Puppet MastersS


Quenelle

German minister tells India to ignore "irritating" US pressure and keep buying Iranian crude


RT
Tue, 24 Jul 2018 07:40 UTC
tankers
© Rupak De Chowdhuri / Reuters
India and Iran are good partners in the oil trade despite Washington's discontent, and they should continue cooperating if they so wish, Germany's Minister of State for Foreign affairs Niels Annen said on a visit to New Delhi.

"I am not a salesman for Iran but I have an impression that India is willing to continue buying oil from Iran and this will be a very important statement," Annen told Indian media, as quoted by Sputnik news agency. He said the US attempts to force its allies to join new anti-Iranian sanctions are "irritating, to put it mildly."

India, which is dependent on crude imports, is Iran's top oil client after China. Despite this, India bought 15.9 percent less crude from Iran in June compared to May. After that, Iran threatened that it would suspend all privileges in bilateral trade with India, including payments in rupees.

Comment: This is just the latest in a spate of high profile statements which demonstrates the US' increasing isolation and shrinking influence: Also check out SOTT radio's: Behind the Headlines: Atlantic Trade War? How Trump Breaking Iran Deal Could Dismantle US Empire

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USA

Syria and Ukraine drove Russia hawks insane

David Stockman
Antiwar.com
Fri, 20 Jul 2018 00:00 UTC
Obama red line
© Moonbattery
In Part 1 we referenced the infamous hysteria triggered in Salem Massachusetts by Betty Parris (age 9) and Abigail Williams (age 12).

In 1692 their prepubescent imaginations were apparently more than capable of detecting the evil doings of witches at loose in their community; and a population hopped up with Calvinist enthusiasm for the supernatural works of the Almighty apparently was also capable of lapsing into collective madness - at least for a spell.

But who would have thought that in the year 2018 the grizzled adults and racketeers who populate the Imperial City would fall prey to the same momentary outbreak of deliriums?

After all, Vladimir Putin was the very same Putin who made a mere cameo appearance in the 2012 presidential debates. He got an honorable mention when Barack Obama appropriately schooled Mitt Romney on the fact that Russia was not America's principal national security threat.

Indeed, the MSM commentators who are shrieking about Trump's parlay with Vlad today were knowingly furrowing their brows about Romney's alleged gaffe back then.

So the question at hand is what changed? How did the politics as usual debating points about the status of Russia and Putin only 69 months ago turn into a veritable Salem style hysteria?

We'd suggest two pivotal events turned the Imperial City upside down. To wit, Barry lost his nerve in August 2013 on the Syrian red line and Donald Trump won the 2016 election in the red zones of Flyover America.

Comment: The US is rapidly becoming an unhinged and upside-down society where normal stability, sanity and traditional values have been transformed into 'evil'. Meanwhile, disruption and corruption are disguised and promoted as the country's salvation.

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Star of David

Barenboim: Israel's 'Nation-State' law is a 'clear form of apartheid'


Middle East Eye
Sun, 22 Jul 2018 15:18 UTC
Daniel Barenboim
© ReutersMaestro Daniel Barenboim
Daniel Barenboim, the world-renowned pianist and conductor, has labelled Israel's "Nation State" law as "a very clear form of apartheid".

Writing in Haaretz on Sunday, in a piece entitled: "Today, I Am Ashamed to Be an Israeli," Barenboim said the law, passed on Thursday, "confirms the Arab population as second-class citizens".

The law passed by a vote of 62-55 and two abstentions in the 120-member Knesset, the country's parliament, after months of political argument. Following the vote, Palestinian members of the Knesset shouted and tore up papers.

The law gives Jews supremacy over all non-Jewish Israeli citizens, which critics and members of the state's Palestinian minority called racist.

Comment: Moving the boundaries, stretching the limits...oh, right, Israel doesn't have any of these.

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Dollar Gold

Trump administration announces short term stimulus plan for farmers

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Tue, 24 Jul 2018 19:10 UTC
young farmers 1
© Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post
Facing the brunt of President Trump's trade war with China, which threatens some $34 billion of US products and agriculture with duties, the White House has announced a $12 billion "short-term" stimulus plan to help US farmers hurt by China's "illegal" retaliatory tariffs.

The package, as expected, will consist of direct payments, food purchases and trade development - under a program already authorized under the Commodity Credit Corp act, which means Congressional approval is not required. Further details on the program will come by Labor Day, according to USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue and top officials.

Earlier in the day, Trump told a Veteran's group: "This country is doing better than it's ever done before, economically...It's all working out. Just remember: what you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening."

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No Entry

Fighting back: White House mulls revoking clearances of Trump-bashing officials


RT
Mon, 23 Jul 2018 22:36 UTC
Brennan
© Leah Millis/ReutersFormer Dir CIA John Brennan: not a happy-camper
The White House is looking into revoking the security clearances of former CIA, FBI and ODNI chiefs, arguing that their "baseless accusations" against President Donald Trump amount to monetizing and misusing the privilege.

Former CIA directors John Brennan and Michael Hayden, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former FBI Director James Comey are among the names considered, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Monday. Security clearances of former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe and Susan Rice, former national security adviser to President Barack Obama, are also under consideration.

Comment: Tricky road ahead to stem the onslaught of animosity and fervor to unseat the president. Every forward thrust of rhetoric and baseless innuendo seems to give way to new thresholds of vehemence and false accusations.

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Megaphone

Lisa Page spills the beans, Strzok no more

Ray McGovern
Consortium News
Mon, 23 Jul 2018 18:45 UTC
Peter Strzok
Strzok during his public testimony earlier this month.
Former FBI attorney Lisa Page has reportedly told a joint committee of the House of Representatives that when FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok texted her on May 19, 2017 saying there was "no big there there," he meant there was no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

It was clearly a bad-luck day for Strzok, when on Friday the 13th this month Page gave her explanation of the text to the House Judiciary and Oversight/Government Reform Committees and in effect threw her lover, Strzok, under the bus.

Strzok's apparent admission to Page about there being "no big there there" was reported on Friday by John Solomon in the Opinion section of The Hill based on multiple sources who he said were present during Page's closed door interview.

Strzok's text did not come out of the blue. For the previous ten months he and his FBI subordinates had been trying every-which-way to ferret out some "there" - preferably a big "there" - but had failed miserably. If Solomon's sources are accurate, it is appearing more and more likely that there was nothing left for them to do but to make it up out of whole cloth, with the baton then passed to special counsel Robert Mueller.

Comment: See also:

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X

Hey FBI, you don't have those rights!

Bruce Bialosky
Townhall
Sun, 22 Jul 2018 12:01 UTC
Peter Strzok
© UnknownPeter Strzok, Congressional hearing
We have seen the theater of Peter Strzok defiantly defending his actions while working for the FBI during the 2016 election cycle and in the aftermath with the investigations. Once again, a "right" was established that the FBI does not have and one that harms our country by the continuing false affirmation.

The right asserted as supposedly told to him by an FBI attorney is that he could not comment on an ongoing investigation. This is one of the two rights the FBI throws around when they do not want to comment on the work that Congress is reviewing as part of its oversight authority. The other right the FBI likes to conjure up is that select testimony cannot be provided because of national security concerns. Congress should decide whether any of these items are relevant to those two areas, not the Bureau.

Ted Lieu (D-CA) stated while questioning Strzok during hearings that the Republicans could not show that there was any bias demonstrated by Strzok in his official capacity during the investigations. How could we know and how could Congress know when both Strzok and FBI Director Christopher Wray stonewalled us about the investigation or providing documents from the FBI?

The IG report stated they did not find evidence of bias in "decision making"; considering the massive amount of biased texts and the identification by the IG of bias, there is a serious question of whether there was bias in the decision-making by Strzok. We may never know because no one outside the FBI or Justice Department will ever evaluate the information because it is part of a "continuing investigation" that may last until the next century or until America has long forgotten this issue.

Neither of these rights exist. They never have.

Comment: Say something enough times, no one questions it.

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Take 2

Bowing out of Syria: The White Helmets' final performance

Tony Cartalucci
New Eastern Outlook
Tue, 24 Jul 2018 00:00 UTC
White Helmets filmed
© Global Research'Lights'...'Camera'...'Action!' The staging of a rescue.
It is commonly known that when a ship is sinking, the crew does not board the lifeboats before the passengers. Most noble of all is when the captain and crew go down with the ship. Then with what level of ignobility should we assess the so-called "Syrian Civil Defense" more commonly referred to as the White Helmets?

We are told that Syrian forces backed by Russian airpower are brutalizing the remnants of "rebels" in southern Syria near the Jordanian border and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Surely now more than ever do the people of southern Syria need the "bravest of the brave" - as UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt described them on social media.

Yet instead of rushing to where the cannons sound loudest, the White Helmets slunk across Syria's borders with the aid of the Israeli Defense Forces, onward to Jordan, where the UN is working to relocate them - allegedly to Europe and North America.

It is a final act laying to rest once and for all a monumental lie - that the White Helmets were anything more than an extension of the foreign-funded proxy war aimed at overthrowing Damascus. And now that overthrowing Damascus is no longer a possibility, the White Helmets are being evacuated to lie another day.

Comment: Another day, another war -- 'White Helmets', the sequel.
See also:

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Dollars

IMF predicts Venezuela on brink of 1,000,000% hyperinflation


RT
Tue, 24 Jul 2018 09:29 UTC
Venezuela cash
© Carlos Garcia Rawlins/ReutersBolivar notes: Not worth the paper it's printed on.
Venezuela is facing one of the worst hyperinflationary crises in modern history, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It expects the country's economy to contract by 18 percent this year amid falling oil production - the third consecutive year of double-digit declines, and three points worse than projected in May.

"We are projecting a surge in inflation to 1,000,000 percent by end-2018 to signal that the situation in Venezuela is similar to that in Germany in 1923 or Zimbabwe in the late 2000s," said Alejandro Werner, head of the IMF's Western Hemisphere Department.

He also pointed to "economic distortions," including printing money to finance the government. "We expect the government to continue to run wide fiscal deficits financed entirely by an expansion in base money, which will continue to fuel an acceleration of inflation as money demand continues to collapse," said Werner.

One million Venezuelan bolivar is today worth just over $8.

Comment: Hyperinflation is a runaway freight train going downhill in value, while uphill in difficulty to correct.



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Handcuffs

'Lock her up!' US AG Sessions amused as students chant anti-Clinton slogan


RT
Tue, 24 Jul 2018 16:07 UTC
Signage Sessions speech
© Mike Segar/ReutersSignage at Sessions speech
US Attorney General Jeff Sessions seemed to join in as conservative teenagers chanted the former Trump campaign anti-Hillary Clinton slogan "Lock her up" at a high school student event in Washington on Tuesday.

Sessions was delivering remarks promoting free speech and conservative values at Turning Point USA's High School Leadership Summit at George Washington University.

During his speech, he criticized universities for "coddling" young people and said he could tell that the students in front of him were able to handle political debate and political attacks. "I like this bunch, I gotta tell you. You're not going to be backing down. Go get 'em. Go get 'em," he said.

At that moment, chants of "Lock her up" began. Sessions, the top law enforcement official in the country, briefly joined in, laughing, before saying: "I heard that a long time over the last campaign," and then continuing on with his speech.


Comment: If Sessions was going to make a move on Killary, there would be indications. So far...?

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