Puppet MastersS


MAGA

Legend: Trump hangs framed portrait of his mugshot outside Oval Office

Emily Van de Riet
News 2
Fri, 14 Feb 2025 22:08 UTC
trump mugshot
President Donald Trump has his infamous 2023 mugshot framed just outside the Oval Office.

The framed mugshot was spotted in numerous photos taken Thursday during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the White House.

Photographers inside the Oval Office took pictures of Trump and Modi sitting side-by-side in two chairs, and some camera angles captured part of the hallway in the background.

The frame is hung in the hallway just outside one of the doors leading to the Oval Office.
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Bullseye

Best of the Web: JD Vance is right: the anti-democratic West is no longer worth defending

Poppy Coburn
The Telegraph
Fri, 14 Feb 2025 22:04 UTC
vance
© AFP/Thomas Kienzle
Yesterday a car was deliberately driven into a crowd of bystanders, injuring 30. Attacks of this nature - violent, random, nihilistic - have become commonplace, even mundane, in Europe; the identity of the alleged perpetrator (reported as a Afghan failed asylum seeker) grimly predictable even as the motive remains obscure.

That this particular attack received so much coverage reflected less the scale of the violence and more the location and timing: in the centre of Munich, a day before the Security Conference.

Perhaps it may have given some pause to the delegates of the liberal Western order, travelling to the city to discuss Europe's external security threats, to be reminded in such a brutal fashion that the greatest danger to our civilisation operates within our borders. Or perhaps not: much easier to offer thoughts and prayers, and turn our eyes to the undoubtedly urgent questions of the future of Ukraine and Nato.

But one attendant - arguably the most important, and certainly the most closely-watched - did pay attention to the chaos on the intersection of Seidlstrasse.
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Bad Guys

SOTT Focus: Exposed: US NSC Developed Secret Terror Blueprints to 'Help Ukraine Resist'

Kit Klarenberg
The Grayzone
Sat, 15 Feb 2025 21:09 UTC
secret plans ukraine terror groups resistance russia
© The GrayzoneThe US National Security Council is helping Ukrainian neonazis hatch terrorist "resistance" plans
Newly-leaked documents reveal a crew of military academics pitching the US National Security Council a series of extreme strategies for Ukraine, from IED's inspired by Iraqi insurgents to sabotaging Russia's infrastructure to propaganda "from ISIS' playbook." Conceived under the auspices of the UK's University of St. Andrews, the plans were outsourced through third parties to ensure "plausible deniability."

Explosive leaked documents reviewed by The Grayzone show how a shady transatlantic collective of academics and military-intelligence operatives conceived schemes which would lead to the US "helping Ukraine resist," to "prolong" the proxy war "by virtually any means short of American and NATO forces deploying to Ukraine or attacking Russia."

The operatives assembled their war plans immediately in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and delivered them directly to the highest-ranking relevant US National Security Council official in the Biden administration.

Proposed operations ranged from covert military options to jihadist-style psychological operations against Russian civilians, with the authors insisting, "we need to take a page from ISIS' playbook."

Comment: One wonders how much money changed hands to develop schemes that led ultimately to nothing, except overflowing Ukrainian graveyards. And Russia continues to advance:
russia advance ukraine
© SouthFront Press


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MAGA

SOTT Focus: Vance's Munich Speech Delivers Historic Defense of Free Speech in Europe

Jonathan Turley
The Hill
Sat, 15 Feb 2025 21:59 UTC
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© Reuters
In "Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis," J.D. Vance wrote, "I don't believe in epiphanies. I don't believe in transformative moments, as transformation is harder than a moment."

Despite that profound point, on Feb. 14, Vance found that transformative moment.

Speaking to European leaders at the Munich Security Conference, he shocked his audience by confronting them over their attacks on free speech in the West.

For the free speech community, it was truly Churchillian — no less than the famous Iron Curtain speech in which Churchill dared the West to confront the existential dangers of communism.

Roughly 80 years after Churchill's speech, Vance called our allies to account not for the growing threat from countries like Russia or China, but from themselves. To a clearly shocked audience, Vance declared that he was not worried about "external actors" but "the threat from within the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America."
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SOTT Logo Radio

SOTT Focus: NewsReal: Trump Avengers Signal End to Ukraine War, EU Leaders Panic


Sott.net
Sun, 16 Feb 2025 21:18 UTC
ukraine peace trump vance newsreal
© Sott.net
Trump talks peace with Putin over Ukraine: is this the end for the worst European war since WW2? Meanwhile, JD Vance's speech in Munich stuns the stewards of 'the Western Order', who aren't used to being lectured on democracy and human rights. RFK Jr and Tulsi Gabbard are confirmed as HHS Secretary and DNI, signalling likely further significant transformations to the US government.


Running Time: 02:13:30

Download: MP3 — 122 MB

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Gavel

Trump DOJ axes 20 immigration judges who were last-minute Biden appointees

Stephen Dinan
Washington Times
Sat, 15 Feb 2025 20:44 UTC
trump modi meeting white house
© AP Photo/Ben CurtisPresident Donald Trump points to a reporter and India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a news conference in the East Room of the White House, Thursday, Feb. 13, 2025, in Washington .
The Trump administration has canned 20 "midnight" immigration judges the Biden administration tried to shoehorn onto the courts in its final days, The Washington Times has learned.

Thirteen judges hired in late December and early January were ousted Friday, a Justice Department source said.

Seven assistant chief immigration judges were also axed.

The housecleaning matches one the Biden administration did when it took office in 2021, clearing out many Trump picks from the immigration courts.

Among the new firings, according to the department source, was Kerry Doyle. She had been a critic of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement before she was appointed to be ICE's principal legal adviser.
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Broom

Trump Administration FIRES over 400 DHS employees connected to DEI initiatives

Kaley
WLT Report
Fri, 14 Feb 2025 20:35 UTC
Department of Homeland Security
© The Hill
The Trump administration has just cut over 400 employees from the Department of Homeland Security.

Over half of the firings came from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The other half came from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and the DHS Science and Technology Directorate.

A dozen DEI Coast Guard members were also affected by the order.

This massive DHS culling is meant to "eliminate egregious waste and incompetence that has been happening for decades at the expense of the American taxpayer," according to a spokesperson from the agency.
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Arrow Up

Vance names biggest threat to Europe


RT
Fri, 14 Feb 2025 15:48 UTC
JDVance
© Johannes Simon/Getty ImagesUS Vice President J.D. Vance
Europe faces its greatest threat from within rather than from foreign powers, US Vice President J.D. Vance has said, expressing concern about what he called the continent's abandonment of its core values.

Vance told the Munich Security Conference on Friday that while Washington is preoccupied with the question of achieving a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine, Europe has bigger problems.
"The threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it's not China, it's not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within."
Vance mentioned a former senior European Union official who went on TV to cheer the Romanian constitutional court's decision to annul the first round of voting in the country's December 2024 presidential election over supposed foreign interference. Vance suggested that the ruling was politically motivated, and made because things did not "go to plan" in the EU nation.
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Nuke

Pentagon refuses to rule out nuclear weapons for Ukraine


RT
Fri, 14 Feb 2025 16:42 UTC
Hegseth
© Alex Wong/Staff/Getty ImagesUS Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
The US president will ultimately decide the matter, according to his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The final decision on whether to provide nuclear weapons to Ukraine rests with US President Donald Trump, and the possibility of such a move has not been ruled out, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth has stated in an interview with Breitbart published on Thursday.

The issue has been raised by Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, who has argued that Ukraine must either be fast-tracked into NATO or given more weaponry as a security guarantee in case of a potential peace deal. Hegseth has described Kiev's ambitions to recover its 2014 borders as "unrealistic," saying Ukraine should prepare for a negotiated peace, potentially supported by international troops.

The US Defense Secretary, clarified that his remarks should not be construed as ultimatums, but that they reflect "realism," and that it is ultimately up to Trump to decide on the matter.
"I'm not the one that declares a red line or not. I work with the president, as we work through these issues, but we believed that it was useful just to speak some reality into the conversation. Ultimately, President Trump is the only one who's going to determine if there's wiggle room or movement on any particular position."
On Friday, Trump backed his defense secretary's comments that Kiev must accept the reality that returning to pre-2014 borders is not feasible, and that its NATO membership is off the table.

Comment: Nukes in the hands of Zelensky? Look what he did with the tanks!

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Attention

Scholz calls for state of emergency in Germany


RT
Fri, 14 Feb 2025 16:33 UTC
Olaf Scholz
© Michael Kappeler/picture alliance/Getty ImagesGerman Chancellor Olaf Scholz
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has called on the country's parliament to declare a state of emergency over the Ukraine conflict. Scholz wants the constitutional 'debt brake' mechanism relaxed in order to ensure continued support for Kiev.

Enshrined in the German constitution, the limit dictates that the government cannot take on debts worth more than 0.35% of the country's annual GDP. Temporary exceptions are allowed "in the event of natural disasters or exceptional emergency situations that are beyond the control of the state," as long as the Bundestag supports the move. This, for instance, was done during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Speaking during a press conference on Thursday, Scholz said:
"Bundestag should adopt a resolution as soon as possible, whereby the war in Ukraine and its grave consequences for Germany's and Europe's security are classified as an emergency situation. This would ensure that aid for Ukraine, which is more important today than ever, no longer comes at the expense of the other duties that our state has to fulfill towards its own citizens."
The chancellor added that US President Donald Trump is right to demand that European NATO member states shell out more for their defense, stressing that military-related spending "must grow considerably more." Scholz dismissed the idea that the necessary funds could be obtained from the existing budget.

Comment: It only takes a small political tremor to crumble an already fractured administration. Chances are it won't last long.

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