings are now limited to just six people and all outdoor gatherings to 15 people.

The GAA [major Irish sports association - Sott.net ed.] has called on the Government and health chiefs to "present the empirical evidence" that informed the decision to move all sporting events behind closed doors.


Comment: They won't because there is none. This is being done to protect their 'gains' thus far this year from terrorizing and hystericizing the population.


Comment: Those 'martyrs to the cause' the Irish PM is emotionally manipulating people with for the most part died BECAUSE OF THE LOCKDOWN.

If this 'second lockdown' takes in Ireland, expect it to be rolled out across the West in due course.

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Document

Russia wants to extend 'New START' nuclear arms control deal but not at any cost - deputy foreign minister


RT
Tue, 18 Aug 2020 18:05 UTC
missile
© Sputnik / Russian Northern Fleet Press ServiceFILE PHOTO: A test launch of a Russian RSM-56 Bulava sumarine-launched ballistic missile.
Moscow wishes to prolong the New START Treaty but not if the US demands unreasonable concessions, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has said, adding that the Russian and American positions on the issue remain quite different.

Russia is ready to extend the treaty without any preconditions BUT Washington is still hesitating in agreeing to that, Ryabkov said following another round of nuclear arms talks with the US Special Presidential Envoy for Arms Control Marshall Billingslea in Vienna.

The high-ranking diplomat hailed some progress in the negotiations by saying that both sides took a more constructive stance and stuck to "intensive, in-depth and business-like discussions," according to Russia's permanent representative to international organizations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov.

Comment: See also: US ignores Russia's offer to extend New START arms control treaty without conditions

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Cow Skull

Best of the Web: CODENAME: Operation Virus Identification 2019; the Elitist Plan to Remake Society

Mike Whitney
The Unz Review
Sun, 16 Aug 2020 00:00 UTC
CFR chart
Everything we were originally told about the Coronavirus has turned out to be wrong. In fact, it's not a "novel" one-of-a-kind infection at all, but a member of a larger family of which there have been many iterations in the recent past. It's also not the most contagious or most lethal virus we've ever seen, but a fairly-mild infection that has no impact on the majority of people and that only kills somewhere between 1 in every 200 to 1 in every 1,000 people. (CDC-IFR- 0.26%) Also, there was no real danger that our public health system was going to collapse, because the projected number of potential deaths (1 to 2 million in the US) never approached the estimates of the flawed computer models that were used to decide the policy. In short, just about everything we were told from the very beginning turned out to be demonstrably wrong. Why is that? Why do you think that the people who provided us with the information - many of them supposedly "experts" in their field - were so wrong about everything? And why haven't they made any effort to publicly correct their mistakes when they realize how much confusion they've caused?
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Stop

Jared Kushner: US won't give Israel green light to annex parts of West Bank 'for some time'

Mica Soellner
Washington Examiner
Mon, 17 Aug 2020 00:00 UTC
Kushen Netanyahu
Senior White House adviser Jared Kushner said that the United States won't approve of Israel annexing parts of the West Bank "for some time."

After President Trump announced last week a peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates focused on normalizing relations between the two Middle East nations, Trump's son-in-law stressed that Israel won't follow through on annexation without U.S. approval.

"Israel has agreed with us that they will not move forward without our consent. We do not plan to give our consent for some time," Kushner told reporters on Monday.

Comment: Israel's pathological thirst for hegemony and carnage in the Middle East has likely been quenched a bit with what was likely their doing in the recent Beirut explosion. They can afford to seem magnanimous and peaceful for a few minutes while they wonder if any evidence of that atrocity comes to light.

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Gold Seal

Best of the Web: Has Sweden beaten C0VlD? One death so far in August, no lockdown, no masks

Ben Swann
Sott.net
Mon, 17 Aug 2020 00:00 UTC
Ben Swann video
Can it be? Is it true? With the relentless almost word-wide hysteria around you know what, how is it that Sweden is doing so well doing so little? Are those Swedes, unlike the rest of us just, somehow, Covid-resistant? Or have their policies of just letting the virus take its course proven the policy of lockdowns, masks, social distancing just a load of pure bull?


Comment: The truth about Sweden has been out there for some time now, but don't expect to hear anything about it from the talking heads in corporate media:

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Control Panel

'Trump probably won't dare take part': Tehran doubts if Iran summit proposed by Putin will yield results, because of US


RT
Tue, 18 Aug 2020 15:31 UTC
Iran sign
Tehran is unsure if the online summit proposed by Vladimir Putin to defuse mounting tensions around Iran and the UN arms embargo will have any effect, thanks to America's stance and the expected absence of Donald Trump.

Russian President Vladimir Putin last week proposed an online gathering, featuring Iran, Germany and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. Defusing tensions around Iran and making the region safer can be achieved "if our countries and the regional states combine their political will and creative energy,"said the Kremlin's statement on the matter.

According to Tehran, that part is the hardest to achieve. "We understand the good intentions of Mr Putin to reduce tensions. However, one way or another, we doubt that such a meeting will be effective in the absence of sincerity on the part of the American government," Iranian government spokesperson Ali Rabiei told Russian news agency RIA Novosti on Tuesday.
Probably, the US president [Donald Trump] will not dare to take part in the summit because he is convinced that he will again be isolated.
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Sherlock

Pentagon investigating 'drone that flew remarkably close' to Air Force One


Fox News
Tue, 18 Aug 2020 20:47 UTC
Trump on Air Force One
FILE PHOTO: Trump on Air Force One
The Air Force is investigating whether a small drone flew close to Air Force One on Sunday before it landed safely at Joint Base Andrews near Washington, D.C.

The White House referred queries to the Pentagon, which confirmed that the incident, which was described by reporters aboard the plane as Mr. Trump was returning from his golf resort in Bedminster, N.J. Sunday evening, was being examined.

"The 89th Airlift Wing is aware of the report. The matter is under review," said a statement from the Air Force unit which oversees Air Force One operations at Joint Base Andrews, Md. "The 89th Airlift Wing's C-32A aircraft landed safely without incident."

Comment: See also:

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Pharoah

Best of the Web: Our leaders cannot 'eradicate' much less 'mitigate' this Coronavirus. We grossly overestimate their powers

Adam Creighton
The Australian
Tue, 18 Aug 2020 12:38 UTC
australia lockdown
On the hunt for The Covid
We can probably excuse Henry VI for trying to ban kissing in 1439 without a serious cost-benefit analysis. The Black Death was wiping out close to a third of all people, after all, so it was natural the precautionary principle would swing into action.

But the spectacle of millions of masked-up Victorians, clinking elbows if they find someone else bold enough to have stepped outside, suggests our response is over the top, born of a mistaken belief that governments have more control over the course of events than they really do.

King Canute realised he couldn't control the tides. Outbreaks of the coronavirus in Victoria and New Zealand should remind us that controlling the spread of an invisible, highly contagious virus is not much easier.

Comment: Coronaviruses and many other types of highly contagious viruses are essentially designed by Nature to blanket the entire human population as quickly as possible.

In fact, we're MEANT to be infected by them because they're essentially 'system upgrades', without which the ever-changing near-Earth and planetary environment would REALLY kill us all!

Which means that trying to stop such system upgrades is the height of folly. Really, it's the stupidest thing the human race has ever attempted to do.

And that's saying something.

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Putin

China and Russia ditch dollar in move towards 'financial alliance'

Dimitri Simes,
Nikkei Asian Review
Thu, 06 Aug 2020 05:16 UTC
dollar
© Dreamstime/FT Montage
Russia and China are partnering to reduce their dependence on the dollar — a development some experts say could lead to a "financial alliance" between them.

In the first quarter of 2020, the dollar's share of trade between Russia and China fell below 50 per cent for the first time on record, according to recent data from Russia's Central Bank and Federal Customs Service.

The greenback was used for only 46 per cent of settlements between the two countries. At the same time, the euro made up an all-time high of 30 per cent, while their national currencies accounted for 24 per cent, also a new high.

Russia and China have drastically cut their use of the dollar in bilateral trade over the past several years. As recently as 2015, approximately 90 per cent of bilateral transactions were conducted in dollars. Following the outbreak of the US-China trade war and a concerted push by both Moscow and Beijing to move away from the dollar, however, the figure had dropped to 51 per cent by 2019.
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