Puppet MastersS


Piggy Bank

Banker-heavy Biden cabinet 'leak' triggers outrage, echoes of Obama's 'Citigroup cabinet'


RT
Mon, 09 Mar 2020 18:44 UTC
Dimon Biden
© Reuters / Jeenah Moon / Brendan McDermid
Mike Bloomberg and the JP Morgan CEO who played a key role in 2008's financial crash are in line for posts in Democratic presidential frontrunner Joe Biden's cabinet, according to a high-profile "leak" that has angered many.

The centrist candidate's alleged cabinet picks were floated on Axios on Monday, citing "top sources" including Biden advisers. Aside from Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who dropped out of the race last week but has yet to endorse another candidate, the roster included polarizing plutocrats like Bloomberg (tapped to lead the World Bank) and JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, whose role in the 2008 housing crisis few have forgotten, for the Treasury Department.

While Biden has notoriously said in the past that "nothing would fundamentally change" under his presidency, many were infuriated at the candidate's naked subservience to Wall Street - and insulted that his advisers might try to paper over such truckling to the oligarchy with the appointment of a progressive favorite like Warren to some token position.


Comment: Even if Dimon doesn't get tapped for the job, the salient point is this:

Tucker Carlson: Biden will be whatever type of leader he is told to be, a vessel for 'stronger forces':
All of these people are happy for the same reason: Joe Biden is fading and uncertain. Weak leaders are vessels for the stronger forces around them. And no force in Amercian politics is stronger — more aggressive or better organized — than the narrow little interest groups that comprise the Democratic coalition.


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Star of David

Gantz accepts' Lieberman's Israeli government coalition talks ultimatum


Sputnik
Sun, 08 Mar 2020 17:12 UTC
netanyahu
© REUTERS / Oded Balilty/Pool
A third general election in Israel in 11 months again resulted in neither of the two main blocs winning a majority in the parliament, which comes with the ability to form a governing coalition. Any new ally could tip the balance in this stalemate, and Avigdor Lieberman may well become one.

In a dramatic turn of events for Israel's political limbo, Benny Gantz has accepted a list of secularist demands in a bid to cobble together a coalition government.

Gantz, the leader of the Blue and White alliance, tweeted on Sunday that he agrees to Avigdor Lieberman's ultimatum. "We must move forward," he wrote alongside a screenshot of the five demands.

Those include a monthly benefit of at least 70 percent of the minimum wage for all seniors living on guaranteed income allowance and transition of control over public transport and commercial activity on Shabbat from the government to local authorities. Lieberman also wants to increase ultra-Orthodox participation in military service, legalise civil marriage, and allow municipal rabbis (who are often less stringent than the chief rabbinate) to oversee conversions.

Lieberman, who served as defence minister in Netanyahu's cabinet, resigned in November 2018 over his opposition to a ceasefire deal with Gaza's Hamas militants.

He has since become a vocal critic of Netanyahu, in particular of his alliance with ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties, and refused to align with the Likud-led bloc after two previous elections in April and September last year.
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NPC

Bernie or Biden? Doesn't matter. Trump's election wasn't a fluke & the trends say he'll beat the Dems again

Neil Clark
RT
Mon, 09 Mar 2020 16:55 UTC
sanders biden
© Reuters/Caitlin Ochs; Reuters/Mike BlakeDemocratic rivals Bernie Sanders (L) and Joe Biden (R)
Those engaged in heated arguments over whether Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders is best placed to defeat Trump need to look at the stats, which indicate that the incumbent will be very hard to beat, whoever is up against him.

Unlike most political commenters I didn't bother staying up late for Super Tuesday. It's not just that I need my beauty sleep. The results really were a matter of indifference. Why? Trends, dear boy, trends. Any decent racing tipster will tell you that the best way to predict the result of big races is to take a close look at past runnings of the race. No seven-year-old has won a Grand National (Britain's most famous steeplechase), since 1940. Now every time we get a seven-year-old lining up, we get some people backing it saying 'this time it will be different', but it isn't. There's a reason why seven year-olds don't do well in the Grand National - they're usually too inexperienced.

Comment: The Deep State is master of the 'something out of the ordinary' event. With all the previous attempts at removing Trump abysmal failures, up to and including an impeachment charge, who knows what will be tried next. Buckle up.

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Quenelle - Golden

Gabbard urges Biden, Sanders to stand against DNC's 'transparent effort' to exclude her from debates


Sputnik
Sun, 08 Mar 2020 01:09 UTC
Tulsi Gabbard
© REUTERS / BRENDAN MCDERMID
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) earlier said a minimum of 20 percent of the delegates is required to participate in the coming Democratic debate in Phoenix, Arizona, which keeps Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) off the stage.

Rep. Tusi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) has turned to Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders to help her get her on the debate stage in Phoenix, Arizona, after a new standard was introduced by the DNC.

In a Twitter post on Saturday, Gabbard insists the rules had been changed intentionally with the aim of not letting her participate in the debates.


Comment: Gabbard's outspoken comments on the DNC, the war industry, and other crucial political issues make her - perhaps even more than Bernie Sanders, a strong threat against the brain-dead and destructive neo-liberal/neo-conservative polices and thinking of mainstream Washington. Though she is not likely to receive any help in getting to the debate stage, she is, in fighting this gross power play, calling attention to the fact that the Democratic party, and the Democratic process, is indeed broken.

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USA

Elizabeth Warren lost by copying Hillary's victim act

Miranda Devine
New York Post
Sun, 08 Mar 2020 10:23 UTC
Elizabeth Warren Hillary Clinton
© REUTERS/Aaron Josefczyk
There's a moment in the new Hillary Clinton hagio-documentary on Hulu when the former presidential candidate complains that it took her an hour every day to have her hair and makeup done during the 2016 campaign.

"It's a burden, believe me," she says in Episode 2 of 'Hillary.'"

"I calculated it, and I spent 25 days doing hair and makeup, and I knew that the men I was running against don't have to do any of that. Get up, take a shower, shake their head, they were ready to go."
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Briefcase

Trump escalates fight against press with libel lawsuits

Justin Wise
The Hill
Sun, 08 Mar 2020 06:02 UTC
Donald Trump press conference
© GettyTrump escalates fight against press with libel lawsuits
The Trump campaign's libel lawsuits against The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN mark a dramatic escalation in the president's long fight with the media.

Legal experts have said the suits are dead on arrival, failing to meet the high bar to prove defamation of a public figure, but they fear an environment in which powerful elected officials try to use the courts to intimidate the press.

"The concern here is not that one of these suits would win on the merits — it's the chilling effect that it has on public discussion of political affairs," Jonathan Peters, the Columbia Journalism Review's press freedom correspondent and a University of Georgia media law professor, told The Hill.

Comment: While the above piece spins it as Trump interfering with the press and trying to silence dissent against him, the real issue brought up by these lawsuits is how accountable should the press should be to what they publish? The Russiagate narrative has been so full of holes from the get-go that no journalist who isn't bogged down by Trump Derangement Syndrome could reasonably believe it. Yet the press has been publishing every lie they can get their hands on.

See also:

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Megaphone

Hillary Clinton: 'Facebook part of vast right-wing conspiracy against me!'


RT
Mon, 09 Mar 2020 06:54 UTC

Comment: Isn't this excuse getting a little old?

2016: Clinton blasts 'vast right-wing conspiracy' at town hall

1998: Hillary Clinton blasts 'vast right-wing conspiracy' against her husband


Hillary Clinton
© REUTERS/Michele TantussiHillary Clinton at the 70th Berlinale International Film Festival in Berlin
Despite numerous accusations of censorship from conservatives, Hillary Clinton is claiming right-wing outlets have "mastered" Facebook and use it against her.

In a Sunday interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria, Clinton was asked about a Vox article presenting research claiming the story on Facebook to receive the most interactions on Super Tuesday was one about her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.

"Fox and the sort of right-wing echo chamber has mastered Facebook, aided and abetted, might I say, from Facebook," Clinton responded.

She claims "algorithms" used by Facebook are keeping negative stories about her alive and feeding them to "millions and millions of people."

The former secretary of state even managed to blame the "echo chamber" right-wing media and Facebook for her 2016 loss to Donald Trump.

Comment: And after all that Facebook and the rest of Silicon Valley and the intel agencies - foreign and domestic - have done for her, sheesh!

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Stop

Who just told the world 'NO'? Russia did!

Tom Luongo
Gold Goats 'n Guns
Fri, 06 Mar 2020 00:00 UTC
CharacterNEO
© Matrix/Twitter
There is real power in the word "No."

In fact, I'd argue that it is the single most powerful word in any language.

In the midst of the worst market meltdown in a dozen years which has at its source problems within global dollar-funding markets, Russia found itself in the position to exercise the Power of No.

Multiple overlapping crises are happening worldwide right now and they all interlock into a fabric of chaos.

Between political instability in Europe, presidential primary shenanigans in the U.S., coronavirus creating mass hysteria and Turkey's military adventurism in Syria, the eastern Mediterranean and Libya, markets are finally calling the bluff of central bankers who have been propping up asset prices for years.

But, at its core, the current crisis stems from the simple truth that those prices around the world are vastly overvalued. Western government and central bank policies have used the power of the dollar to push the world to this state. And that state is, at best, meta-stable.

But when this number of shits get this freaking real, well... meeting the fan was inevitable. And all it took to push a correction into a full-scale panic was the Russians saying, "No."
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No Entry

Why do the US and its allies hide certain facts from the public?

Eric Zuesse
Strategic Culture Foundation
Sat, 07 Mar 2020 00:00 UTC
Sign,Rose,MH17
© WFMZ.com
The latest are document-dumps and accompanying detailed explanations and translations of the revealed documents, and are from Bonanza Media. That's a Finland-based website. Their "Bonanza Leaks" on 24 February 2020 shows photos of the official transcriptions of the witnesses' testimony to the official Joint Investigative Team (JIT) which the U.S-allied Dutch Government operates in order to convict Russia for the shoot-down of the MH17 Malaysian airliner on 17 July 2014 above the civil-war zone in Ukraine. It includes an accompanying video presentation of these documents, from a day earlier, on February 23rd, titled "Bonanza Media Leaks Talk". That video includes this: "Australian police confirm that these are authentic documents" (in response to Bonanza Media's having supplied Australian police with the photos), and "these are original documents," which their video shows. Then, they showed their documents to the JIT's own office in Netherlands, which refused to comment.
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X

China again rejects Trump's offer to join trilateral arms control talks with US and Russia


Sputnik
Fri, 06 Mar 2020 09:20 UTC
Headquarters MFA
© CC0/WhisperToMeMinistry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China Headquarters.
China has not changed its mind and still has no intention to join any trilateral arms control talks with the United States and Russia, the Foreign Ministry said on Friday in the wake of Washington's renewed invitation for such negotiations. The ministry's spokesman, Zhao Lijian, said at a briefing:
"China has repeated many times that we have no intention to join the so-called trilateral arms control talks between Russia, China and the United States, and this stance is quite clear."
According to the diplomat, the US should first:
"respond to calls from the Russian side to extend the New START Treaty and reduce own nuclear arsenal to create conditions for other countries to join multilateral negotiations on nuclear disarmament".
China, in turn, keeps its nuclear arsenal at a "minimum level necessary to ensure national security" and will never join any arms race, Zhao noted.
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