Puppet MastersS


Eye 2

Senate's first order of business: "An implicit rebuke" of Trump's Syria draw down

Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge
Sat, 05 Jan 2019 18:38 UTC
Trump visit US troops Iraq
The President recently told troops in Iraq that it's not America's job to be global policeman
The Republican-held Senate's first order of business as it reconvened on Friday for 2019 was to push back against President Trump's planned Syria withdrawal, as the first bill Republican leadership introduced, led by hawk Marco Rubio, is being described as "an implicit rebuke" of the president's Syria policy.

Senate Bill 1, expected to be one of the first pieces of legislation under consideration of the new Senate, was introduced Thursday by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) is being co-sponsored by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and incoming Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jim Risch of Idaho. Sen. McConnel subsequently announced this means Congress is finally set to debate Syria policy; however ironically at the very moment Trump is attempting a "full" and "immediate" pull out of some 2,000+ US forces. This after US officials reiterated on Friday that "no fixed deadline" for troop withdrawal has been given and they would seek to ensure "no power vacuum" in previously occupied northeast Syria would remain.

Comment: Trump's instincts are right and his base is with him. After all, it's drawn from the group that does the actual fighting and dying for the US war machine. Arrayed against him is Deep State/MIC that find all conflicts profitable whether in power or dollars. They will do everything possible to stall or derail leaving Syria. False flag on tap?

Read More...
Mr. Potato

Biden interview fumble: Blames 'conservative blonde woman' for shutdown, 'forgets' Ann Coulter's name


RT
Sun, 06 Jan 2019 18:30 UTC
biden coulter
© Reuters / Yuri Gripas/ Global Look Press / Catherine BauknightFormer Vice President Joe Biden (Left), conservative political commentator Ann Coulter (Right)
Obama-era vice-president Joe Biden is being called out for sexism after he referred to a radio host as a "conservative blonde woman," while blaming the media for hyping up President Donald Trump to go into the government shutdown.

"Republicans overwhelmingly voted to keep the government open," Biden, who has recently hinted at a potential 2020 bid, told CNN's Randi Kaye on Friday. "Then Rush Limbaugh and the conservative blonde woman says he's losing his base, and so he's changed his mind."

Limbaugh, one of the most influential and highest-paid (trailing only Howard Stern) show hosts, has been a strong supporter of Trump's border wall. Ahead of the shutdown, which is in its third week now, Limbaugh said that Trump personally told him that "it's money or nothing."
Read More...
Map

Sykes-Picot on acid? US still reportedly planning Syria partition amidst troop withdrawal

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Sat, 05 Jan 2019 18:13 UTC
Kurds flag SDF
The White House-appointed Syria and anti-ISIL coalition envoy James Jeffrey has asked Syrian Kurdish leaders backed by the United States to hold off on making any deals with President Bashar al-Assad's government while the Trump administration tries to develop its strategy. As we predicted the longer it takes to withdraw troops, the more time the blob of Washington hawks has to put obstacles in the way of a true and full US pullout.

Meanwhile according to The Wall Street Journal Turkey is putting pressure on the US to provide "substantial military support, including airstrikes, transport and logistics" in support of Turkey's supposed ISIS fight in Syria. So a mere little over two weeks following Trump's announced Syria draw down, it appears we could be right back to a square one quagmire.

Or perhaps the US deep state will send things further into a "forever war" indefinite quagmire, the polar opposite of Trump's stated desire to "bring our youth back home where they belong!" - as the president declared following the initial troop pullout announcement, per the below alarming commentary from the WSJ:
The Turkish requests are so extensive that, if fully met, the American military might be deepening its involvement in Syria instead of reducing it, the officials added. That would frustrate President Trump's goal of transferring the mission of finishing off Islamic State to Turkey in the hope of forging an exit strategy for the U.S. military to leave Syria.
But to "frustrate President Trump's goal" is precisely the point among the many Iran hawks, Syrian regime change promoters, neocons and liberal interventionists alike filling the ranks of the State Department and influential DC think tanks.

Comment: What are the chances Trump signed off on this latest piece of idiocy? Trump gave the military months to wrap up their mission in Syria. They failed - because they have no intention of winning. They want to be there indefinitely, and this latest gambit just shows how unwilling they are to follow the direction of their commander in chief. But their new ideas are just as idiotic as their original ideas. Turkey has no interest in fighting ISIS in the southeast of Syria. They have no interest in a major war with the Kurds. It's impossible to carve out a Kurdish-only zone in eastern Syria - Arabs and Kurds are mixed in the region. And the Kurds are almost certainly going to make a deal with the Syrian government. The is the last-gasp effort of a desperate bunch of chickenhawks.

Read More...
Chess

'EU a captive and hostage of US economy': Iranian FM spokesman says EU's dependency on US is stalling independent payment channel


RT
Sun, 06 Jan 2019 09:45 UTC
EU economic dependence US
Iranian FM Qasemi says 'Dollar dominance and interconnection of the EU and US economies are behind SPV delay, adding that the EU is a 'captive and hostage of the US economy'.
Brussels has still not introduced an independent payment channel to bypass American sanctions against Iran because of dollar dominance and the reliance of the European economy on the US, a top Iranian diplomatic official said.

The European Union vowed to keep doing business with the Islamic Republic after the US withdrawal from the landmark nuclear agreement, signed between Tehran and major world powers, which prompted the re-introduction of punitive measures against Iran last year.

The 28-nation bloc has been working on the creation of a clearing house, known as a special purpose vehicle (SPV), to facilitate financial transactions and non-dollar trade with Iran. In December, the EU's foreign policy chief said she expected the mechanism to be established before the end of 2018. However, no further significant progress has been made since then.

Meanwhile, Tehran's patience is wearing thin and it is time for Brussels to take its strategic decision, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi warned on Saturday.

Comment: Iran isn't holding its breath waiting on the EU to get off the fence:

Read More...
Star of David

Forward reveals prominent Jewish-American leaders funding anti-BDS smear campaign with $millions

Nasim Ahmed
Middle East Monitor
Sat, 05 Jan 2019 17:59 UTC
BDS boycott israel logo
© BDSmovement.net
A number of prominent Jewish-American leaders are funding covert, anonymous campaigns targeting pro-Palestinian student activists, The Forward has found. The Jewish daily newspaper, which has been publishing valuable information concerning the source of funding for these hyper-aggressive and shadowy groups - which spearhead coordinated hate campaigns against critics of the Zionist state - has uncovered the identities of those behind hidden social media accounts.

Community heads and prominent Jewish organisations with a carefully-crafted, respectable public profile have donated millions to fund secret projects targeting students and lecturers, the report has found. On a number of occasions, their blind support for Israel has seen them bankroll far-right and anti-Muslim hate groups.

The latest pro-Israeli group to be exposed by The Forward is the campaign targeting the pro-Palestinian campus network Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). SJP is said to be the most well-known advocate of the Palestinian cause on US campuses. It has been the target of a pro-Israel group known as SJP Uncovered, which anonymously attacks student activists affiliated with SJP across the country. With more than 100,000 followers on Facebook, SJP Uncovered has gone after pro-Palestinian students by maintaining a veil of anonymity that is said to be all-but impenetrable.

Until now, the source of funding for SJP Uncovered had been a mystery. The Forward has now been able to shed light on the organisation to reveal that the site is a secret project of the Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC), a Washington DC-based pro-Israel organisation tied to most mainstream funders and organisations in the Jewish community.
Read More...
Propaganda

Best of the Web: How Integrity Initiative subverts the media and academia by planting state-sponsored propaganda

Erin Gallagher
Twitter / @3r1nG
Sun, 06 Jan 2019 17:08 UTC
integrity initiative
I spent the past 2 days reading this 40 page request for funding for "Phase 2" of the Integrity Initiative. This is the most dystopian thing I've ever heard of. Journalists need to read this whole document closely because y'all are being targeted.

I'm going to skip to page 15 because this is extremely f***ed up. In phase 2, each new cluster will be commissioned to produce a study & disseminate (e.g. as an II report, or fed anonymously into local media outlets) **fed anonymously into local media outlets.** Excuse me?

How will journalists know if any of their sources are in these clusters? Will the cluster members be stating their affiliations to journalists? Will articles be labeled? Or is this research going to be presented to the public with no attribution to a government-funded group?
integrity initiative

Comment: See also:

Read More...
Che Guevara

Why the US #Resistance is ignoring France's Yellow Vest protests

Max Parry
Global Research
Sun, 06 Jan 2019 16:16 UTC
yellow vest vendetta guy fawkes mask
© Courtesy Max Parry
""The rich are only defeated when running for their lives." - C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins
In less than two months, the yellow vests ("gilets jaunes") movement in France has reshaped the political landscape in Europe. For a seventh straight week, demonstrations continued across the country even after concessions from a cowing President Emmanuel Macron while inspiring a wave of similar gatherings in neighboring states like Belgium and the Netherlands. Just as el-Sisi's dictatorship banned the sale of high-visibility vests to prevent copycat rallies in Egypt, corporate media has predictably worked overtime trying to demonize the spontaneous and mostly leaderless working class movement in the hopes it will not spread elsewhere.

The media oligopoly initially attempted to ignore the insurrection altogether, but when forced to reckon with the yellow vests they maligned the incendiary marchers using horseshoe theory to suggest a confluence between far left and far right supporters of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Marine Le Pen. To the surprise of no one, mainstream pundits have also stoked fears of 'Russian interference' behind the unrest. We can assume that if the safety vests were ready-made off the assembly line of NGOs like the raised fist flags of Serbia's OTPOR! movement, the presstitutes would be telling a different story.

Comment: Everyone's hoping the Yellow Vests are ideologically-aligned with their interpretation of events. Marxist analysis is useful, but ultimately limited in explaining what's going on. This is a backlash against capitalism gone rogue, not capitalism per se. And it's equally a backlash against the open borders and postmodernist multiculti madness. As such, it is a Left AND a Right movement. It is nationalist AND it is socialist...

Yes, we know what you're thinking.

"But Sott, that means..."

No, Hitler was a lunatic. And anyway, this time around, the crowd is baying for aggressive wars to END, not start.

It's probably not coincidental that the very thing the people want is the very thing they've been pre-programmed over the last 70-some years to not ever, ever whisper, much less demand...

See also: Niall Bradley to PressTV: 'Yellow Vests Movement a Result of Sclerotic, Totalitarian Politics in Western Europe'

Read More...
Radar

Russia and Iran preparing for joint naval drills in Caspian Sea 'for peace and stability'


RT
Sun, 06 Jan 2019 10:36 UTC
Russian Navy
© Global Look Press / MOD RussiaFile Photo: A warship belonging to the Russian Navy's Caspian Flotilla
The Caspian Sea will play host to fresh joint naval exercises currently being planned by the navies of Iran and Russia, a top Iranian naval commander said on Sunday.

"We have established a very good and lasting relationship with the countries in the Caspian Sea region," Rear Admiral Hossein Khanzadi told the Mehr news agency, saying that the wargames "will be implemented in the near future."

Previous joint exercises held by both navies in the sea took place in 2015 and 2017.

The Iranian commander added that "tactical, rescue and anti-piracy" scenarios would feature as part of the exercises, and noted that cooperation between both navies had "strengthened in recent years."

Comment: A show of united strength and force of will is the only language the Pentagon understands in the face of its goals to 'secure' control over the world's resources and enforce global hegemony. But not even that will be enough as the pathological drive to dominate means it will stop at nothing.

Read More...
Quenelle - Golden

Yellow Vests continue rallying across France to maintain pressure on Macron's government for eighth weekend


Sputnik
Sat, 05 Jan 2019 22:09 UTC
Yellow Vests Paris Jan 2019
At least 50,000 people across France took to the streets on Saturday to keep up pressure on the government for the eighth weekend.
In Paris, government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux was evacuated from his office after a group of protesters forced their way into the ministry, the RTL broadcaster said.

Another media outlet, BFMTV, said that police detained 24 people as some 3,500 protesters marched through the French capital. Those arrested reportedly threw stones at officers, prompting them to fire tear gas.

At least 50,000 people across France took to the streets on Saturday to keep up pressure on the government for the eighth weekend, local media said.


Comment:

Read More...
Control Panel

Pompeo and Bolton go to Middle East to 'reassure' US allies

Jason Ditz
AntiWar.com
Fri, 04 Jan 2019 00:00 UTC
pompeo bolton
Last month's announced US withdrawal from Syria took many nations by surprise. The subsequent disavowal of any and all timelines are only adding more questions. Americans may not be getting a lot of answers, but US allies across the Middle East are likely to get some form of reassurance.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton will both be heading for the Middle East over the next several days, with Bolton making the rounds in Israel and Turkey, and Pompeo visiting much of the GCC.

Comment: See: As the domestic political noose tightens Trump walks back Syria pullout

Read More...