Puppet MastersS


Jet4

Israel thinks apologies and high level personnel will absolve it of Russian jet tragedy

jet plane
© AP Photo / Ariel Schalit
Israel is guided solely by its military interests in the region, and this factor along with the lack of coordination with the Russian side led to the crash of Russia's Il-20 military plane in Syria, Egyptian military expert Adil Suleiman told Sputnik.

The Egyptian analyst noted that the tragedy was the result of a lack of coordination at the operational and tactical levels. "It was not taken seriously in full, especially by the Israeli side," Suleiman said.

"Israel does not care about anything apart from its interests, especially with regard to military operations. It is not ready to bear military losses and look weak... Israel is not interested in who is on the other side, whether it is the Syrian side, which is armed with Russian advanced weapons, or any other," he noted.

Comment: See also:


Bad Guys

Please God, no: Trade tensions between US and China could drag on for decades

Trade war
© iStockWe might be at the start of a decades-long trade war between China and the US.
Alibaba's Jack Ma has warned that the ongoing US-China trade war could last at least 20 years. As we'll see, it's actually more like 30 - up to 2049, the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the People's Republic of China (PRC).

Steve Bannon always boasted that President Trump was bound to conduct a "sophisticated form of economic warfare" to confront China.

The logic underpinning the warfare is that if you squeeze the Chinese economy hard enough Beijing will submit and "play by the rules."

The Trump administration plan - which is, in fact, trade deficit hawk Peter Navarro's plan - has three basic targets:
  1. Displace China from the heart of global supply chains.
  2. Force companies to source elsewhere in the Global South all the components necessary for manufacturing their products.
  3. Force multinational corporations to stop doing business in China.
The overarching concept is that unending confrontation with China is bound to scare companies/investors away.

There's no evidence South Korean or German conglomerates, for instance, would withdraw from the vast Chinese market and/or production facilities.

And even if the Flight Away from China actually happened, arguably the American economy would suffer as much, if not more, than China's.

The latest US tariff volley may lower China's GDP by only 0.9 percentage points, according to Bloomberg Economics. But China may still grow a healthy 6.3% in 2019.

Black Cat

UK has "grave concerns" over Steele involvement in Russiagate, pleads with Trump not to declassify docs

Theresa may trump
Donald Trump and Theresa May
The British government "expressed grave concerns" to the US government over the declassification and release of material related to the Trump-Russia investigation, according to the New York Times. President Trump ordered a wide swath of materials "immediately" declassified "without redaction" on Monday, only to change his mind later in the week by allowing the DOJ Inspector General to review the materials first.

The Times reports that the UK's concern was over material which "includes direct references to conversations between American law enforcement officials and Christopher Steele," the former MI6 agent who compiled the infamous "Steele Dossier." The UK's objection, according to former US and British officials, was over revealing Steele's identity in an official document, "regardless of whether he had been named in press reports."

We would note, however, that Steele's name was contained within the Nunes Memo - the House Intelligence Committee's majority opinion in the Trump-Russia case.

Comment: Steele is small fry compared to Stefan Halper. How much will the documents reveal about him, and about Alexander Downer for that matter?


Newspaper

Pure hubris: The New York Times as judge and jury

New York Times
© New York Times
Seeking to maintain its credibility, The New York Times dispenses with the criminal justice system and basic principles of journalism to weigh in again on Russia-gate, reports Joe Lauria.

We've seen it before: a newspaper and individual reporters get a story horribly wrong but instead of correcting it they double down to protect their reputations and credibility - which is all journalists have to go on - and the public suffers.

Sometimes this maneuver can contribute to a massive loss of life. The most egregious example was the reporting in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. Like nearly all Establishment media, The New York Times got the story of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction - the major casus belli for the invasion - dead wrong. But the Times, like the others, continued publishing stories without challenging their sources in authority, mostly unnamed, who were pushing for war.

The result was a disastrous intervention that led to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and continued instability in Iraq, including the formation of the Islamic State.

In a massive Times article published on Thursday, entitled, "A Plot to Subvert an Election: Unravelling the Russia Story So Far," it seems that reporters Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti have succumbed to the same thinking that doubled down on Iraq. They claim to have a "mountain of evidence" but what they offer would be invisible on the Great Plains.

Comment: By 'doubling down on its mistakes', the NYT risks exposure for distortion, hearsay, false accusations, lack of source identification and the stigma of yellow journalism. The power of any story is its truth supported by facts.


Cardboard Box

Clinton-linked company diverted millions via bogus project

SorosClinton
© Jewish Business News/The Cut/KJNGeorge Soros • Hillary Clinton
$90 Million was squandered on a program to find jobs for women in a collapsed economy; the only ones to benefit share strong ties to Hillary Clinton and George Soros.

According to a federal audit, the U.S. taxpayers blew about $90 million to fund a project doomed from the start. "Someone must be pocketing the cash," Judicial Watch reports. The trail of breadcrumbs led straight to a company linked to Hillary Clinton and some of her favorite cronies, and even deeper down the "deep state" ladder to Mr. George "Satan" Soros himself.

In 2014, While Hillary Clinton was at the helm as Secretary of State under Barack Obama, the U.S. Agency of International Development [USAID] scraped together $216 million taxpayer dollars for a program helping "tens of thousands of Afghan women get jobs and gain promotions."

Some say it was Hillary Clinton's personal ATM machine. Others believe the cash was funneled to the Muslim Brotherhood. Only one thing is certain, there weren't any jobs for many women before or after the project.

Attention

'We'll overthrow them!' Giuliani stirs up 'Iran Uprising Summit' after deadly terrorist attack

Rudy Giuliani uprising summit
© Amr Alfiky/ReutersIranians want the US to overthrow them...
The US will overthrow the Iranian government once socio-economic conditions there, shaped by sanctions, are ripe for a revolution, presidential lawyer Rudy Giuliani told a cheering crowd on the day of the deadly attack in Ahvaz.

"I don't know when we're going to overthrow them. It could be in a few days, months, a couple of years, but it's going to happen. They're going to be overthrown, the people of Iran have obviously had enough," said Giuliani at a so-called 'Iran Uprising Summit' held by the Organization of Iranian-American Communities in New York.

Speaking to members of Iranian expat and dissident communities in the US, who are seeking political change in Iran, the 74-year-old lawyer praised Donald Trump's bullish approach towards Tehran, boasting that sanctions slapped on Iran, after the White House unilaterally withdrew from the internationally-backed nuclear deal in May, are stalling the country's economy and damaging Iranians' lives.


Comment: Something to be proud of?


Comment: Damage control: Giuliani should not be let off leash.


Bullseye

Syria, the UN and the 'Slobodan Milošević treatment'

Trial of Slobodan Milošević
© YouTubeTrial of Slobodan Milošević and the corruption of international justice.
It's long been obvious the United Nations is a rubber stamp lapdog of the United States. It set the stage for a decade of sanctions that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and piled sanctions on Libya that resulted in the US and NATO (another lapdog) taking military action that killed around 30,000 Libyans.

Now that supposedly august body has signaled it will investigate war crimes in Syria.

The Associated Press reports the "resolution adopted by the assembly said the body, known as the 'International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism,' would help collect and analyze evidence of violations of human rights and international humanitarian law 'to facilitate and expedite fair and independent criminal proceedings.'"

There is nothing fair and independent about it. If it were truly fair, the top human rights violator, the United States government and its Pentagon, would be at the top of the UN's to-do list.

The US is responsible for the "civil war" in Syria. It has agitated for "regime change" since at least 2005 under the guise of "democracy promotion," well before the CIA sent operatives - many were "rebels" that participated in the US-NATO Libyan massacre - into the city of Deraa to stir up trouble.
"The staged uprising in Deraa had some locals in the street who were unaware of their participation in a CIA-Hollywood production," writes Steven Sahiounie. "They were the unpaid extras in the scene about to be shot. These unaware extras had grievances, perhaps lasting a generation or more, and perhaps rooted in Wahhabism, which is a political ideology exported globally by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Royal family and their paid officials."

Comment: See also:


Jet5

Report: Israeli intel chief boasted of IAF's 'precision' just before IL-20 shootdown

Russian ll-20
© Reuters/Sergey PivovarovRussian ll-20 reconnaissance aircraft
Tel Aviv has ordered the commander of the Israeli Air Force to continue talks with his Russian counterparts about the destruction of the Russian IL-20 recon aircraft over Syria. Israel's Defense Ministry maintains that Syria is responsible for the destruction of the plane, which took place during an Israeli air raid on Syrian targets in Latakia.

In an interview with Haaretz take shortly before the destruction of the Russian IL-20 but published Friday, Israeli Air Force Intelligence chief Brig. Gen. Uri Oron bragged that while the Russian presence in Syria was a "challenge" for the IAF, it didn't constrain its activities.

"Does the Russian presence constrain the IAF's activity? It challenges us. We have to be very precise. [But] that doesn't mean that the IAF only flies in Israeli skies," Oron said.

"The Russians' arrival in Syria was one of the strongest things to shape reality in the area in recent years," Oron noted, saying that before the Russian intervention, "everyone was sure that ISIS was about to roll over Damascus."

Oron expressed confidence in his agency's ability to obtain and transmit accurate intelligence to the IAF to allow it to "cause accurate damage without major collateral damage," with the present focus being the alleged Iranian presence in Syria.

Comment: See also:


Light Sabers

Corbyn: Labour set to challenge May on Brexit deal, trigger general election if it fails

Jeremy Corbyn
© ipanewsLabour leader Jeremy Corbyn
Jeremy Corbyn says the Labour party will call for a national election if any Brexit deal struck by Prime Minister Theresa May with Brussels fails to meet his party's 'six tests.'

"We will challenge this government on whatever deal it brings back on our six tests, on jobs, on living standards, on environmental protections," Corbyn said at a rally in Liverpool, confirming an earlier report that his party plans to call for an election if the deal is defeated in the parliament.

"And if this government can't deliver, then I simply say to Theresa May the best way to settle this is by having a general election," he said.


To pass the Labour Party's 'six tests,' the Brexit deal has to ensure the UK's collaborative future with the EU; maintain Britain's current benefits as a member of the Single Market and Customs Union; provide for fair management of migration; defend the rights of British citizens; protect national security and deliver for all the nations and regions of the UK.

On Thursday, EU leaders rejected May's so-called "Chequers" plan, demanding concessions from the PM on trade and on customs arrangements for the UK border with Ireland.

Document

Scholar: Inter-Korean peace agreement not 'legal' but symbolic

Moon Jae-in, Kim Jong-un
© AP Photo/Pyongyang Press Corps PoolSouth Korea President Moon Jae-in • North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un
South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un proclaimed an end to the state of war earlier this week during their third summit this year in Pyongyang. Sputnik discussed the statement with Howard Stoffer, associate professor of national security at the Henry C. Lee College of Criminal Justice and Forensic Sciences.

Sputnik: The South Korean presidential spokesperson called the agreements achieved by North and South Korea nothing less than a proclamation of an end to the state of war. To what extent do you share this feeling?

Howard Stoffer: I think that's an overstatement; it's a very symbolic act; the two Koreas are basically saying they want to defuse the border, they want to defuse the situation and don't feel that they are in a state of hostilities anymore, but in order to really end the war, in order to get a peace treaty, you have to get the United Nations Command involved, you have to get China, the United States, Australia, who were all combatants in that war; so it's a much more complicated process, but it was a very symbolic statement as the whole visit of President Moon, the president of the Republic of Korea, to the North Korean side was a symbolic visit and that's one of the symbolic things that they did, he even called it himself a political statement, so it's not a legal statement in any way.