Puppet MastersS


Eye 1

Ukrainian nationalist leader demands compensation from Russia for 'occupation in 20th century'

Bryan MacDonald
RT
Mon, 27 Jan 2020 21:45 UTC
Oleg Tyagnibok
© Sputnik / Pyotr ZadorozhnyiOleg Tyagnibok, leader of the Ukraine's nationalist Svoboda party
Oleg Tyagnibok, the leader of Ukraine's far-right Svoboda party, has demanded Kiev authorities follow the example of Poland and the Baltic States by seeking compensation from Russia, for a range of historical grievances.

The radical politician, who has a history of expressing anti-Semitic and xenophobic views, expects Moscow to pay up for the damage caused during World War Two when Soviet Ukraine was invaded by Nazi Germany. He wants more cash for "occupation during the last century," plus dispossession and collectivization, at the hands of the Bolsheviks, as well as recompense for three famines and "tens of millions of killed Ukrainians."

Tyagnibok is also seeking payouts for Ukraine's claims to a portion of the Russian "Diamond Fund": a valuable collection of gems, and jewelry, held at the Kremlin Armoury in Moscow, which is roughly analogous to Britain's "Crown Jewels."

The list doesn't stop there: he additionally wants a share of the foreign exchange reserves of the old USSR. However, the Svoboda Party leader doesn't take into account how Russia, after the Soviet collapse, assumed the debt obligations of all of its constituent republics, including Ukraine. A burden that caused Moscow considerable financial headaches in the 1990s, a decade which culminated in the 1998 economic crisis, and default.

Comment: But mah reparations! He sounds more like a total snowflake than the leader of a radical right party. What happened Oleg?

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War Whore

Bolton blows up Trump team's foolhardy quid pro quo defense

Andrew C. McCarthy
National Review
Mon, 27 Jan 2020 17:29 UTC
John Bolton
© Joshua Roberts/ReutersJohn Bolton adjusts his glasses as President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, April 2, 2019.
Don't build your fortress on quicksand.

That's been my unsolicited advice for President Trump and his legal team. You always want the foundation of your defense to be something that is true, that you are sure you can prove, and that will not change.

Instead, the president and his team decided to make a stand on ground that could not be defended, on facts that were unfolding and bound to change. Last night, that ground predictably shifted. In a soon-to-be-published memoir, former White House national-security adviser John Bolton asserts that the president withheld $391 million in defense aid in order to pressure Ukraine into investigating Trump's potential 2020 election opponent, former vice president Joe Biden.

For months, I've been arguing that the president's team should stop claiming there was no quid pro quo conditioning the defense aid Congress had authorized for Ukraine on Kyiv's conducting of investigations the president wanted. Trials and impeachment itself are unpredictable. You don't know what previously undisclosed facts might emerge during the trial that could turn the momentum against you. So you want to mount your best defense, the one that can withstand any damaging new revelations.

Here, the president's best defense has always been that Ukraine got its security aid, and President Volodymyr Zelensky got his coveted high-profile audience with the president of the United States (albeit at the U.N., rather than at the White House). Kyiv barely knew defense aid was being withheld, the very temporary delay had no impact whatsoever on Ukraine's capacity to counter Russian aggression, and Zelensky was required neither to order nor to announce any investigation of the Bidens.

Comment: See also:

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Binoculars

Bulletin of Atomic Scientists warns of "civilization-ending nuclear war"

Andre Damon
World Socialist Website
Fri, 24 Jan 2020 00:00 UTC
Soldiers mount a refurbished nuclear warhead
© AP Photo/Eric DraperSoldiers mount a refurbished nuclear warhead on to the top of a Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile
On Wednesday, Congressman Adam Schiff, speaking from the Senate floor during the second day of the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, said "the United States aids Ukraine and her people so that we can fight Russia over there and we don't have to fight Russia here."

For most of the American population, the assertion that "we" are fighting Russia will come as a surprise.

For years, the media has laughed off the danger of a war between the United States and Russia or China as a "conspiracy theory." But Schiff raised the United States fighting Russia not just as a possibility, but as a statement of present fact.

The United States and Russia each possesses over 6,000 nuclear weapons. Just a fraction of these is sufficient to kill billions of people and destroy human society. A war between these two countries, in other words, would be a cataclysmic disaster.

And yet, the entire political establishment, from the Democrats with their anti-Russian hysteria to Trump with his bullying threats against the whole world are preparing for military conflict on a scale not seen since World War II.

On Thursday, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which for more than seven decades has maintained a Doomsday Clock, warned that human civilization is closer to midnight, i.e., total destruction, than at any other period in history, including the Cuban Missile Crisis at the height of the Cold War.
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Arrow Down

The global financial system is at a point of no return

Greg Hunter
USA Watchdog
Wed, 08 Jan 2020 00:00 UTC
storm clouds gathering
Financial writer and book author John Rubino sees the world careening toward a debt reset at an increasing pace. Rubino explains,
"The coming monetary reset and what that means for gold and what that means for the rest of the global financial system, you don't need a war to bring that about because we are making enough financial mistakes that will get us there in no time flat now without geopolitical turmoil. If you add a big war in the Middle East into the equation, then anything can happen. A scenario right now that is very, very feasible is we start shooting in the Middle East and Russia and China is on the other side of this in one way or another. They help Iran, and we have our allies helping us, and we start using these next generation weapons that are breathtakingly powerful. Nobody has any idea what's going to happen when we start throwing these things at each other. . . . Oil spikes to $100 - $150 per barrel, and that tips the already extremely fragile global financial system over the edge. So, we get the 'Greater Depression' or the monetary reset or a hyperinflation or whatever we get sooner rather than later. It's a disaster for everybody when it happens that way."
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Bullseye

Pam Bondi lays out explosive case against Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Burisma

Joel Pollak
Beitbart
Tue, 28 Jan 2020 00:54 UTC
Pam Bondi
Former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi made the White House's case to the Senate on Monday afternoon that President Donald Trump had good reason to ask Ukraine to investigate the conflict of interest involving former Vice President Joe Biden; his son Hunter Biden; and the corrupt Ukraine gas company, Burisma.

Using clips of testimony from Democrats' own witnesses, and reports from the mainstream media — including an ABC News interview with Hunter Biden — Bondi argued that Hunter Biden was paid handsomely for little reason other than that he was the vice president's son. The company was under investigation at the time — and Vice President Biden later famously insisted the prosecutor be fired.

She also noted that Hunter Biden was involved in business with Chris Heinz, the stepson of then-Secretary of State John Kerry. Both were involved in Ukraine — and elsewhere — at a time when ending corruption was said to be the top priority of the United States and other western governments in dealing with Ukraine.
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Blue Planet

Why the New Silk Roads are a 'threat' to US bloc, and the Middle East is key

Pepe Escobar
Asia Times
Mon, 27 Jan 2020 21:59 UTC
Silk Road
© FacebookModern day traders on the ancient Silk Road track in Central Asia.
Under the cascading roar of the 24/7 news cycle cum Twitter eruptions, it's easy for most of the West, especially the US, to forget the basics about the interaction of Eurasia with its western peninsula, Europe.

Asia and Europe have been trading goods and ideas since at least 3,500 BC. Historically, the flux may have suffered some occasional bumps - for instance, with the irruption of 5th-century nomad horsemen in the Eurasian plains. But it was essentially steady up to the end of the 15th century. We can essentially describe it as a millennium-old axis - from Greece to Persia, from the Roman empire to China.

A land route with myriad ramifications, through Central Asia, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey, linking India and China to the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea, ended up coalescing into what we came to know as the Ancient Silk Roads.

Comment: See also:

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Alarm Clock

The troubling decline of respect for international law

Craig Murray
craigmurray.org.uk
Mon, 27 Jan 2020 21:11 UTC
International Criminal Court building
© Reuters / Piroschka Van De WouwThe International Criminal Court building in The Hague, The Netherlands
While it is true that rogue states - most notably the USA - have always posed a threat to the rule of international law, I see no serious room to dispute that the development of the corpus of international law, and of the institutions to implement it, was one of the great achievements of the twentieth century, and did a huge amount to reduce global conflict.

The International Court of Justice, the Law of the Sea Tribunal, the European Court of Justice, the World Trade Organisation, these are just some of the institutions which have played an extremely positive role, helping resolve hundreds of disputes during their existence and, still more importantly, helping establish rules that prevented thousands more disputes from arising. Regional Organisations, dozens of them including the EU, the African Union and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, have also flourished.

The judgement of the ICJ in the 160 cases it has heard has almost always been respected by the parties to the case. That has applied even when the dispute is radical, inflammatory and had already led to fighting and deaths, such as the settlement of the Nigeria/Cameroon border. The ICJ has been a massive success story.
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Bad Guys

Brexit's 'finish line' only marks the beginning of the End

Finian Cunningham
The Strategic Culture Foundation
Mon, 27 Jan 2020 20:23 UTC
boris john brexit
© Getty imagesBoris Johnson
The British parliament voted through the EU divorce bill last week, with the head of state Queen Elizabeth giving her symbolic assent. And so this week, on January 31, Britain is officially out of the continental bloc - after more than four decades of membership.

Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, was in self-congratulatory mode when he extolled the passing of the deal, saying: "At times it felt like we would never cross the Brexit finish line, but we've done it."

It was Johnson's "get Brexit done" promise that was key to his Conservative party winning the national election last month when it gained a landslide majority.

However, the Brexit "finish line" is not as straightforward as it might seem. Britain will have officially departed from the EU at 11pm on January 31 and it will no longer have representation in the European parliament or in the bloc's executive in the Brussels-based European Commission. But there is a long way to go before "Britannia rules the waves", if it ever does.
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Briefcase

Impeachment: Trump team begins defense blasting Dems for 'massive election interference'

Alex Swoyer, S.A. Miller
The Washington Times
Sat, 25 Jan 2020 00:00 UTC
Cipollone
© Senate Television via APPat Cipollone speaks during the impeachment trial against President Donald Trump in the Senate at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Saturday, Jan. 25, 2020.
White House Counsel Pat Cipollone on Saturday opened the defense case at President Trump's impeachment trial by accusing the Democratic prosecutors of attempting the biggest election meddling scheme in U.S. history.

Mr. Cipollone, addressing the Senate a day after House impeachment managers completed nearly 24 hours of presenting their case, said the Democrats left out key evidence in a quest to undo the 2016 election and tear him from the ballot in 2020.

"They are asking you to tear up all the ballots across this county," he said. "I don't think they spend one minute talking about the consequences of that for our country."

He then accused the Democrats of the same offense they have charged Mr. Trump: attempting to cheat in an election.

"They are here to perpetrate the most massive interference in an election in U.S. history," said Mr. Cipollone.

It was the first time Mr. Trump's defense team had presented a defense in a formal setting since the impeachment process began Sept. 24.

Comment: Breitbart, 26/1/2020: Biden unmentioned in Trump's opening argument
Politico reported Saturday morning that President Donald Trump's lawyers would open their arguments in the Senate impeachment trial by focusing on former Vice President Joe Biden. In fact, they barely mentioned Biden at all.

White House lawyers instead focused their two-hour presentation on the facts that, they argued, House Democrats had deliberately left out of their three-day presentation to the Senate because the facts would "collapse" their case. The only person they attacked was lead House impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), arguing that his track record of misleading the public meant the Senate could not trust his inferences about the evidence.

A few minutes before the opening of proceedings in the Senate at 10:00 a.m. ET, Politico sent an email alert: "BREAKING NEWS: Trump's legal team to begin opening arguments with assault on Biden." The email claimed that White House counsel were going to open their defense of Trump with an "unbridled" attack on Biden.

But in the end, there was simply a passing reference to the vice president that did not mention him by name.

Politico later reported: "Trump's legal team launches attack on Dem case — and Schiff." It admitted:
Unmentioned in the first hours of the trial was Joe Biden, who Trump asked Zelensky to investigate during their July 25 call, a request that Democrats said amounted to a violation of Trump's oath of office — using his power to obtain a personal, political benefit. Biden is a front-runner to challenge Trump in the 2020 election.
It added: "But [White House lawyer Jay] Sekulow has foreshadowed that Biden will be a feature of the defense."

The opening arguments of the White House will resume Monday in the Senate at 1:00 p.m. ET.


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X

Trump denies Bolton's Ukraine account of quid pro quo

Dave Boyer
The Washington Times
Mon, 27 Jan 2020 00:00 UTC
TrumpBolton
© Reuters/Carlos BarriaUS President Donald Trump • Former National Security Advisor John Bolton
President Trump rejected a reported claim by former National Security Adviser John Bolton early Monday that he tied military aid to Ukraine to investigations of Democratic candidate Joseph Biden.

"I NEVER told John Bolton that the aid to Ukraine was tied to investigations into Democrats, including the Bidens," the president tweeted after midnight. "In fact, he never complained about this at the time of his very public termination. If John Bolton said this, it was only to sell a book."

The New York Times reported the conversation in a draft of a forthcoming book by Mr. Bolton, prompting Democrats to renew calls for his testimony in the president's impeachment trial.

Mr. Trump said transcripts of his calls with Ukraine's president "are all the proof that is needed." "Additionally, I met with President [Volodymry] Zelensky at the United Nations ... ... (Democrats said I never met) and released the military aid to Ukraine without any conditions or investigations - and far ahead of schedule," he tweeted. " I also allowed Ukraine to purchase Javelin anti-tank missiles. My Administration has done far more than the previous Administration."
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