Puppet MastersS


Better Earth

The geo-politics of Turkey's incursion in Syria

Salman Rafi Sheikh
New Eastern Outlook
Fri, 11 Oct 2019 12:26 UTC
Turkey
Despite the fact that Turkey has been defying the US as of recently with regard to its purchase of Russian S-400 missile system, the US president has finally conceded to its NATO partner's long-standing demand of invading northern Syria and wipe out the Kurdish militias. This is a critical decision since Kurdish militias were the main US ground allies in the war against the Islamic State in Syria. With the US now abandoning its only ground ally in Syria, a policy shift is in the air, a change that might ultimately go to Syria's benefit. While we shall come to this point later, what is pertinent here to discuss is the factor that led the US to change its erstwhile position vis-à-vis Kurds.

There is hardly any gainsaying that the world is increasingly becoming multipolar, and Turkey being a 'Middle Kingdom' between two poles has been making the best use of its geo-strategic position in the emerging world order. As Erdogan said in his recent UNO speech, "the world is bigger than five." He was referring to the five permanent members of the Security Council: Britain, France, Russia, China, and America. Perhaps he wants his country to be included as a sixth, or that the world has already changed too much for these countries to manage on their own without showing sensitivity to other powers' interests.

Comment: See also:

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Newspaper

Sweden's hysterical hunt for Russian sub that was never there, and the consequences

Simon Osborne
The Express
Tue, 08 Oct 2019 07:17 UTC
Sweden
Sweden increased military spending after the scare
Sweden was gripped by the massive operation to track down and capture a damaged Russian sub in Kanholmsfjärden in the Stockholm archipelago five years ago this month. The alarm was raised when encrypted transmissions sent on an emergency radio frequency used by Russian units were recorded. The sources of the transmissions were identified as a submarine and a military site in the Kaliningrad region.

Reported sightings of the unidentified submarine started to emerge amid rumours that the Russian oil tanker Concord, which was criss-crossing outside Stockhom, was acting as a mother-ship for smaller underwater vessels.

Several days later, the hunt was still on and officials became certain foreign underwater operations were underway.

Comment: See also: And check out SOTT radio's: The Truth Perspective: The Strange Contagion: How Viral Thoughts and Emotions Secretly Control Us

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Display

How Trump's Tweets blow the lid off of the US-led war narrative

Mike Luongo
Guns, Gold 'N Goats
Mon, 07 Oct 2019 00:00 UTC
deal with it
Over the weekend I asked whether Donald Trump had risen to the level of Grey Champion. A few days later Trump takes to Twitter and puts a big line item in his resume.

There have been signs of change coming since Trump rightly refused to go to war with Iran over their shooting down an unmanned U.S. drone.

Starting with a major shake up of his cabinet by firing National Security Director John Bolton to his tepid response to the Houthi attack on the Saudi Aramco Abqaiq facility, Trump has sought to defuse a situation that had flown way to close to the sun and threatened to burn millions.

These five tweets taken in context of the past few days, however, blow the lid off a number of narratives as well as ongoing operations.



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Newspaper

The Saker: Debunking the Putin and Netanyahu/Israel work together canard


The Saker
Thu, 10 Oct 2019 12:00 UTC
netanyahu putin
© Sputnik / Sergey Guneev
This will not be an analysis or even a commentary. Neither am I siding with, or expressing support for, the Turkish military operation in northern Syria. Finally, I am not discussing the legitimacy (or lack thereof) of the Kurdish Independence movement. All I propose to do here, is to draw your attention to a series of facts and logical imperatives which, in my opinion debunk and falsify the disinformation campaign aimed at convincing us that Putin and Netanyahu are working hand in glove or, even better, that Putin is a puppet of the Israelis. So, with that in mind, here we go:

Comment: See also:

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Light Sabers

Finian Cunningham: America's political implosion

Finian Cunningham
Strategic Culture
Fri, 11 Oct 2019 10:58 UTC
America
© Pexels/Strategic Culture
The polarization in American politics has become so extreme there seems no longer to be any center ground. The political establishment is consequently imploding into an abyss of its own making.

President Trump is being driven into an impeachment process by Democrats and their media supporters who accuse him of being "unpatriotic" and a danger to national security.

Trump and Republicans hit back at Democrats and the "deep state" whom they condemn for conspiring to overthrow the presidency in a coup dressed up as "impeachment".

The White House is being subpoenaed, the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives wants to access transcripts to all of Trump's phone calls to foreign leaders; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has blasted congressmen for "harassing the State Department" in their search of evidence to indict Trump. Trump calls the impeachment bid a "witch-hunt".

Comment: See also: And check out SOTT radio's: MindMatters: Decoding the American Minds: The Deep History of America's Culture Wars

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Newspaper

Trump's latest foreign policy nightmare: Peace breaking out in the Middle East

Martin Jay
Strategic Culture
Thu, 10 Oct 2019 12:00 UTC
middle east
© Pixabay / Strategic Culture
The last few weeks have seen media dominated by tumultuous events in the region, in particular the attack on Saudi Arabia's oilfields, which shocked the Kingdom and sent a very clear message to Donald Trump that if he continues to pursue a policy of denying the world of Iranian oil, then Tehran has the capability to also restrict the flow from KSA as well.

But it also sent another message which was perhaps heeded better in Riyadh than in Washington which was that Iran is prepared to start a war with Saudi Arabia if it has to, as it is being pushed into a corner where diplomatic options seem meaningless in comparison to military ones. In the last few days of the UN's general assembly, we witnessed informal shuttle diplomacy by several world leaders trying to send messages to Iran's president. Macron, Johnson et al failed with the "it's a good time to talk" approach, when, in reality all they achieved was to advertise to the world their shocking ignorance of Iranian politics, as it would never be President Rouhani's off-the-cuff decision anyway to meet Trump in the alcoves of the UN building.

Comment: See also:


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Attention

Who's becoming one of America's biggest military giants? Amazon

Aaron Kesel
Activist Post
Thu, 10 Oct 2019 02:58 UTC
Pentagon
© Amazon
Amazon is on its way to becoming one of the U.S. military's biggest security giants, with a pending $10bn JEDI cloud computing deal that the company could win, MIT Technology Review reported.

In August the Pentagon halted the controversial contract deal, known as Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI), an initiative to "aggressively accelerate the Department's adoption of cloud architecture and services, with a focus on commercial solutions."

The deal was stopped and is now under investigation by Secretary of Defense Mark Esper to audit the process which caused complaints from other tech companies like Microsoft. U.S. President Donald Trump has publicly criticized Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in the past and announced in July that he wanted a review of the contract, citing "tremendous complaints" from competing companies.

Further, the Office of the Inspector General is investigating possible conflicts of interest, the acquisition process and requirements, according to Dwrena Allen, a spokeswoman for the watchdog office, Fed Scoop reported.

Comment: See also:

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Bullseye

Best of the Web: CIA's war on Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks

Kevin Gosztola
Medium
Fri, 04 Oct 2019 00:00 UTC
CIA emblem
© Lance Page/truthout/wikimedia
On behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency, a Spanish security company called Undercover Global spied on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange while he was living in the Ecuador embassy in London.

The Spanish newspaper El Pais reported on September 25 that the company's CEO David Morales repeatedly handed over audio and video. When cameras were installed in the embassy in December 2017, "Morales requested that his technicians install an external streaming access point in the same area so that all of the recordings could be accessed instantly by the United States."

Technicians planted microphones in the embassy's fire extinguishers, as well as the women's bathroom, where Assange held regular meetings with his lawyers — Melynda Taylor, Jennifer Robinson, and Baltasar Garzon.

Morales' company was hired by Ecuador, but Ecuador apparently had no idea that Morales formed a relationship with the CIA.

The world laughed at Assange when it was reported in a book from David Leigh and Luke Harding that he once dressed as an old woman because he believed CIA agents were following him. It doesn't seem as absurd now.

Comment: From RT, 9/10/2019: Security firm at Ecuadorian embassy created 'profiles' on Russian and American visitors to Assange - gave info to CIA
The Spanish security firm hired to guard the Ecuadorian Embassy in London during Julian Assange's stay there gathered information on his Russian and American visitors and handed it to US intelligence, according to a new report.

David Morales, owner of security contracting firm Undercover Global SL, allegedly ordered his employees to keep extensive records on anybody coming to meet with Assange during his nearly seven-year residency at the diplomatic compound.

Former employees at the firm told El Pais the CIA was also granted access to a web server where those records were stored, which included "profiles" containing all manner of personal information on the individuals. American and Russian visitors were reportedly given the highest priority, especially lawyers and those working in media.

All guests were required to hand over phones and computers to embassy security before entering the compound, potentially giving Undercover Global - and, in turn, US intelligence - access to any files stored on the devices.

Interest in Assange's meetings with Russians may have been piqued by the US Department of Justice (DOJ), which accused the cyber activist of cooperating with Russian intelligence to leak Hillary Clinton's emails, among other pilfered documents, prior to the 2016 US election - a claim Assange has fervently denied and which the DOJ has never backed up with evidence.


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Arrow Up

New protests in Egypt point to a US-fueled 'Arab Spring' reboot

Tony Cartalucci
New Eastern Outlook
Wed, 09 Oct 2019 00:00 UTC
Mohammed Aly
© UnknownProtest leader Mohammed Aly
When the West's leading media organizations attempt to convince audiences they know nothing about where Mohammed Aly - a Spanish-based Egyptian protest leader - came from, the first thing one can be sure of is they are being lied to.

Protests have begun to spread again in Egypt after nearly a decade of frustration in Washington over its inability to coerce Cairo into serving its regional and global designs.

Protesters have allegedly been stirred up by economic turmoil still plaguing Egypt, however familiar US-backed organizations used in the past to destabilize Egypt are turning up at the center of protest venues including the Muslim Brotherhood which has served a pivotal role in other regional US projects including filling the ranks of militant forces fighting the government in Syria.

The Western media's feigned ignorance over self-proclaimed protest leader Mohammed Aly is meant to obfuscate his political ties and those of the organizations and enterprises he is associated with.

The New York Times in its article, "Egypt Protests Came as a Total Shock. The Man Behind Them Is Just as Surprising," claims:
Under the government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, so little dissent is allowed — and what little there is comes at such a high price — that when just a few hundred people across the country called for Mr. el-Sisi's ouster in a burst of scattered protests on Friday night, it came as a shock.

The apparent trigger for the demonstrations was almost as unexpected: Mohamed Ali, a 45-year-old construction contractor and part-time actor who says he got rich building projects for the Egyptian military and then left for Spain to live in self-imposed exile, where he began posting videos on social media accusing Mr. el-Sisi of corruption and hypocrisy.
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X

Best of the Web: Zelenskiy insists Trump did nothing wrong: 'There was no blackmail!'

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Thu, 10 Oct 2019 06:00 UTC
Volodymyr Zelenskiy
© Screen ShotUkraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
As Democrats and their media allies turn up the pressure on President Trump with this latest report about the president allegedly trying to do favors for his political allies (something that everyone in politics does, to one degree or another), perfectly timed to coincide with the NatSec meltdown over Trump's decision to let Turkey have northeastern Syria, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy once again denied that he had been blackmailed by Trump during the now-infamous July 25 phone call that's at the center of the Dems' impeachment crusade, Bloomberg reports.

At a press conference in Kyiv, far from American soil, and well beyond Trump's jurisdiction, Zelenskiy insistently replied to a group of reporters that there never was any 'blackmail' from Trump, and that Trump must have known Zelenskiy doesn't possess the power to interfere in Ukraine's judiciary (as rooting out corruption was one of the tentpoles of his campaign).

Democrats say Trump tried to use $400 million of military aide from the US as leverage to try to strong-arm Zelenskiy and the Ukrainian government to dig up some dirt on Joe and Hunter Biden and their shady business dealings in the country (these include Hunter's position on the board of a private gas company, and Joe's involvement in the ouster of a supposedly corrupt prosecutor). We've detailed many of Hunter's shady dealings here.

Zelenskiy claims it's simply not so. "There was no a blackmail," Zelenskiy told reporters at an all-day press event in Kyiv. "It wasn't a subject of our talk."

Comment: See also:
Inconvenient truth: Zelenskiy didn't even know US was withholding aid during Trump call

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