Puppet MastersS


Yoda

Duterte counter-sanctions by 'terminating' US military's immunity from prosecution in the Philippines

US military tents
© Reuters/Romeo RanocoUS military forces' annual Philippines-US live fire amphibious landing exercise near Manilla.
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte is "terminating" the Visiting Forces Agreement, which provides legal immunity to US military drills, in retaliation for the US canceling the visa of a political ally and fellow drug-warrior.

"The president said he is terminating the VFA," Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana told ABS-CBN News on Friday. "I asked for clarification and he said he is not changing his decision." The agreement provides legal immunity for US soldiers conducting military exercises in the Philippines.

Enraged by the US decision to cancel the visa of former police chief and Senator Roland dela Rosa last month, Duterte had given Washington a month to fix its 'mistake,' refusing to back down even as other members of his government urged him to reconsider.

"I'm warning you... if you won't do the correction on this, I will terminate the... Visiting Forces Agreement," Duterte said last month, daring the US to call his bluff. "I'll end that son of a b*tch."

Comment: Here's the full interview, in which Duterte excoriates the United States for its "total lack of respect for our sovereignty" and its representatives "coming to the Philippines like they own the place..."




Satellite

NATO's 'hysteria' over Russia stalking their satellites is a ploy to get more money, say MPs

US satellite illustration
© Reuters/NASAConceptual illustration of a US satellite
Claims that Russia is using its spacecraft to spy on NATO satellites have no real backing and are used to justify funding requests as the US and its allies are militarizing space, Russian MPs said.

Earlier this week, French General Andre Lanata, who is NATO's supreme allied commander transformation, sounded the alarm over a recently-launched Russian satellite synchronizing its orbit with an American surveillance spacecraft.

"It is a threat to our allies," Lanata told the Washington Examiner. "It's a key question. We need to be sure that we give to our forces this space asset support." The commander went on, saying that space used to be considered "a safe haven," but now, thanks to the actions of Russia and China, "it's not the case anymore."

Washington and NATO have been increasingly accusing Moscow and Beijing of developing technologies for space warfare in order to cripple the US military communications and GPS networks, but as often happens the claims were never backed by any convincing proof.

"We can imagine many different ways and many different kinds of aggression in space," Lanata said.

Cell Phone

US senators demand censorship of Iranian leaders, threaten Twitter with sanctions

Zarif/Khamenei
© Reuters /Khalid Al-Mousily/Mike Blake/Official Khamenei website handoutIranian FM Javad Zarif • Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei
US senators have demanded that Twitter ban the accounts of two top Iranian officials, or face the wrath of US sanctions, in a thinly veiled threat to naïve free speech-believers who might fall out of favor with Washington next.

Despite an Obama-era provision exempting certain internet platforms - including social media - from a raft of sanctions imposed on Iran, the four Republican lawmakers insisted in a joint letter that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif enjoyed no such protection, demanding that Twitter ban them immediately.

"Twitter is aware of these accounts and their links to the Iranian regime," yet "continues to provide [them] Internet-based communications services," the senators said, calling it a "sanctionable offense."

The senators argued that by allowing Iranian officials to share their country's position with the rest of the world, Twitter was providing a "service" in violation of an executive order signed by President Trump last June prohibiting Americans from any exchange with Tehran.

The letter was signed by Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Marco Rubio (R-FL), all of whom have taken a hard line on the Islamic Republic. Twitter has yet to respond to the blatant demand of selective censorship.

Yoda

Tucker Carlson warns of bill AOC and other House Democrats are backing: 'New Way Forward' legislation will protect migrant criminals from deportation

Tucker Carlson
© Fox News

Comment: This article is a lightly edited transcript of Tucker Carlson's monologue on "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on Feb. 6, 2020.


At this moment there is a bill pending in Congress called the New Way Forward Act. It's received almost no publicity, which is unfortunate as well as revealing.

The legislation is sponsored by 44 House Democrats, including Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. At roughly 4,400 words, it's almost exactly as long as the U.S. Constitution.

Like the Constitution, this legislation is designed to create a whole new country. The bill would entirely remake our immigration system, with the explicit purpose of ensuring that criminals are able to move here, and settle here permanently, with impunity.

You may think we're exaggerating for effect. We're not - not even a little.

Comment: Tucker continued his commentary on the appalling "New Way Forward Bill" the next day.


Breitbart posted an adaptation of Carlson's second segment:
Crime and violence are the clearest possible signs that a society isn't functioning as it should. If they increase to a certain point, societies don't function at all, and we should be worried about that always. We ought to be doing all that we can to build a place, a country where people who follow the law are rewarded; those who flout it are punished, and above all, children can live in peace and safety.

They used to be obvious. It's not obvious anymore. At this moment, there's a bill pending in the Congress called the New Way Forward Act. It's received almost no publicity, and that's unfortunate, as well as revealing. The legislation is sponsored by 44 House Democrats, including Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It is roughly 4,400 words long. That means, it's almost exactly as long as the U.S. Constitution. Like the Constitution, it is designed to create a whole new country.

The bill would entirely remake immigration system with the explicit purpose of ensuring that criminals are able to move to the United States and settle here permanently with immunity. They may think we're exaggerating for effect, but we're not exaggerating, not even a little bit. The New Way Forward Act is the single most radical piece of legislation we have ever seen proposed in this country — ever. It makes the Green New Deal like the status quo. The document produced by Democrats to promote the bill says this, and we're quoting it verbatim, "Convictions should not lead to deportation."

Now, keep in mind, we're not talking about convictions for double parking or even for DUI. The bill targets felony convictions, serious crimes that could send you to prison for years, and should. A press release from Congressman Jesus Garcia of Illinois is explicit about this. Garcia brags that the bill will break the "prison to deportation pipeline." Something most of us are for. So how does the bill do that? Well, under current U.S. law, legal U.S. immigrants can be deported if they commit "aggravated felony" or a crime of moral turpitude that is a vile, depraved act like molesting children.

Under the New Way Forward Act, crimes of moral turpitude are eliminated entirely as justification for deportation and the category of aggravated felony gets eliminated, too.

So what does that mean? Consider this. Under current law, immigrants who commit serious crimes, robbery to fraud to child sexual abuse, must be deported regardless of the sentences they receive. Other crimes, less severe ones like racketeering require deportation if the perpetrator receives at least a one-year sentence.

Under this bill, they will no longer be any crime that automatically requires deportation. None. And one crime, falsifying a passport would be made immune from deportation, no matter what, because apparently, 9/11 never even happened, and we no longer care about fake government documents. By the way, if you just renewed your driver's license to comply with the Real ID Act, you must feel like an idiot. Because immigrants are getting a pass, you're not.

Under the proposed legislation for crimes that would still allow deportation, the required prison sentence would rise from one year to five years. We checked the Bureau of Justice Statistics. According to Federal data, crimes like car theft, fraud and weapons offenses all carry average prison sentences of fewer than five years. And that's just looking at averages. There are people who commit rape, child abuse, even manslaughter, and get sentences with fewer than five years. Lots of them actually.

If the New Way Forward Act passes, immigrants who commit those crimes and receive those sentences would remain in this country, and of course, they will be eligible for citizenship day one, too, of course. But even that is understanding the law's effect. Even a five-year prison sentence wouldn't necessarily be enough to trigger deportation. The bill would grant sweeping new powers to immigration judges allowing them to nullify a deportation order.

The only requirement for that is, "The immigration judge find such an exercise of discretion appropriate in pursuant of humanitarian purposes to ensure family unity, or when it is otherwise in the public interest." Talk about open-ended. In other words, anti-American immigration judges, and there are a lot of those in this country would have a blank check to open the borders. You would not be voting on this. It would happen anyway.

Is this shocking you yet? Because we're just getting started. We read this proposed legislation. Here's another point.

Current U.S. law makes drug addiction grounds for deportation, because why wouldn't it? This bill would eliminate that statute. Current law also states that those who have committed drug crimes abroad or "any crimes involving moral turpitude are ineligible to immigrate here." The New Way Forward Act abolishes that statute. So a Mexican drug cartel leader could be released from prison, can freely come to America immediately. And if he wants, he can come here illegally, and it still wouldn't be a crime because — and you are waiting for this part — the bill also decriminalizes illegal entry into America even by those we've previously deported.

In other words, you break our law, we send you out, you come back, you break it again, you can stay.

According to a document promoting this bill. Criminalizing illegal entry into America is "white supremacist." That's a quote, white supremacist. Now, by this point, you're beginning to wonder, are we making this up? We're not making it up. In fact, we're barely halfway through the bill. The legislation doesn't just make it harder to deport illegal immigrants who commit crimes. It doesn't just make it easier for criminals to move here illegally, though it does both, the bill would also effectively abolish all existing enforcement against illegal immigration.

To detain illegal immigrants, I.C.E. would have to prove in court that they are dangerous or a flight risk. But of course, I.C.E. wouldn't be allowed to use a detainee's prior criminal behavior as proof of danger. That's banned. I.C.E. would have to overcome even more hurdles if the detainee claims to be gay or transgendered. If they're under 21 or if they can't speak English, an interpreter isn't immediately available, they get a pass.

In other words, it would be much harder to arrest an illegal alien in this country than it is to arrest you. They're the protected class here. You're just some loser who's paying for it all.

But believe it or not, we save the nuttiest part of this legislation for last, and here's what it is. What could be more destructive than changing U.S. law specifically to allow rapists, child molesters, and drug dealers to stay in America? How about this: using taxpayer money to bring deported criminals back into America. That's right. This bill would not only abolish your right to control who lives in your country, but it invents a brand new right, "the right to come home."

It orders the government to create a "pathway for those previously deported to apply to return to their homes and families in the United States" as long as they would have been eligible to stay under the new law. It's retroactive in other words. D.H.S. must spend taxpayer dollars transporting convicted criminal illegal aliens back into the United States. I am not making this up.

So who would be eligible for these flights? Tens of thousands of people we kicked out of this country for all kinds of crimes: Sexual abuse, robbery, assault, drug trafficking, weapons trafficking, human trafficking. From 2002 to 2018, four hundred and eighty thousand people were deported for illegal entry or re-entry into America. And under this bill, you'd have to buy each of them a plane ticket to come home.

Those tickets alone would cost about a billion dollars, and that's before Democrats make you start paying for these criminals free healthcare, too, which they plan to do and have said so. The New Way Forward Act fundamentally inverts every assumption you have about this country. Under this legislation, the criminals are now the victims. Law enforcement is illegitimate. It's racist, just like the country you live in, just like you are.

Now, the only solution is to get rid of both. America would be better off as a borderless rest stop for the world's predators and parasites. That's the point of this. And we're not overstating it, go read it. This is a big deal. This is not a small thing. It's not renaming a Post Office. It's hard to believe any American would put these ideas on paper, much less try to pass them into law. And yet remarkably, that's happening.

And even more remarkably, the press has ignored it. This isn't happening in secret. It is happening in the House of Representatives. Scores of Democrats have backed this bill. But the legislation has not been mentioned in The New York Times. It has not been mentioned on CNN, a news or even in self-described conservative outlets like National Review. No mention.

Consider if this were working the other way. If a lone — I don't know, Republican state legislator from Minot, North Dakota had proposed to build this extreme that would remake America completely, the President himself would be expected to answer for it. CNN would demand that he disavow it even if you've never heard of it before. But when one-fifth of the entire Democratic Caucus backs a bill demanding that you import illegal alien felons and then pay for it, it's a non-event in the American media. They don't think you should know about it. And that's dangerous, if we're being honest.

Whether the press cares or not, these are the stakes of the 2020 election, and you have a right to know what they are. A growing wing of the Democratic Party views America itself as essentially a legitimate, a rogue state in which everything must be destroyed and remade — our laws, our institutions, our customs, our freedoms, our history, our values.

And of course, what's the point of all of this? An entirely new country in which resistance is crushed, and they're in charge forever.



Propaganda

An honest 'NY Times' would call the Netanyahu/Trump proposal a 'peace plan,' with quotation marks

deal of the century cartoon
© Carlos Latuff/Mondoweiss
The bias in today's New York Times report starts right in the print edition's headline, which calls Trump's proposal a "peace plan," without quotation marks. The paper repeats the slant in the very first sentence, which cites "the American plan for Middle East peace."

That Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, the true author of the proposal, call it a "peace plan" and want the world to agree is certainly news, which the Times should report — but with the appropriate indications that their view is not a fact. But George Orwell's point in Nineteen Eighty-Four is that if you control the language you shape what people think; you can even prevent them from thinking certain things.

Comment: Well said, Mr. North. The entire American MSM is devoted to pushing this appalling "deal", and demonizing anyone who points out its inherent unfairness.


Bad Guys

NYT says 'Iran-backed militia' attack that provoked Soleimani murder was possible ISIS false flag

isis miltants iraq terrorists
© FileISIS terrorists in Iraq
The initial major rationale and justification the US administration offered for the drone assassination of IRGC Gen. Qassem Soleimani and commander of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis was the Dec.27 rocket attack on K1 camp in Kirkuk, which houses coalition forces.

That attack involving surface-to-surface missile strikes killed an American contractor and reportedly wounded several US troops. Washington immediately blamed the Iran-backed Iraqi paramilitary group Khataib Hezbollah, with Mike Pompeo saying of the attack: "We will not stand for the Islamic Republic of Iran to take actions that put American men and women in jeopardy," after he briefed President Trump. But top Iraqi military and intelligence officials are now calling this entire narrative into question.

A new lengthy New York Times investigative report cites multiple top Iraqi officials who go on record to say of their analysis of the Dec.27 Kirkuk incident: "These facts all point to the Islamic State, Iraqi officials say."

Comment: Sputnik adds more background:
Brig. Gen. Amer Isa Hassan, chief of staff of the Iraqi side of the K-1 Air Base, told NYT that he didn't buy the US claims blaming Khaitab Hezbollah. "The villages near here are Turkmen and Arab," he said. "There is sympathy with Daesh there. Why do we resort to blaming Hezbollah or others?"

Col. Talib Madhloum al-Tamimi, an Iraqi Federal Police commander from the Kirkuk region, said he urged the US to fly a reconnaissance balloon over the base to prevent an attack from taking place, but that it was down for maintenance.

No Consultations

Abu Ali al-Basri, director general of Iraq's Intelligence and Counterterrorism, confirmed that the US did not consult with his agency before carrying out its 'retaliatory' attacks against five Khaitab Hezbollah bases across Iraq and Syria on December 29, which killed 25 militiamen and injured 55 more.

"They did not ask for my analysis of what happened in Kirkuk and neither did they share any of their information. Usually, they would do both," al-Basri said.

After being informed by the US side about the impending strikes, Baghdad reportedly tried to talk Washington out of launching attacks on Khaitab Hezbollah, pointing out that the group hadn't been present in Kirkuk since at least 2014, when the militia teamed up with the Iraqi and US militaries to fight the Daesh advance.

Lt. Gen. Muhammad al-Bayati, who served as chief of staff in ex-prime minister Adel Abdul Mahdi's government, said Baghdad had requested that the US side shared its intelligence, but was spurned.

Iraqi officials also said that an examination of the Kia pickup truck found outside K-1 with 107 mm rockets fitted in its cab did not link it in any way to Khaitab Hezbollah.



Snakes in Suits

Bloomberg's naked bid to buy the White House is an assault on democracy

Bloomberg
The rich are different from you and me — they can buy themselves instant presidential campaigns.

Former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg has elbowed himself into the Democratic nomination race solely on the basis of his fortune.

His campaign is high-handed as only a billionaire many times over could even contemplate. He ­entered late, is skipping the early contests and hasn't participated in any of the debates to date ­(although that will change soon, thanks to the Democratic National Committee retrofitting its rules for Bloomberg).

Without more than $50 billion to his name, Bloomberg would ­almost certainly be running a campaign like another late entrant, former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, who hasn't been heard from.

Bloomberg's political strategy has always been built on the belief that nothing succeeds like excess. If he wants it, he can buy it; money is no object.

It's a free country, and Bloomberg can spend as much money as he likes on whatever suits his fancy. But Bloomberg 2020 is still an affront to small-"d" democratic sensibilities, a tribute not to his ­superior political skills or messaging compared with the other candidates, but his access to an enormous personal bank account.

Comment: See also:



Mr. Potato

Alexander Vindman condemned himself in his impeachment testimony, and the putz is now out of his job at the NSC

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman at the hearing
© Ron SachsLt. Col. Alexander Vindman at the hearing
The commander-in-chief ought to fire Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who serves on the National Security Council, for rank insubordination. That is the key take­away from Tuesday's hearings in the Democratic impeachment push.

Vindman, unlike other Democratic "star witnesses," was at least on the July 25 phone call between President Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, that set off the inquiry.

But Vindman was unreliable and had questionable judgment, according to his own outgoing superior, Tim Morrison, the National Security Council's senior director for European affairs.

In fact, Morrison viewed Vindman as so untrustworthy that he opted to exclude him from his conversations with William Taylor, the senior US diplomat in Ukraine.

Vindman had an "unfortunate habit," Morrison thought, of defying the sprawling executive branch's carefully delineated chain of command. Vindman's testimony vindicates Morrison's dripping disdain for his former subordinate.

Comment: Well it looks like the White House sees Vindman's behavior in much the same way because he's just been dismissed:

See also:


Megaphone

'We will be independent,' Catalonia's regional leader vows

catalan catalonia
© Reuters / Nacho Doce
Catalonia's succession from Spain is "absolutely irreversible," regional leader Quim Torra said, adding that he is ready negotiate the date of a new independence referendum with the central government in Madrid.

Torra met with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in Barcelona on Friday to outline the agenda for the larger talks on Catalonia's future to be held later in February. They've met for the first time in over a year after the previous talks collapsed in late 2018.

But it seems Madrid and Barcelona are once going to the negotiating table with completely opposite stances. Sanchez, who vigorously rejects the idea of Catalonia's independence and a new referendum, said that "what the government of Spain is proposing is a restart."

Comment: See also: And check out SOTT radio's:


Magic Wand

This is Brexit? France demands UK's BoJo sign up to EU rules in return for trade deal

Macron
© AFP / POOL / Christophe PETIT TESSONFrench President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson
France has warned the UK that they must agree to "dynamic alignment" on EU rules if they want a favorable post-Brexit trade deal with the bloc, in a move that could trigger tensions between the two countries.

French President Emmanuel Macron has told the European Commission that British PM Boris Johnson needs to agree to abide by EU rules for tax, state aid, the environment and social standards, the Telegraph reports.

Agreeing to dynamic alignment means Britain would change its laws to mirror Brussels' rules, accordingly, over time, but without a say at the table over the drafting of those standards.

Comment: See also: And check out SOTT radio's: NewsReal: Yellow Vest Protests, Brexit Farce - Revolutionary Climate in Western Europe?