Puppet MastersS


Bad Guys

Saudi-led coalition launches numerous airstrikes on Yemen despite ceasefire agreement a week ago

saudi yemen airstrike December 16th
© AP Photo / Hani Mohammed
The Arab coalition launched new airstrikes in Yemen's Al Hodeidah despite the agreements that were reached during the negotiations in Sweden, a source in Yemen's Ministry of Defense told Sputnik on Sunday.

According to the source, the bombing affected the Isa area of Al Hodeidah.

The source added that the coalition had also launched an airstrike in the province of Al Bayda, leaving two children killed, as well as bombed the northern province of Saada, located on the border with Saudi Arabia and considered to be a stronghold of the Houthi movement.

The strike comes after one-week UN-mediated talks on Yemen crisis settlement finished earlier in December. The sides agreed on a governorate-wide ceasefire and withdrawal of forces in Al Hodeidah, the establishment of a UN-chaired committee to monitor the process, a prisoner exchange, and humanitarian corridors to the city of Taiz.

Comment: So we have: the US-led continued bombing of civilians in Syria, the US and UK backed Saudi-led war on Yemen, meanwhile Iran is struggling with US waged economic warfare in the form of sanctions, and Afghanistan is suffering increased attacks from the Taliban (to name just a few of the ongoing conflicts in the area); one would think this was a coordinated attack to obliterate much of Middle East - those countries that refuse to kowtow to the establishment anyway. Also check out SOTT radio's:


Arrow Down

Arrogant Washington is changing the World Order against its own interests

US Russia China global directions
The hubris and arrogance of Washington have been at work since the Clinton regime to destroy the power and relevance of the United States.

This website has an international audience. The most asked question from this audience is the world order. There is a realization that Washington's control might weaken, a development people abroad see as hopeful. They ask me for verification of their hope.

Here is my answer:

The world order has already changed. China has a larger and more powerful industrial and manufacturing based economy than the US, and China's potential domestic consumer market is four times larger than that of the US. As economies are consumer based, China's potential is an economy four times larger than that of the US.

Comment: See also:


Black Magic

'Macron... WHAT?' French TV channel France3 caught censoring photo of Yellow Vest protester's placard

TV censor yellow vest placard
© AFP / Geoffroy Van der Hasselt (L) / france.tv (R)Part of original photo (L) and screenshot of doctored image broadcast by France3 (R)
TV channel France3 has "fixed" a placard held by a Yellow Vest protester, which urged President Emmanuel Macron to resign. The broadcaster explained that the sign was broadcast reading just Macron, due to a "human error."

The unfortunate blunder occurred on Saturday during an evening news program that was covering the ongoing Yellow Vest protests.

Among videos and images of the protests, France3 featured a photo supplied by Agence France Presse (AFP). It shows a couple of mounted police officers watching the crowds outside the Opera b uilding in Paris on Saturday. One of the Yellow Vests holds high a placard, reading "Macron out." Here's this photo.


Comment: Quelle surprise. News behemoth AFP has been manipulating images (and stories) to fit the agenda of their establishment backers who are clearly worried about the protests and its message.


Comment: Is it any wonder the Yellow Vest protesters have included in their manifesto that the mainstream media should be forced to give them airtime because they know the news can't even be trusted to post undoctored photos?

But then, it's not only France's mainstream media who have been caught out in the last few days: "The editorial board wants blood": Leaked messages show BBC wants to 'prove' Russia linked to Yellow Vest protests

See also: And check out SOTT radio's: NewsReal: Révolution Jaune? France Revolts Against Macron


Rocket

Likelihood of a shooting war between NATO and Russia on the increase

Trident Juncture
© Master-Corporal Jonathan Barrette, Canadian Forces Combat CameraNATO practices war with Russia. Exercise Trident Juncture.
George Szamuely is a Hungarian-born scholar and Senior Research Fellow at London's Global Policy Institute. He lives in New York City. I spoke to him about escalating hostilities on Russia's Ukrainian and Black Sea borders and about Exercise Trident Juncture, NATO's massive military exercise on Russian borders which ended just as the latest hostilities began.

Ann Garrison: George, the hostilities between Ukraine, NATO, and Russia continue to escalate in the Sea of Azov, the Kerch Strait, and the Black Sea. What do you think the latest odds of a shooting war between NATO and Russia are, if one hasn't started by the time this is published?

George Szamuely: Several weeks ago, when we first talked about this, I said 60 percent. Now I'd say, maybe 70 percent. The problem is that Trump seems determined to be the anti-Obama. Obama, in Trump's telling, "allowed" Russia to take Crimea and to "invade" Ukraine. Therefore, it will be up to Trump to reverse this. Just as he, Trump, reversed Obama's policy on Iran by walking away from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, otherwise known as the Iran nuclear deal. So expect ever-increasing US involvement in Ukraine.

AG: NATO's Supreme Commander US General Curtis M. Scaparrotti is reported to have been on the phone with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko "offering his full support." Thoughts on that?

GS: There has been a proxy war within Ukraine since 2014, with NATO backing Poroshenko's Ukrainian government and Russia backing the dissidents and armed separatists who speak Russian and identify as Russian in Ukraine's southeastern Donbass region. But in the Kerch Strait the hostilities are between Russia and Ukraine, with NATO behind Ukraine.

A shooting war will begin if it escalates to where NATO soldiers shoot and kill Russian soldiers or vice versa. Whoever shoots first, the other side will feel compelled to respond, and then there'll be a war between Russia and NATO or Russia and a NATO nation.

We don't know whether NATO would feel compelled to respond as one if Russians fired on soldiers of individual NATO nations-most likely UK soldiers since the UK is sending more of its Special Forces and already has the largest NATO military presence in Ukraine. Russia could defeat the UK, but if the US gets involved, all bets are off.

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Yoda

Fmr FBI SSA Robyn Gritz's letter to Judge Sullivan supporting Michael Flynn

Flynn
Michael Flynn
Former FBI Supervisory Special Agent Robyn Gritz has asked SaraACarter.com to post her letter to Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in support of her friend and colleague retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, who will be sentenced on Dec. 18. The Special Counsel's Office has requested that Flynn not serve any jail time due to his cooperation with Robert Mueller's office. Based on new information contained in a memorandum submitted to the court this week by Flynn's attorney, Sullivan has ordered Mueller's office to turn over all exculpatory evidence and government documents on Flynn's case by mid-day Friday. Sullivan is also requesting any documentation regarding the first interviews conducted by former anti-Trump agent Peter Strzok and FBI Agent Joe Pientka -known by the FBI as 302s- which were found to be dated more than seven months after the interviews were conducted on Jan. 24, 2017, a violation of FBI policy, say current and former FBI officials familiar with the process. According to information contained in Flynn's memorandum, the interviews were dated Aug. 22, 2017.

Letter from Supervisory Special Agent Robyn Griz

The Honorable Emmet G. Sullivan. December 5, 2018 U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia
333 Constitution Avenue, N.W.
Washington D.C. 20001

Re: Sentencing of Lt. General Michael T. Flynn (Ret.)

Dear Judge Sullivan:

I am submitting my letter directly since Mike Flynn's attorney has refused to submit it as well as letters submitted by other individuals. I feel you need to hear from someone who was an FBI Special Agent who not only worked with Mike, but also has personally witnessed and reported unethical & sometimes illegal tactics used to coerce targets of investigations externally and internally.

About Myself and FBI Career

For 16 years, I proudly served the American people as a Special Agent working diligently on significant terrorism cases which earned noteworthy results and fostered substantial interagency cooperation. Prior to serving in the FBI I was a Juvenile Probation Officer in Camden, NJ. Currently, I am a Senior Information Security Metrics and Reporting Analyst with Discover Financial Services in the Chicago Metro area. I have recently been named as a Senior Fellow to the London Center for Policy Research.

Comment:


Bad Guys

'Blatant & brazen': Russian lawmaker lambastes US "interference" in Nord Stream 2 deal

nord stream 2
© RIA NOVOSTI/Tomas Eugster
Washington has absolutely no say in the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline deal, and pressuring Germany into dumping the project equates to meddling in other nations' domestic affairs, Senator Konstantin Kosachev said.

The calls for Berlin to halt the pipeline's construction are "blatant and brazen interference into the affairs of its sovereign partners," something Washington "has no right to do," the lawmaker wrote on social media on Sunday.

The Nord Stream 2 project is designed to deliver Russian natural gas to Germany across the Baltic Sea. The US Department of State earlier urged Berlin "to heed the concerns of the many neighbors whose security will be damaged by this pipeline."


Comment: American profits will be damaged, pretty much everyone else will benefit.


Comment: If last winter is anything to go by, the US will have a hard time convincing shivering Europeans that Russian gas is 'evil': Russia to the rescue! Britain receives another gas delivery after record cold causes shortage and 400% price increase

See also:


Black Magic

"The editorial board wants blood": Leaked messages show BBC wants to 'prove' Russia linked to Yellow Vest protests

BBC camera
© Global Look Press / Matt Cetti-RobertsFILE PHOTO.
The BBC is desperate in its quest to 'find' the dreaded Kremlin hand behind the French protests, messages obtained by Russian media indicate. They reveal attempts by one of its journalists to find any trace of Russian involvement.

A series of screenshots, purporting to show a conversation between BBC Russia journalist Olga Ivshina and a stringer working in France, was published by RIA Novosti on Sunday.

In it, the journalist first asks about Moscow's general involvement in the protests, but the stringer replied that no Russians were actually seen during the demonstrations. Ivshina, however, did not give up, since uncovering even the slightest Russian involvement would apparently do the trick. The journalist was bursting with ideas, one of the screenshots suggests.

Comment: One wonders how the majority in France, who support the Yellow Vests protests over plummeting living standards and the corruption of Macron's government, feel about being used by the British taxpayer funded BBC for their sinister propaganda purposes? The BBC will also struggle to explain why similar movements are popping up all over Europe, and even further afield: 'Macron resign!' Yellow Vest protests enter 5th week - 33,000 people throughout France brave aggressive security forces

Although this behavior from the BBC is standard:


Attention

An examination of Bellingcat's Kerch gaff and how Kurt Volker bought into Ukraine's lie

PoroshenkoVolker
© Mikhail Palinchak/PPS/APUkrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Kurt Volker in Kiev, Ukraine, Jan. 23, 2018.
For 5 years Ukraine has bamboozled supporters by using "independent" researchers like Bellingcat that work with Ukraine's Intel to fabricate its innocence.

On November 25th, the Kerch incident happened, worsening the West's relationship with Russia ahead of the G-20 Meeting in Argentina.

Seemingly right on cue, Russian planners couldn't find anything better to do than cause another major international incident right in front of the entire world. They did this even as Russian President Vladimir Putin was set to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump. The formal meeting that never happened was canceled because of Ukraine's hyper histrionics.

Special Representative for Ukraine negotiations, Kurt Volker, wasted no time getting on Ukraine's already crashing wagon by citing Bellingcat's conclusion that the Ukrainian ships "may have been" fired on in international waters. Bellingcat suspects the Russian ships may have been 500 yards outside of their territory. This flaccid statement by Bellingcat is all Volker and Ukraine found to stand behind. Volker is undeterred even though the Bellingcat report's only value is to spin another nut into Ukraine's InfoWar machine.

Bellingcat is a western based arm of Ukrainian Intel and InfoWar. Bellingcat OSINT school attendance can be cross-referenced against people from Ukraine and the various Diasporas supporting a nationalist Ukraine or Syria. When Ukrainian supporters at the seminars are multiplied by a per seat value, we can know exactly who built Bellingcat's reputation and how Bellingcat receives financing.

When Bellingcat's OSINT results are looked at against Ukrainian Intel, Bellingcat is anti-American, anti-Democracy, against Christianity, against free-speech, support Ukraine's Bandera nationalists and ISIS.

Comment: The drivers behind Ukraine's Neo-Nazi agenda appear to be the same cadre that serve and supply Trump's official sources of information on Russia and Ukraine. To put it concisely, the US is being played...right into WWIII.
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Oil Well

Oil industry's covert campaign to rewrite US car emissions rules

Marathon refinery
© Kirk Allen/Center for Public IntegrityMarathon Oil tar sands refinery in southwest Detroit.
When the Trump administration laid out a plan this year that would eventually allow cars to emit more pollution, automakers, the obvious winners from the proposal, balked. The changes, they said, went too far even for them.

But it turns out that there was a hidden beneficiary of the plan that was pushing for the changes all along: the nation's oil industry.

In Congress, on Facebook and in statehouses nationwide, Marathon Petroleum, the country's largest refiner, worked with powerful oil-industry groups and a conservative policy network financed by the billionaire industrialist Charles G. Koch to run a stealth campaign to roll back car emissions standards, a New York Times investigation has found.

The campaign's main argument for significantly easing fuel efficiency standards - that the United States is so awash in oil it no longer needs to worry about energy conservation - clashed with decades of federal energy and environmental policy.

"With oil scarcity no longer a concern," Americans should be given a "choice in vehicles that best fit their needs," read a draft of a letter that Marathon helped to circulate to members of Congress over the summer. Official correspondence later sent to regulators by more than a dozen lawmakers included phrases or sentences from the industry talking points, and the Trump administration's proposed rules incorporate similar logic.

Comment: Oil scarcity excuse is bogus. Global warming excuse is bogus. CO2 emissions excuse is bogus. Whether we agree or not with manufacturing decisions, the science behind any impetus for current or future manufacturing parameters must be based on real science with accurately proven results.
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Key

Pompeo: China should free the Canadians held after Huawei's arrest

Pompeo
© UnknownUS Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Friday China should free two Canadian citizens who were detained this week after authorities in Canada arrested a senior Chinese technology executive on a U.S. extradition warrant.

Pompeo's comments were the first by a senior U.S. official on the arrests, which Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said could escalate a growing trade conflict between China and the United States.

"The unlawful detention of two Canadian citizens is unacceptable," Pompeo told reporters after talks in Washington with Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland. "They ought to be returned ... We ask all nations of the world to treat other citizens properly."

Canadian officials were granted consular access on Friday to one of the two detainees in China and were still trying to contact the second, the Foreign Ministry said.

China detained the two - businessman Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, a former diplomat and an adviser with the International Crisis Group (ICG) - after Canadian police arrested Huawei Technologies Co Ltd's chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, on Dec 1.

Comment: See also: