Puppet MastersS


Arrow Up

'Ghosting': Iran delivers 1 million barrels of oil to fuel starved Syria in defiance of sanctions

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Fri, 10 May 2019 20:42 UTC
tanker
© Image via FleetMon Maritime News
At a moment the Persian Gulf is heating up given the highest tensions and exchange of threats in years between the US and Iran, Tehran is running the high risk gambit of restarting its crude transfers to Syria.

A new CNBC report finds, "Tanker-tracking firms believe Iran is once again shipping crude oil to Syria, resuming the illicit trade as tensions with Washington rise and the Islamic Republic faces increasing international isolation." Specifically a one million barrel delivery was reportedly made through the Syrian port of Baniyas in early May, the first since the end of 2018, according to TankerTrackers.com and ClipperData.

Washington has in recent months ramped up targeted sanctions against Syrian oil imports, causing the worse fuel crisis in Syria's modern history, resulting in a "lifeless" and "decimated economy" with cars lined up for miles, sometimes waiting for days for a simple gas fill-up, as one Bloomberg on the ground report recently described.

Comment: And, according to Al Masdar news, the US really is attempting to thwart these deliveries by force: US forces attack Syria's oil imports in the Euphrates

See also:

Read More...
Red Flag

Illegal collective punishment: US siege on Venezuelan embassy violates Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, US Constitution, UN Charter and international laws

Stephen Lendman
StephenLendman.org
Thu, 09 May 2019 00:00 UTC
Venzuela embassy DC siege
MintPress News journalist Alexander Rubinstein and a reporter for The Grayzone, Anya Parampil, are besieged inside the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, DC.
Dozens of embassy protectors have been living in Venezuela's DC embassy since mid-April, holding out against an unlawful Trump regime order to leave.

The facility is sovereign Venezuelan territory. Activists protecting it from an unlawful US takeover were thanked by Bolivarian officials in Caracas, including Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza.

Trump regime hardliners blocked food and medicine from reaching activists inside, along with access to the embassy.

Last evening, they had the Potomac Electric Power Company (PEPCO) cut off electricity to the facility. Water was turned off.

Along with limited food supplies, they "creat(ed) a dangerous emergency situation," according to a press release by activists inside.

Embassy protection was organized by "CODEPINK, (the) Answer Coalition, and Popular Resistance." They demand their rights under international and constitutional law for "electricity and water (to) be turned back on, and that food and medicines be allowed inside."

"Since May 1, the building - with the activists inside - has been besieged by a violent (rent-a) mob (gang of thuggish) Guaido supporters, who have been preventing food, medicine, and supplies from entering with support from the US Secret Service."

Comment: More on the embassy siege:

Read More...
Handcuffs

UK MPs claiming expenses for 'dependent' children who are actually adults

James Hockaday
Metro
Sat, 11 May 2019 20:17 UTC
Claire Perry
© ReutersEnergy minister Claire Perry claimed £9,846 for her kids aged 17, 19 and 22
Some MPs are claiming nearly £10,000 in expenses for 'dependent children' who are 18 or older and are studying at university.

They're entitled to up to £5,400 per child as a second home expense under guidelines designed to help MPs with families rent larger homes. But many are topping up their £22,760 standard rental allowance by claiming for children in their 20s.

Energy Minister Claire Perry is said to have claimed £9,846 for her three children aged 17, 19 and 22, the Telegraph reports. The MP for Devizes who earns £111,148 a year insists all claims were compliant with expenses watchdog the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa).

Although the age limit for claiming for children is 18, it goes up to 21 under certain circumstances including for children in full-time education who need care. The Telegraph identified five other MPs who were also reportedly claiming allowances for adult children, two of whom have since agreed to return the money.

Comment: This is all the more outrageous because they're not just taking what's on offer, they're rewriting the rules so they can bilk the taxpayer of all they can get: 377 UK MP's credit cards suspended due to misuse, Parliament watchdog tried to keep it a secret

See also: And check out SOTT radio's:

Read More...
Eye 1

US forces attack Syria's oil imports in the Euphrates


Al Masdar News
Sat, 11 May 2019 19:58 UTC
US oil attack
The U.S. military and their allies from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) opened fire on a Syrian government ferry that was attempting to transport oil in the Euphrates River Valley.

According to the pro-SDF Deir Ezzor Media Center page on Facebook, the U.S. Coalition forces fired shots at the Syrian government ferry as it was traveling down the Euphrates River.

The U.S. has been preventing Syria from transporting oil from neighboring countries like Iraq because of the Trump administration's ongoing sanctions against the government in Damascus.

Comment: So that's how the US enforces its sanctions? It's an extremely risky tactic and it surely can't carry on like that forever:

Read More...
Light Sabers

Pepe Escobar: The hardcore is yet to come for US & China

Pepe Escobar
Asia Times
Sat, 11 May 2019 19:41 UTC
container china
© Mark Ralston / AFPA container ship unloads cargo at the port terminal in Long Beach, California on May 10, as talks to resolve the US-China trade battle ended Friday with no deal, but no breakdown.
The Trump administration's response to China's emergence has been to throw all sorts of spanners in the works, but tariffs won't bring back manufacturing jobs

Let's start with the "long" 16th Century - which, as with the 21st, also saw a turbulent process of marketization. At that time, the Jesuits and the Counter-Reformation were trying to rebound across Asia - but within a context where the rivalry between the Iberian superpowers of the age, Spain and Portugal, still lingered.

The Reformation first attached itself to the Dutch trade thalassocracy - a seaborne empire, under which commerce was paramount - over strict propaganda of religious dogma. Britain's maritime realm was still biding its time. The emergence of Protestantism proceeded in parallel to the emergence of neo-Confucianism in East Asia.

Fast forward to our turbulent times. Marketization - renamed as globalization - seems to be in crisis. But not in the Middle Kingdom, which is now investing in globalization 2.0 amid increasing rivalry with the other superpower, the US.

The American thalassocracy is being superseded by the Revenge of the Heartland, in the form of the Russia-China strategic partnership - for whom Eurasian trade integration, as expressed by the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), is paramount over the Make America Great Again (MAGA) dogma.

Comment: See also:

Read More...
Star of David

Resistance is not the enemy; it is the necessity

Stanley L. Cohen
Counterpunch
Fri, 10 May 2019 00:00 UTC
Gaza destruction
© International Solidarity Movement/CC BY-SA 2.0
The Islamic Resistance Movement began more than thirty years ago at an historical moment in time which it knew to be fraught with absolute peril for their people. The founders of this national liberation struggle examined the overwhelming military capabilities of Israel, fostered by its global superpower sponsor, the United States. They looked at Israel's expansionist programs-the Zionist project of illegal settlements erasing their homes and villages, dispossessing mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers - and at the failure of the international community to stop them. They knew then that within a generation Palestinians would lose it all - their motherland and patrimony and their nation - leaving them homeless captives to the whims of another man's door. In that moment, resistance was not a lifestyle choice or a revolutionary pose. It was existential necessity, just as it is now.

Everything Hamas predicted then has come to pass. Here, a generation later, it should take no comfort reminding the world that they were right in their analysis. Israel has grown only stronger and more rapacious, more intransigent and murderous in its deeds. Its "democracy" did not save it from becoming a racist, apartheid state presiding over a military occupation of millions of Palestinians. Israel's policy of creating "facts on the ground"- that is, the illegal settlement project - has transitioned from a de facto expulsion and annexation policy into a de jure one, as its prime minister calls for the removal of Palestinians and the annexation of the West Bank, and the American president and congress pre-emptively applaud the crime-to-be.
Read More...
Arrow Down

Senate Intel Committee: Zero GOP members publicly endorsed Richard Burr's rogue Trump Jr. subpoena

Matthew Boyle
Breitbart
Wed, 08 May 2019 00:00 UTC
SenRichard Burr (R-NC)
© Getty Images/Zach GibsonSenator Richard Burr (R-NC)
Not one GOP senator on the Senate Intelligence Committee was willing to publicly align himself or herself on Wednesday evening with the panel's chairman, Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), after Burr made the determination, against indications from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, to issue a subpoena to Donald Trump Jr. to testify again on the Russia probe.

News broke late Wednesday afternoon that Burr had issued Trump, Jr. a subpoena to try to compel the president's eldest son to testify again. The subpoena is in contravention of a previous promise Burr made to Trump, Jr. that he would only need to testify once and would not be subpoenaed, and it contradicts McConnell's edict on Tuesday that the Russia hoax is "case closed" after two years of investigating with no evidence of collusion or obstruction.

Condemnation rained down upon Burr quickly and swiftly from across the Republican Party, as Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy both ripped him for the subpoena, as did Reps. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) and Devin Nunes (R-CA), the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, who served as chair for the first two years of Trump's presidency, as well as many others in the Trump universe.


Comment: See also:

Read More...
USA

H.R. McMaster comes out against former colleagues as a 'danger to the Constitution'

Wesley Morgan
Politico
Wed, 08 May 2019 05:16 UTC
TrumpMcMaster
© Getty ImagesPresident Donald Trump • Former National Security Adv. H.R. McMaster
Former national security adviser H.R. McMaster accused some of his former White House colleagues on Wednesday of being "a danger to the Constitution" because they are either trying to manipulate President Donald Trump to push their own agenda or see themselves as rescuing the country from what they view as the commander in chief's bad policy choices.

The retired Army lieutenant general, who served as a top Trump aide between February 2017 and April 2018, cast himself among the group who sought to provide unvarnished policy options to the president. But he said others whom he declined to identify by name had very different agendas - and he said those agendas are dangerous.

"The second group of people, and I think this is true in any administration," he explained, are those "who are not there to give the president options - they're there to try to manipulate the situation based on their own agenda, not the president's agenda."

The third group of Trump advisers are those who "cast themselves in the role of saving the country, even the world, from the president," McMaster told an event hosted by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish think tank where he is now a scholar. "I think those latter two categories of people are actually a danger to the Constitution of the United States," he concluded, explaining that the public servants were not elected to overrule or stymie Trump's policy desires.
Read More...
Brick Wall

Immigration hypocrisy: Biden clip proves he demanded the border fence and he wasn't the only one!


RT
Sat, 11 May 2019 05:12 UTC
BidenWallFence
© Chicago Tribune/Reuters/Lucy Nicholson/KJNFormer US VP Joe Biden
Joe Biden is being called out for immigration virtue-signaling after a video of the Democratic candidate calling for a fence "40 stories high" at the US-Mexican border to keep out the Mexicans bringing in drugs resurfaced.

"I voted for a fence," Biden boasts in the video, unearthed by CNN, before launching into a rant against "American employers who knowingly violate the law when, in fact, they hire illegals" and "people driving across that border with tons, tons, hear me, tons of everything from byproducts for methamphetamine to cocaine to heroin and it's all coming up through corrupt Mexico."

The Biden in the video stands in stark contrast to the Democratic frontrunner who has accused Trump of using migrants' illegal status "to demonize people" and called his immigration policy "one of the darkest moments in our history."

Filmed at a South Carolina campaign stop in November 2006, the clip is hardly ancient history. Biden was referring to his vote for the Secure Fence Act, which secured over $1 billion for 700 miles of double-layered fencing on the border, and he wasn't alone in supporting it - then-Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama also voted for the measure.

Read More...
Attention

Lavrov: Deploying US missile defense systems to Japan is a threat to Russia


RT
Fri, 10 May 2019 16:30 UTC
USMissileDestroyerJapan
© Reuters/US NavyArleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS John S. McCain is seen at Fleet Activities Yokosuka, Japan.
The US' continuous military buildup in Japan, namely deployment of missile defense systems, is a direct threat to Russia, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said after meeting his Japanese counterpart Taro Kono. Lavrov said on Friday:
"We've yet again drew attention to certain actions of Washington, including the deployment of the global missile defense systems' elements to Japan, bolstering of its military presence in the region and activities in the arms control sphere, where the US is demolishing all the existing agreements. We perceive such actions as a threat for our country,"
The bilateral Russia-Japan relations are still riddled with multiple issues, including the significant differences in Moscow's and Tokyo's approach to the peace treaty issue, Lavrov noted.
Read More...