Puppet MastersS


Mr. Potato

US bluster: Trump to Russia: 'Get out' of Venezuela


RFE/RL
Wed, 27 Mar 2019 19:05 UTC
Guaido wife trump Fabiana Rosales venezuela
© Saul Loeb /Agence France-Presse/Getty ImagesPresident Donald Trump meets with Fabiana Rosales, the wife of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, at the White House on March 27, 2019.
U.S. President Donald Trump has called on Russia to withdraw its troops from Venezuela and warned that "all options" were open to achieve that.

"Russia has to get out," Trump told reporters on March 27 in the Oval Office, where he met with Fabiana Rosales, the wife of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, recognized by the United States and more than 50 other countries as the South American country's interim president.

Two Russian military planes landed outside Venezuela's capital, Caracas, on March 23, carrying nearly 100 Russian military personnel.

Comment: Bluff and bluster. Just as with Syria, Russia is in Venezuela at the invitation of Maduro, head of Venezuela's legitimate government. Unlike the US, Russia does not turn its back on its friends.

Read More...
Quenelle

'Interim president' Juan Guaido gets appropriate welcome: Motorcade ATTACKED by angry mob


RT
Wed, 27 Mar 2019 17:37 UTC
Juan Guaido
© Reuters / Ivan AlvaradoVenezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido
A car escorting Venezuela's self-proclaimed president was ambushed by a group of displeased citizens, a short clip appears to show. Washington has rushed to blame Nicolas Maduro for the attack.

The 10-second video, published by a local television channel, shows a car belonging to Juan Guaido's retinue sitting at a traffic light, when suddenly a man rushes the automobile and attempts to open the driver-side door. The door was locked, but there was more in store for Guaido's convoy: a group of bystanders began to pelt the car with projectiles.

Comment: Yup. The ordinary Venezuelans really love him. Who does support Guaido's instalment as 'president'? Craig Murry sums up the citizenry who favor Guaido:

Vultures of Caracas
rich guaido supporters
We are frequently told that people in Venezuela have no food, clothing or toilet paper, and that popular discontent with the left wing government is driven by real hunger. There are elements of truth in this story, though the causes of economic dislocation are far more complex than the media would have us believe.

But I ask you to look at this photo of supporters of CIA poster-boy, the West's puppet unelected "President" Juan Guaido, taken at a Guaido rally in Caracas two days ago and published yesterday in security services house journal The Guardian. Please take a really close look at the photo. Blow it up as big as you can. Scan individual people in the crowd, one-by-one.

These are not the poor and most certainly not the starving. As it chances I have a great deal of life experience working amongst seriously deprived, hungry and despairing people. I know the gaunt face of want and the desperate glance of need. Look at these Guaido supporters, one-by-one-by-one. This designer spectacled, well-coiffed, elegantly dressed, sleekly jowled group does not know hunger. This group does not know want. This is a proper right wing gathering, a gathering of the nicely off section of society. This is a group of those who have corruptly been siphoning Venezuela's great wealth for decades and who want to make sure the gravy train flows properly in their direction again. It is, in short, a group of exactly the kind of people you would expect to support a CIA coup.


Read More...
Briefcase

Seventh Integrity Initiative leak reveals £10mn in UK govt funding for 'network of NGOs' to combat Russia


RT
Wed, 27 Mar 2019 17:37 UTC
london
© Reuters / Neil Hall
A seventh batch of Integrity Initiative leaks has been dumped by hackers, revealing British government plans to build an umbrella network of organizations across Europe focused exclusively on countering 'Russian disinformation.'

Hackers, claiming to be linked to the Anonymous collective, have been dumping batches of Integrity Initiative (II) documents online since November 2018, gradually uncovering a major UK government-funded project which secretly conducted Europe-wide anti-Russia influence campaigns while posing as a simple disinformation-fighting charity. Earlier leaks led the II to make their public Twitter account temporarily private and to completely wipe their website pending an "investigation" into the situation.

NGOs under umbrella of government grants

The latest batch reveals a UK-funded program called the EXPOSE Network, which aimed to "upskill" existing "counter-disinformation" organizations by offering grants and training, while their activities would then be coordinated with the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to "ensure effectiveness."

Organizations named in the proposal for the project included the UK-based Bellingcat, the Prague-based European Values think tank, and the Digital Forensic Research Lab (a project of the arms-manufacturer-funded Atlantic Council). The hackers claim it was these groups and a couple of others which were among the "most eager" to receive nearly £10 million ($13.2 million) in potential government funding, which would be dished out over three years between the summer of 2018 and March 2021.

Comment: More on II:

Read More...
Dollars

Hedge fund returns $300million investment from Saudi Arabia following murder of Jamal Khashoggi

Nishant Kumar and Dinesh Nair
Bloomberg
Tue, 26 Mar 2019 17:35 UTC
Jamal Khashoggi
© Jehan Alfarra/Middle East MonitorJamal Khashoggi
A hedge fund has told investors it returned money to Saudi Arabia following the murder of columnist Jamal Khashoggi, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The move is a rare rebuke to one of the world's most influential investors. Pharo Management (UK) LLP in December gave back about $300 million that it had previously managed for the kingdom's central bank Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority, known as SAMA, one of the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is confidential.

Guillaume Fonkenell, 54, who founded Pharo, told some investors in January that the decision was made to uphold its principles due to concerns about Khashoggi's death at the hands of government agents last year, the person said.

The move highlights lingering disquiet about Saudi Arabia's human rights record under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whose ambitious plans for economic redevelopment have been overshadowed by allegations since October that he engineered the writer's brutal killing in the kingdom's Istanbul consulate. The heir to Saudi Arabia's throne, who is often referred to as MBS, still has the crucial support of President Donald Trump, and most Wall Street firms and a number of nations have chosen to continue doing business with the wealthy kingdom despite widespread condemnation of the murder.

Saudi authorities deny the prince played any role in Khashoggi's death.

A spokesman for Pharo, which managed $9.7 billion at the end of January, declined to comment. A representative for SAMA, which acts as the custodian of the kingdom's foreign reserves, didn't respond to several calls and emailed requests for comment.
Read More...
Megaphone

Italy's critics are jealous of its China deal, says Rome's lead negotiator

Sarah Zheng and Liu Zhen
South China Morning Post
Wed, 27 Mar 2019 17:27 UTC
Michele Geraci
© boaoforum.orgMichele Geraci, undersecretary of state at Italy's ministry of economic development, says at least two other European countries are expected soon to join China’s “Belt and Road Initiative”
Italy has got an edge over other European nations by signing up first to China's "Belt and Road Initiative" and it may be making some of them "jealous", the Italian politician who pushed for his country's involvement said on Tuesday.

Michele Geraci, undersecretary of state at the Italian Ministry of Economic Development, said at least two other European countries were expected to follow Italy, which last week became the first G7 nation to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on the transcontinental infrastructure initiative with China.

"All the other countries will follow Italy and sign an MOU, and I can give you two names, but I won't - they are in the pipeline," Geraci said at the Boao Forum for Asia in China's southern Hainan province. "In reality, all European countries want to be part of the belt and road."

Italy agreed to join the initiative while it hosted a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping, despite warnings by the United States and some European countries that it risked being a debt trap with questionable infrastructure project standards. Washington has branded the belt and road scheme a "vanity project".
Read More...
Blue Planet

The EU bows to 'systemic rival' China

Pepe Escobar
Asia Times
Wed, 27 Mar 2019 12:00 UTC
merkel xi macron juncker
© AFP/Thibault CamusEuropean Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker (L), Chinese President Xi Jinping, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the Elysee presidential palace in Paris on March 26, 2019.
Let's start with the essential background for the meeting in Paris on Tuesday between Chinese President Xi Jinping and three EU heavyweights - French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President of the European Commission (EC) Jean-Claude Juncker.

As imperfect as these figures may be, economic growth for the past 10 years after the 2008 financial crisis - which was a made in the West phenomenon - do tell an enlightening story.

China's growth: 139%. India's growth: 96%. the US' growth: 34%. EU growth: a negative 2%.


Comment: And the true rate of growth in the US is up for question.


French mainstream media, controlled by a rarified group of oligarchs, spun a risible narrative that Macron "imposed" this four-way meeting on Xi to press on him the new EC strategy aiming to "clarify" Chinese ambiguity in relation to the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

As I previously reported, the EC now brands China a "systemic rival," and seems to have realized that Beijing is an "economic competitor in search of technological leadership." And that may translate as a threat to European values and norms.

Xi had just come from Rome - where the populist, eurosceptic Lega, Five Stars coalition government became the first G7 nation to sign a partnership with the BRI, igniting massive sparks of Atlanticist fear.

Comment: See also:

Read More...
Info

Papadopoulos knew Mueller probe was a 'hoax', but was barred from speaking out

Lucia I. Suarez Sang
Fox News
Tue, 26 Mar 2019 16:52 UTC
papadopoulos
Former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos clarified the "misinformation" about his guilty plea in the Russia probe, saying Tuesday the entire thing was "basically fabricated" by Western intelligence.

The 31-year-old, who pleaded guilty in October 2017 to making false statements to FBI agents, said on "Fox & Friends" that he knew the probe by Robert Mueller was a "hoax" but could not speak out about it until after he was sentenced.

"There has been so much misinformation about what my real case was all about. It was about a professor I met in London who the FBI told the world was a Russian agent," he said.

Papadopoulos was talking about Joseph Misfud, whom the FBI has said was a Russian agent with connections to high-ranking Russian officials. He was declared missing by Italian officials in September 2018.

"I met this man through an intermediary who represents the FBI in the U.K. and I met him at a university in Rome. I never expected this guy to be a Russian agent," Papadopoulos said. "Then one day, this person tells me that the Russians have Hillary Clinton's emails, out of the blue. I don't believe him. This was not a credible person."


Comment: In the Fox video above, Papadopolous points out that he thinks that Mifsud wasn't a Russian spy: he was working for Western intelligence. Papadopoulos and his wife expand on that in this MSNBC interview:


And a longer interview, also from MSNBC:




Read More...
Snakes in Suits

US Embassy pressed Ukraine to drop probe of George Soros group during 2016 election

John Solomon
The Hill
Tue, 26 Mar 2019 16:54 UTC
SOROS
George Soros
While the 2016 presidential race was raging in America, Ukrainian prosecutors ran into some unexpectedly strong headwinds as they pursued an investigation into the activities of a nonprofit in their homeland known as the Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC).

The focus on AntAC - whose youthful street activists famously wore "Ukraine F*&k Corruption" T-shirts - was part of a larger probe by Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office into whether $4.4 million in U.S. funds to fight corruption inside the former Soviet republic had been improperly diverted.

The prosecutors soon would learn the resistance they faced was blowing directly from the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, where the Obama administration took the rare step of trying to press the Ukrainian government to back off its investigation of both the U.S. aid and the group.

"The investigation into the Anti-Corruption Action Center (sic), based on the assistance they have received from us, is similarly misplaced," then-embassy Charge d' Affaires George Kent wrote the prosecutor's office in April 2016 in a letter that also argued U.S. officials had no concerns about how the U.S. aid had been spent.
Read More...
Bad Guys

"Terrorists" set fire to power plant in Venezuela, widespread blackouts, oil production threatened


RT
Wed, 27 Mar 2019 03:04 UTC
venezuela arson power plant
© Twitter / jorgerpsuv
Images of burned-out electricity generation equipment at Venezuela's biggest hydroelectric power plant were posted by the country's communications minister on Twitter, as Caracas blamed arsonists for a crippling power blackout.

A large-scale blackout hit Caracas and nearly a dozen Venezuelan states on Monday afternoon, bringing public transport to a near-standstill. People attempted to cram into overcrowded buses to get home before dusk, as the subway system was also disrupted by the outage.

The blackout was reminiscent of the outage that affected over 30 million citizens on March 7 and saw the Latin American country plunged into darkness.

Comment: Julianne Geiger at OilPrice.com reports on the effects it could have on oil production:
Venezuela's Oil Production In Jeopardy After New Blackout

Venezuela is once again finding itself in the dark in another massive power outage, weighing further on the South American country that is struggling to maintain its oil output and oil exports amid US sanctions.

Venezuela, in dire need of its oil revenues that are withering on the vine, may be home to the world's largest oil reserves, but the Maduro government is likely finding that fact of little consolation these days.

The most recent blackout marks the second such widespread blacking in less than a month and even reached the capital city and covering more than half of Venezuela's 23 states, according to Time, who was citing social media outlets.

Just two weeks ago, Venezuela suffered a catastrophic blackout that jeopardized the country's oil production and exports, shutting down its main oil export terminal and its heavy crude processing complex in Jose. These operations affected its minority partners in the projects as well, including Chevron, Rosneft, Total, and Equinor, in what was thought to take offline as much as 450,000 bpd.

This time around, Venezuela's oil operations once again could be further jeopardized, although the Maduro government is claiming that many areas have since had power restored.

While Maduro points the finger once again at the United States for causing the outage, the White House has denied responsibility. Tensions between the two nations are high as the United States continues to crack down on sanctions, and Venezuela's oil exports to the United States hit zero a couple weeks ago.

Tensions between the United States and Russia over Venezuela are also increasing, escalating over the weekend when two Russian planes with 100 troops landed in Venezuela, according to Reuters. The United States was quick to condemn what it felt was an encroachment in South America, while Russia downplayed the incident, hinting that it had routine military contracts to fulfill at the time.

This week's blackout will no doubt impact oil production and exports further, with OPEC likely using the production loss as a win in its drive to lower global oil inventories to see higher prices.
It's notable that not long after Russia delivered the military equipment to Venezuela, potentially thwarting US threats of military action, yet another heinous act of terrorism is committed: Russia gives US a red line in Venezuela then pulls a Syria: S-300 missile batteries now up and active near Caracas

See also: And check out SOTT radio's: NewsReal: US Regime Change Operation in Venezuela - This Time It's Legit?

Read More...
Arrow Down

Green New Deal fails Senate test vote as dozens of Democrats vote 'present'

Samuel Chamberlain
Fox News
Tue, 26 Mar 2019 16:27 UTC
ocasio cortez
The Green New Deal, a sweeping Democratic proposal for dealing with climate change, fell at the first hurdle Tuesday as the Senate failed to reach the 60 votes necessary to begin debate on the non-binding resolution, with 42 Democrats and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., voting "present."

No senator voted to begin debate on the legislation, while 57 lawmakers voted against breaking the filibuster. Democratic Sens. Doug Jones of Alabama, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona joined 53 Republicans in voting "no." Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, who caucuses with the Democrats, also voted "no."

The vote had been teed up by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in a bid to make Democratic senators -- including several 2020 presidential candidates -- go on the record about the measure. McConnell had called the proposal "a radical, top-down, socialist makeover of the entire U.S. economy."

The Green New Deal calls for the U.S. to shift away from fossil fuels such as oil and coal and replace them with renewable sources such as wind and solar power. It calls for virtual elimination by 2030 of greenhouse gas emissions responsible for global warming. Republicans have railed against the proposal, saying it would devastate the economy and trigger massive tax increases.
Read More...