Puppet MastersS


Jet4

Syrian army repels Israeli attack on Damascus airport

Israeli strike damascus airport
© Associated Press/ SANAThis frame grab from a video provided by the Syrian official news agency SANA shows missiles flying into the sky near Damascus, Syria, 25 December
The airstrike comes after Israeli warplanes conducted a similar attack against Syria on 25 December, destroying an ammunition depot near the capital Damascus.

Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) has published a video in which it says the country's air defence systems intercept missiles launched by Israeli warplanes.

Earlier, the state-run news agency cited a military source as saying that Israeli jets fired several missiles towards the vicinity of Damascus, and that most of the missiles were successfully shot down.

Bad Guys

Did CIA Director & 'torture queen' Gina Haspel run a black site at Guantánamo?

Gina Haspel
An attorney for the accused architect of the Sept. 11 attacks told a judge in a secret session last year that CIA Director Gina Haspel ran a secret agency outpost at Guantánamo, an apparent reference to a post-9/11 black site, according to a recently declassified transcript.

The claim by Rita Radostitz, a lawyer for Khalid Sheik Mohammed, appears in one paragraph of a partially redacted transcript of a secret hearing held at Guantánamo on Nov. 16. Defense lawyers were arguing, in a motion that ultimately failed, that Haspel's role at the prison precludes the possibility of a fair trial for the men accused of orchestrating the 9/11 attacks who were also held for years in covert CIA prisons.

Neither the public nor the accused was allowed to attend the hearing but, following an intelligence review, the Pentagon released portions of its transcript on a war court website.

Snakes in Suits

Fresh revelations in Russiagate from transcripts of Lisa Page's closed-door testimonies

Lisa Page
© Mark Wilson/Getty ImagesFormer FBI Lawyer Lisa Page arrives to testify before a House Judiciary Committee closed-door meeting on July 13, 2018.
Transcripts of two closed-door testimonies by Lisa Page, the former assistant general counsel at the FBI, have provided new insights into the actions of the FBI, DOJ, and others - including CIA Director John Brennan - regarding their investigation into Donald Trump.

Included in the transcripts provided to us is information suggesting Brennan was aware of the so-called Steele dossier in early August 2016, and that he included information regarding the dossier in a briefing given to then-Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

Other key points in Page's testimony before Congress:

Bad Guys

Julian Assange's living conditions are akin to a Stasi-era dissident

Assange
© InterceptJulian Assange
Julian Assange's current living conditions in the Embassy of Ecuador in London are more akin to those of a political dissident in China or Stasi-era Germany - not a journalist claiming political asylum from a country that once promised to protect his right to publish information.

I last visited Assange in March, days before the Ecuadorians placed the award-winning journalist in isolation for allegedly violating a draconian ban on all public political comments.

That isolation has since been - mostly - lifted, but I felt a sense of trepidation as I approached the embassy last Monday - the Ecuadorians, pressured by the U.S., are widely believed to have grown hostile to Assange, so I didn't expect a warm welcome.

Cut

US nixes Israel's sale of F-16s with added "advanced electronic systems" to Croatia

Israeli F16 fighter
© (REUTERS/Amir Cohen). (photo credit: REUTERS/AMIR COHEN)An Israeli F16 fighter jet takes off during a joint international aerial training exercise hosted by Israel and dubbed "Blue Flag 2017" at Ovda military air base in southern Israel November 8, 2017. Picture taken November 8, 2017.
After months of delay, a $500 million deal between Israel and Croatia to buy F-16 fighter jets is officially dead because of "unforeseen problems," Israel's Defense Ministry announced on Thursday night.

Croatia, a NATO member, was preparing to buy 12 used F-16 Barak fighters from Israel in order to replace its aging fleet of Soviet-designed MiG-21s, which had originally entered service in 1959.

"The Ministry of Defense attaches great importance to the deepening of cooperation between Israel and Croatia, and initiated the project of the F-16, which includes Israeli know-how and technology, which was conducted professionally in the framework of the GTG deal between the two countries," said director-general of the Defense Ministry Udi Adam while on a visit to Zagreb.

Comment: Considering the billions in funding the US provides to Israel, it's no surprise they were willing to comply.

See also:


Snakes in Suits

American accused of spying in Moscow had plenty of 'friends' with Russian military ties

Paul Whelan
© vk.com / Paul Whelan
The former US marine detained in Moscow on spying charges had for long been a user of the Russian social media network VK, and almost half of the people he chatted with there seem to have links to the Russian military.

Paul Whelan, who also holds British, Irish and Canadian citizenships, seemed to have a particular penchant for Russia. His account on Russia's most popular social network, VK, is more than a decade old although he had just 55 friends. But nearly half of them, notably, had either a military education or a history of military service, Reuters reports.

At least 12 of his friends on VK had received military education in Russia, while another 11 apparently had served in the Russian Army, the report says, adding that the list of Whelan's acquaintances also includes people from the IT, engineering or civil aviation circles.

Comment: As noted in Philip Giradi's Is Paul Whelan a spy?:
The flawed but nevertheless useful Whelan would be a perfect target for recruitment as an intelligence source, referred to in the business as "agents."

[...]

And the details of Whelan's arrest, if true, are completely consistent with how a low- to mid-level source might be run and used by a US government case officer. According to Russian accounts published in Rosbalt, a news agency close to the Kremlin, an unidentified intelligence source revealed that Whelan was trying to recruit a Russian citizen to obtain classified information regarding employees at various government agencies when he was caught in flagrante. He was arrested five minutes later in what was clearly a sting operation after having received a USB stick that included a list of all of the employees that he apparently had requested.
See also: US court documents in 'foreign agent' Butina case suggest deal made - UPDATE - Putin says she was jailed for nothing, has no ties to Russian intel


Light Sabers

China's Ambassador to Canada highlights "white egotism" following US-initiated feud

Meng Wanzhou
© Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press, via Associated PressThe arrest of Meng Wanzhou, carried out at the request of the United States, set off a fury in China, where it was seen as an attack on Huawei for political purposes.
China's ambassador to Canada has said that "Western egotism and white supremacy" were behind calls for Beijing to release two detained Canadians, further straining relations between the countries after the arrest in Canada last month of a Chinese technology executive.

The ambassador, Lu Shaye, wrote on Wednesday in an op-ed for The Hill Times, an Ottawa-based newspaper, that Canadians were applying "double standards" to the cases.

Some Canadians, he wrote, argued that their country was merely enforcing the law when it arrested Meng Wanzhou, the finance chief of the Chinese technology giant Huawei, but insisted that Beijing was out of line when it detained two Canadians soon after.

"It seems that, to those people, the laws of Canada or other Western countries are laws and must be observed," Mr. Lu wrote, "while China's laws are not and shouldn't be respected."

Comment: As noted in F. William Engdahl's Is Canada's Huawei arrest an attempt to sabotage Trump-Xi talks?, Michael Kovrig, one of those arrested in retaliation by the Chinese government, is quite a shady character:
Michael Kovrig previously worked as a Canadian diplomat in Beijing, Hong Kong and the United Nations. Chinese national security police took him into custody on December 10 in Beijing. Kovrig is officially listed as "North East Asia adviser" for something called the International Crisis Group.

The International Crisis Group is an NGO with a knack for being involved in key conflict zones such as Myanmar. The magazine Third World Quarterly in a peer-reviewed article in 2014 accused the ICG of "manufacturing" crises.
For more on the situation, see:


Arrow Up

Tulsi Gabbard announces she's running for president in 2020

Tulsi Gabbard
© AP Photo/Marco Garcia
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), an Iraq War veteran who made history in 2012 as the first Hindu elected to Congress, said Friday she will run for president in 2020.

"I have decided to run and will be making a formal announcement within the next week," Gabbard told CNN's Van Jones during an interview to air Saturday. "There are a lot of reasons for me to make this decision. There are a lot of challenges that are facing the American people that I'm concerned about and that I want to help solve."

Tulsi, who serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said her campaign platform will address health care, climate change, and criminal justice reform.


"There is one main issue that is central to the rest, and that is the issue of war and peace," she continued. "I look forward to being able to get into this and to talk about it in depth when we make our announcement."

Comment: That's what they thought about Trump but look what happened. In any case, as long as she plays nice with the Zionists, it's not out of the realm of possibility. But as we've seen time and time again, even if she were president, would that actually do anything to change America's downward spiral? See also: Tulsi Gabbard weighing 2020 presidential bid


Quenelle - Golden

French PM Edouard Philippe says Yellow Vest protests sign of Europe-wide anger over financial woes & govt indifference

Yellow vest police woman
© Reuters / Gonzalo Fuentes / FileProtesters wearing yellow vests face police as the take prat in a demonstration by the "Women's yellow vests" movement in Paris, France, January 6, 2019. A placard reads: "I am your daughter."
Protesters wearing yellow vests face police as the take prat in a demonstration by the "Women's yellow vests" movement in Paris, France, January 6, 2019. A placard reads: "I am your daughter." As France still battles with defiant Yellow Vests protests, its prime minister has warned that the violent unrest is an indication of anger felt by "neglected" people all over Europe and called for the EU values to be defended.

The "strong anger" that fuels the Yellow Vests demonstrations, which have regularly gripped France since mid-November 2018, is hardly an "exclusively French matter," Philippe said while speaking in the German city of Cologne. The anger is "partly a response to the global financial crisis," which Europe faced back in 2008, and now people are facing "worse prospects" in life as the living standards have either stayed the same or have even been on the decrease over the last ten years since the crisis.

Comment:


Георгиевская ленточка

Russia will respond 'appropriately' as UK defence chief issues 'warning to Putin'

Putin annual press conference
© Sputnik/Natalya SeliverstovaAnnual big press conference of the Russian President V. Putin
Earlier, UK Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson boasted that Britain's new fleet of F-35s served as a message to the country's "enemies", including Russia, not to "mess with" Britain.

Moscow is perplexed by the militaristic tone taken by the UK Ministry of Defence, and will respond appropriately if Russia's security is threatened, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said.

"The statements of the Minister of Defence of Great Britain in favour of the further militarisation of British politics bring forth, at the very least, bewilderment," Zakharova said, speaking at a press conference on Friday.

Comment: Looks like Williamson just couldn't miss a chance to bait Russia while bragging about his new toys.