Puppet MastersS


Broom

Boris de Gaulle is taking power in London: What the UK government reshuffle really means

George Gallowy
RT
Fri, 14 Feb 2020 17:18 UTC
Boris Johnson Charles de Gaulle
© AFP / Daniel Leal-Olivas; Global Look Press/ZUMAPRESS/k09(L) Boris Johnson (R) Charles De Gaulle
Commentary about Prime Minister Boris Johnson's cabinet reshuffle has largely missed the point in the British media. This is the real Boris Johnson standing up, not some cack-handed mishandling of "the colleagues."

No more primus inter pares [first among equals], just primus and the pygmies.

This is President Boris Johnson, a better-educated Donald Trump, one who can speak Latin at least as well as Trump can speak English. This is populist Boris Johnson. Dirigiste Boris Johnson, the first Gaullist prime minister of the United Kingdom.

Comment: Bojo reshuffles cabinet, Chancellor quits, Northern Ireland & environment minster among notable sackings

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Chess

Trump: Bloomberg a 'mass of dead energy who does not want to debate' - 'Mini Mike' responds

Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge
Thu, 13 Feb 2020 16:55 UTC
trump bloomberg
President Donald Trump (L), Presidential hopeful Michael Bloomberg (R)
President Trump slammed Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg on Thursday, calling him a "LOSER who has money but can't debate and has zero presence."

"He reminds me of a tiny version of Jeb "Low Energy" Bush, but Jeb has more political skill and has treated the Black community much better than Mini!"

Trump included a link leading to a CNBC article about Bloomberg paying online social media influencers to post memes for his 2020 campaign.
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Yoda

Independent Australian MP to visit Julian Assange after tabling historic petition in parliament

John McEvoy
The Canary
Wed, 12 Feb 2020 14:59 UTC
Julian assange 60 minutes australia
© screengrab/60MinutesAustraliaJulian Assange interview with 60 Minutes Australia in 2018
Australian MP Andrew Wilkie has announced that he will travel to London this week to visit WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange in Belmarsh prison. On 10 February, Wilkie also tabled a "massive petition" in defence of Assange in Australia's parliament.

Visiting Assange in Belmarsh

On 12 February, Wilkie shared a video announcing his plans to visit Assange at his own expense:


Comment: Mr. Wilkie's principled actions puts the governments of Australia, Britain and the U.S. to shame. Kudos to his bravery in standing up to the enormous pressure he must be getting from all three.

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X

Pompeo announces US rejection of UN database of Israeli settlement companies


Aljazeera
Thu, 13 Feb 2020 00:00 UTC
Pompeo
© Jacquelyn Martin/APUS Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo
United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday said the US government would not furnish any information for a database of companies operating in the occupied West Bank that the United Nations' human rights office released, and said the compilation hurts efforts in the Middle East.
"The United States has long opposed the creation or release of this database. Its publication only confirms the unrelenting anti-Israel bias so prevalent at the United Nations ... Attempts to isolate Israel run counter to all of our efforts to build conditions conducive to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that lead to a comprehensive and enduring peace."
The UN Human Rights Council on Wednesday named 112 companies it said have business ties to Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. The settlements are considered illegal under international law.

A spokesman for Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the report was not a "blacklist" and was not intended to qualify any of the companies' business activities as illegal. But the release prompted a Palestinian threat of legal action against the firms, and raised concerns that the companies could be targets of boycotts or divestment to pressure Israel over its settlements.
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Briefcase

Abby Martin sues Georgia for cancelled talk; says anti-BDS laws censor, control speech


RT
Fri, 14 Feb 2020 01:12 UTC
Abby Martin
© AFP/Twitter/Abby MartinProtesters • Abby Martin
Barred from speaking at a public university over her refusal to sign a pledge of allegiance to Israel, journalist Abby Martin is now suing the state of Georgia, arguing its anti-BDS legislation sets fire to the First Amendment.

Slated to give a keynote talk at a media literacy conference at Georgia Southern University later this month, Martin was asked to sign what amounts to a loyalty oath to the State of Israel, mandated under a 2016 Georgia law barring the government from hiring contractors who boycott Israeli products or associate with the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Martin told RT she was "shocked" when she saw what she was asked to sign.

"I was not anticipating this whatsoever," she said. "I was aware of the issue - I've talked about how over two dozen states have employed this measure for independent contractors - but I just never connected the two."

Declining to sign the pledge, explaining that pro-Palestine activism is "central" to her work, the university swiftly called off Martin's talk. When her colleagues came to her defense, the entire event was shut down, a move she says is "emblematic of the state of academic freedom in the United States at large," where similar laws have been passed in 28 states.

Comment: See also:

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Handcuffs

Arrest of explosives-smuggling uncle viewed by MSM as 'intimidation' of failed coup leader Guaido

Helen Buyniski
RT
Thu, 13 Feb 2020 17:46 UTC
Guaido
© Reuters/Manaure QuinteroPretender Juan Guaido
The arrest of self-appointed 'interim' president of Venezuela Juan Guaido's uncle on explosives smuggling charges has been spun as a 'kidnapping' - or even 'revenge' for Guaido's State of the Union stunt - by credulous MSM.

Juan José Marquez, uncle to thrice-failed coup leader Guaido, was arrested on Tuesday after returning to Caracas from Lisbon, where he had been accompanying his relative on a world tour to shore up support for the latter's flagging efforts to depose Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

While Marquez was charged with smuggling "dangerous materials" - a stash of C4 explosives concealed in flashlight batteries and perfume capsules - into the country, sympathetic media have lined up behind Guaido's explanation for the arrest. Marquez, Guaido insisted, had been "forcibly disappeared by the dictatorship" in a "cowardly move" meant to intimidate the wannabe leader.

Vice President Diosdado Cabello poured cold water on that theory. "He's detained, not forcibly disappeared, he's detained for bringing prohibited substances onto a flight," the statesman explained on his Wednesday night TV program, showing photos of the explosives and a bulletproof vest - also contraband - allegedly taken off Marquez after he went through immigration control at Caracas airport. The supposedly apolitical uncle, whose wife insisted he was an airplane pilot who merely accompanied Guaido for protection, was also in possession of an electronic file with information about "operations against Venezuela" and contact information for a US secret service agent, Cabello said.
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X

YouTube removes video of Rand Paul naming alleged Ukraine whistleblower on senate floor

Tristan Justice
The Federalist
Thu, 13 Feb 2020 12:00 UTC
youtube
YouTube removed a video clip of Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul reading the question Chief Justice John Roberts suppressed during the Senate impeachment trial naming Eric Ciaramella, a man identified as the whistleblower by Real Clear Investigations.

"It is a chilling and disturbing day in America when giant web companies such as YouTube decide to censure speech," Paul told Politico, which first reported the story. "Now, even protected speech, such as that of a senator on the Senate floor, can be blocked from getting to the American people. This is dangerous and politically biased. Nowhere in my speech did I accuse anyone of being a whistleblower, nor do I know the whistleblower's identity."

YouTube spokesperson Ivy Choi said in a statement to Politico that YouTube has routinely taken down videos that name the alleged whistleblower ruling it in violation of its standards.

Comment: See also:

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House

Best of the Web: The USA's doll house: A vast tapestry of lies and illusions

Edward Curtin
OffGuardian
Sun, 09 Feb 2020 11:16 UTC
This is an updated and revised version of the full cover-story that appeared in the important publication, garrison: The Journal of History and Deep Politics, Issue 003. Issue 004 is due out this week and I urge readers to purchase it. You will read articles there that you will find no place else, brilliant, eye-opening analyses of issues that the MSM will never touch.

doll house
It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis."

Harold Pinter's Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, 2005
While truth-tellers Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning sit inside jail cells and Edward Snowden lives in exile in Russia, the American people hole up in an illusionary dwelling constructed to reduce them to children afraid of the truth. Or is it the dark?

This is not new; it has been so for a very long time, but it has become a more sophisticated haunted doll's house, an electronic one with many bells and whistles and images that move faster than the eye can see. We now inhabit a digital technological nightmare controlled by government and corporate forces intent on dominating every aspect of people's lives.
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USA

Pot, kettle, black: The US Mafia is charging Huawei with racketeering

Danny Crichton
Tech Crunch
Thu, 13 Feb 2020 19:31 UTC
huawei
© AFP / Mohd Rasfan
Ratcheting up its pressure campaign against Huawei and its affiliates, the Department of Justice and the FBI announced today that it has brought 16 charges against Huawei in a sprawling case with major geopolitical implications (you can read the full 56-page indictment here).

Huawei is being charged with conspiracy to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) statute. The DoJ alleges that Huawei and a number of its affiliates used confidential agreements with American companies over the past two decades to access the trade secrets of those companies, only to then misappropriate that intellectual property and use it to fund Huawei's business.

An example of this activity is provided in the indictment. Described as "Company 1," Huawei is alleged to have stolen source code for Company 1's routers, which it then used in its own products. Given the context, it is highly likely that Company 1 is Cisco, which in the indictment is summarized as "a U.S. technology company headquartered in the Northern District of California."

Comment: Having failed to legitimately compete with Huawei and knowing it cannot coerce it to work on its behalf, the US has resorted to lawfare to thwart its progress; little of which appears to be working, and some of which appears to be backfiring.

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Megaphone

Trump's "peace" plan is apartheid, says South Africa's president

Ali Abunimah
Electronic Intifada
Wed, 12 Feb 2020 12:00 UTC
apartheid south africa israel
Screenshot from the discussion.
On Tuesday I appeared on The Heat, on China's CGTN television, to discuss the so-called Deal of the Century - the "peace" plan recently released by the Trump administration.

Kicking off the discussion, I cited South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa, who slammed the plan at a meeting of the African Union, just before the body rejected it.

"It brought to mind the chronicled history that we as South Africans went through," Ramaphosa said.

"The apartheid regime once imposed the bantustan system on the people of South Africa without consulting them and with all the oppressive elements which that plan had."

Comment: Nelson Mandela's grandson would likely agree with him: Nelson Mandela's grandson slams Israel the "apartheid state"

See also:

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