Puppet MastersS


Gold Bar

Russia's gold reserves approaching Stalin-era peak, strives for independence from US dollar


RT
Sun, 29 Jul 2018 13:04 UTC
gold bar
© Ilya Naymushin / Reuters
With 2,000 tons of gold in reserves, Russia's bullion holdings are approaching the Soviet peak seen in 1941. Moscow is striving for financial independence and escape from US dollar hegemony, analysts told RT.

"Some countries in the world want to depend as little as possible on US policy, they dump the dollar in trade and American assets as reserves. Russia's gold purchases increased during the US presidential race and did not stop despite Donald Trump's victory even though he seemed as a more preferable candidate for the Kremlin," Anton Makhnovsky, CEO of ICBF told RT. The analyst says he thinks Russia will continue ramping up its reserves.

Gold holdings of 2,000 tons are approaching the Soviet maximum of 2,800 tons reached in 1941. Over the last decade, the share of gold in reserves has soared tenfold. Russia also reduced its holdings of US Treasuries from $96.1 billion in March to just $14.9 billion in May. Bullion reserves are now worth $460 billion with the central bank aiming to increase that figure to $500 billion.

Analyst Vladimir Rojankovski from the International Financial Center in Moscow warned the Russian central bank last week that it shouldn't get too dependent on gold.

"In the event of a global decline in the interest of large sovereign investors in US Treasury bonds, I expect an increase in speculative activity in precious metals in order to artificially lower their market valuation," he told RT.

Comment: See also:

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Megaphone

Trump hits back after New York Times publisher decries 'enemy of the people' comments

Martin Pengelly
The Guardian
Mon, 30 Jul 2018 01:25 UTC
new york times building
© Shannon Stapleton / Reuters
Hours after saying he had a "very good meeting" with the publisher of the New York Times about his labelling the press the "enemy of the people", Donald Trump launched a blistering attack on "anti-Trump haters in the dying newspaper industry".

"The failing New York Times and the Amazon Washington Post do nothing but write bad stories even on very positive achievements," Trump tweeted. "And they will never change!"

Earlier, the White House confirmed Trump met Times publisher AG Sulzberger on 20 July. Sulzberger then issued a statement that opened an exchange over whose activities were more damaging to America.

Sulzberger said he had raised "concerns about the president's deeply troubling anti-press rhetoric" and "implored him to reconsider his broader attacks on journalism, which I believe are dangerous and harmful to our country".

Sulzberger did not say how the president responded. Hours later, Trump obliged.

In a multi-tweet rant, he claimed reports on "internal deliberations of our government ... truly put the lives of many, not just journalists, at risk". He added: "Freedom of the press also comes with a responsibility to report the news accurately."

Comment: Trump isn't exactly wrong. A press that serves a one-sided agenda that only misinforms is no friend to the people. See also: Fake news purveyor: How the NYT plays with history

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Rocket

NATO is a goldmine for US military industrial complex

Brian Cloughley
Strategic Culture Foundation
Mon, 30 Jul 2018 11:48 UTC
fighter jets
Countries of the NATO military alliance have been ordered by President Trump to increase their spending on weapons, and the reasons for his insistence they do so are becoming clearer. It's got nothing to do with any defence rationale, because, after all, the Secretary General of the US-NATO military alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, has admitted that "we don't see any imminent threat against any NATO ally" and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute recorded in its 2018 World Report that "at $66.3 billion, Russia's military spending in 2017 was 20 per cent lower than in 2016."

Even Radio Free Europe, the US government's anti-Russia broadcaster, records that Russia has reduced its defence spending.

military spending
There is demonstrably no threat whatever to any NATO country by Russia, but this is considered irrelevant in the context of US arms' sales, which are flourishing and being encouraged to increase and multiply.

On July 12, the second and final day of the recent US-NATO meeting, Reuters reported Trump as saying that "the United States makes by far the best military equipment in the world: the best jets, the best missiles, the best guns, the best everything." He went on "to list the top US arms makers, Lockheed Martin Corp, Boeing Co and Northrop Grumman Corp by name."

Comment: Begs the question, how many of those fancy new weapons will end up in the hands of terrorists?

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Alarm Clock

Giraldi: An Iran War would destroy the United States

Philip Giraldi
American Herald Tribune
Mon, 30 Jul 2018 10:50 UTC
American and Iran
The establishment of a military force to go abroad and overthrow governments does not appear anywhere in the Constitution of the United States, nor does calling for destruction of countries that do not themselves threaten America appear anywhere in Article 2, which describes the responsibilities of the President. Indeed, both Presidents George Washington and John Quincy Adams warned against the danger represented by foreign entanglements, with Adams specifically addressing what we now call democracy promotion, warning that the United States "should not go abroad to slay dragons."

Since the end of the Second World War, the United States has proven to be particularly prone to attacking other countries that have only limited capability to strike back. North Korea was the exception that proved the rule when the Chinese intervened to support its ally in 1950 to drive back and nearly destroy advancing U.S. forces. Otherwise, it has been a succession of Granada, Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Serbia, and Libya, none of which had the capability to hit back against the United States and the American people.
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Map

Cambodia sees record turnout for general election amid allegations of US meddling


RT
Mon, 30 Jul 2018 10:45 UTC
Cambodia election voter
© Samrang Pring / ReutersA woman shows her stained finger at a polling station during a general election in Cambodia.
Cambodia's general election on Sunday showed an impressive turnout of more than 82 percent. The vote, which is set to return Prime Minister Hun Sen to power, was marred by allegations of US meddling and of a crackdown on critics.

The ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP) claimed an estimated 100 out of 125 parliament seats, declaring victory. The National Election Commission (NEC) said the election saw a record turnout of 82.71%. The NEC chairman rejected media reports of bribery and intimidation of voters, saying: "You can tell from the face of the voters. They are happy. So how can you say that they were forced?"

The election in Cambodia was "so different from anywhere I've seen people vote," RT's Ilya Petrenko reported from country's capital, Phnom Penh. The polling stations in the Southeast Asian state, populated by over 16 million, opened at 7am the morning and closed just after lunchtime, at 3pm.
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Propaganda

Israel helps White Helmets (aka Terrorists), but rejects Syrian refugees

Akiva Eldar
AL-Monitor
Tue, 24 Jul 2018 00:00 UTC
Israeli army evacuating ISIS
© Israeli army / REUTERSPeople prepare to board a bus under guard of Israeli soldiers on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights following the extraction of members of the Syria Civil Defense, or White Helmets, and their families from Syria, in a still image taken from a video provided by the Israeli military, July 22, 2018.
The evacuation of White Helmets members and their families from Syria was an admirable gesture by Israel, but hardly enough to compensate for the expulsion of Syrians from the Golan Heights after the 1967 war.


Comment: White Helmets work only in terrorist controlled areas and are a propaganda arm of these western backed Syrian rebels. There is no difference between terrorists and White Helmets.


Let's start with the glass half full. In a clandestine July 22 operation, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) evacuated several hundred activists from the White Helmets, the Syrian humanitarian civil defense group, and their family members, and removed them from the fighting in southern Syria, through Israel, to Jordan. From there, they will continue on, to be settled in the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Canada. Even the European Union, which does not often pamper Israel with compliments, issued a statement recognizing the efforts by Israel and others to bring the activists to safety. At the end of June, the IDF had provided tents, food, medical equipment, shoes and clothing for Syrians who had escaped to a tent encampment on the Golan.

Comment: If the author wants to expose the duplicity of Israeli actions, he can find a ton of more recent events and countless UN resolutions condemning its genocide in Gaza.

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Propaganda

Jon Rappoport - Washington Post-CIA connections: back to basics

Jon Rappoport
NoMoreFakeNews.com
Thu, 26 Jul 2018 00:00 UTC
Jeff Bezos
There are now hundreds of supposed "facts" which prove Russia influenced the 2016 US election. I thought I'd go back to a few basics...

"The CIA says" is never a great way to start a sentence. But that's one basis of the charge that Russia "hacked" the US presidential election.

Members of Congress were secretly briefed by the CIA on "the Russian affair," and media, led by the Washington Post, ran with the story that Russia influenced the US election on the side of Trump.

Comment:

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Stock Down

China is no longer beholden to the US and could trigger a dollar debt reset, if it really wanted too

Chris Marcus
Global Research
Wed, 25 Jul 2018 12:00 UTC
US China trade war
© SCMP
One of the reasons why it has seemed so bizarre that the United States would engage in a trade war with its largest creditor in China, is that China has a move that the United States simply can't defend against.

In terms of any sort of engagement between the United States and China, for at least the last decade or so, it's always seemed to me that China has an incredibly large amount of leverage over the United States. To the degree that if push comes to shove, China has available actions that the U.S. simply has no answer to.

For the simple reason that they do have the ability to end the U.S. Treasury scheme at any point in time. Because if China did just dump its U.S. Treasury holdings, that would very well likely end the debt bubble overnight.

Comment: China has been slowly divesting itself of the ailing US and instead diversifying by dumping the dollar, stockpiling gold, implementing massive infrastructure projects and aligning itself through mutually beneficial deals with countries that share its view of a multipolar world: The Rising Chinese Dream: How China Became Great Again

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Info

Chinese military arrives in Russia for annual drills, bringing state-of-the-art hardware


Global Times
Sun, 22 Jul 2018 00:00 UTC
Chinese military officers in Russia
© ICChinese military officers march in formation outside a Chinese military aircraft upon arrival in Russia ahead of the International Army Games 2018.
Chinese military arrives in Russia for annual drills, bringing state-of-the-art hardware. Chinese military officers arrived in Russia on Friday to participate in the upcoming International Army Games 2018. The army will exhibit advanced H-6K bombers, J-10A fighters, JH-7A fighter-bombers, and IL-76 and Y-9 transport aircraft at the competitions.

This is the first time that the H-6K bombers and Y-9 transport aircraft have been brought abroad to participate in an international military competition, said a spokesperson for the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force, according to Xinhua.

The H-6K is a domestically-developed intermediate and long-range bomber. It has carried out patrols around the East China Sea, South China Sea and Taiwan Straits since its first debut in March 2015, said the Xinhua report.

Comment: See also:

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Stock Up

Lawrence Solomon: Trump unveils the new trade world order, Canada not included

Lawrence Solomon
Financial Post
Fri, 27 Jul 2018 08:14 UTC
TrudeauTrump
© Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/GettyTrump and Trudeau met in Washington in March; perhaps Trump's facial gesture meant something other than we thought then.
Canada has been relegated to third-wheel status and now depends on Trump's graces

No country participating in the world's annual US$2 trillion in trade operates in an unfettered free market. The idea of true free trade has been so alien that when President Donald Trump proposed it at last month's G7 meeting in Canada, it drew blanks among the other six leaders.

No longer. As of this week, a commitment is in place to begin to deregulate up to half of the world's trade - the US$1 trillion between the U.S. and the EU - taking it out of the hands of politicians and bureaucrats and leaving it to participants in the free market. But that's just the half of it.

Out are the WTO and the world trading regime as we've known it.

In is the Trump endgame of "four big zeros" - zero tariffs, zero non-tariff barriers, zero subsidies and zero barriers to market access.

The commitment, announced Wednesday at the White House jointly by Trump and EU President Jean-Claude Juncker, will start modestly, by first eliminating tariffs and subsidies on all non-auto industrial goods, and opening up the European market to American natural gas and farm goods. The U.S. expects to negotiate away the EU's farm tariffs, which now average 10 per cent, as well as non-tariff barriers in agriculture (such as "non-science-based standards"). As put by U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, "everything is on the table" in the Trump administration's grand strategy to revamp the world trade order.
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