Puppet MastersS


Attention

An examination of Bellingcat's Kerch gaff and how Kurt Volker bought into Ukraine's lie

George Eliason
MintPress News
Fri, 14 Dec 2018 00:00 UTC
PoroshenkoVolker
© Mikhail Palinchak/PPS/APUkrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Kurt Volker in Kiev, Ukraine, Jan. 23, 2018.
For 5 years Ukraine has bamboozled supporters by using "independent" researchers like Bellingcat that work with Ukraine's Intel to fabricate its innocence.

On November 25th, the Kerch incident happened, worsening the West's relationship with Russia ahead of the G-20 Meeting in Argentina.

Seemingly right on cue, Russian planners couldn't find anything better to do than cause another major international incident right in front of the entire world. They did this even as Russian President Vladimir Putin was set to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump. The formal meeting that never happened was canceled because of Ukraine's hyper histrionics.

Special Representative for Ukraine negotiations, Kurt Volker, wasted no time getting on Ukraine's already crashing wagon by citing Bellingcat's conclusion that the Ukrainian ships "may have been" fired on in international waters. Bellingcat suspects the Russian ships may have been 500 yards outside of their territory. This flaccid statement by Bellingcat is all Volker and Ukraine found to stand behind. Volker is undeterred even though the Bellingcat report's only value is to spin another nut into Ukraine's InfoWar machine.

Bellingcat is a western based arm of Ukrainian Intel and InfoWar. Bellingcat OSINT school attendance can be cross-referenced against people from Ukraine and the various Diasporas supporting a nationalist Ukraine or Syria. When Ukrainian supporters at the seminars are multiplied by a per seat value, we can know exactly who built Bellingcat's reputation and how Bellingcat receives financing.

When Bellingcat's OSINT results are looked at against Ukrainian Intel, Bellingcat is anti-American, anti-Democracy, against Christianity, against free-speech, support Ukraine's Bandera nationalists and ISIS.

Comment: The drivers behind Ukraine's Neo-Nazi agenda appear to be the same cadre that serve and supply Trump's official sources of information on Russia and Ukraine. To put it concisely, the US is being played...right into WWIII.
See also:

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Oil Well

Oil industry's covert campaign to rewrite US car emissions rules

Hiroko Tabuchi
The New York Times
Thu, 13 Dec 2018 00:00 UTC
Marathon refinery
© Kirk Allen/Center for Public IntegrityMarathon Oil tar sands refinery in southwest Detroit.
When the Trump administration laid out a plan this year that would eventually allow cars to emit more pollution, automakers, the obvious winners from the proposal, balked. The changes, they said, went too far even for them.

But it turns out that there was a hidden beneficiary of the plan that was pushing for the changes all along: the nation's oil industry.

In Congress, on Facebook and in statehouses nationwide, Marathon Petroleum, the country's largest refiner, worked with powerful oil-industry groups and a conservative policy network financed by the billionaire industrialist Charles G. Koch to run a stealth campaign to roll back car emissions standards, a New York Times investigation has found.

The campaign's main argument for significantly easing fuel efficiency standards - that the United States is so awash in oil it no longer needs to worry about energy conservation - clashed with decades of federal energy and environmental policy.

"With oil scarcity no longer a concern," Americans should be given a "choice in vehicles that best fit their needs," read a draft of a letter that Marathon helped to circulate to members of Congress over the summer. Official correspondence later sent to regulators by more than a dozen lawmakers included phrases or sentences from the industry talking points, and the Trump administration's proposed rules incorporate similar logic.

Comment: Oil scarcity excuse is bogus. Global warming excuse is bogus. CO2 emissions excuse is bogus. Whether we agree or not with manufacturing decisions, the science behind any impetus for current or future manufacturing parameters must be based on real science with accurately proven results.
See also:

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Key

Pompeo: China should free the Canadians held after Huawei's arrest

Lesley Wroughton, David Ljunggren
Reuters
Fri, 14 Dec 2018 12:11 UTC
Pompeo
© UnknownUS Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Friday China should free two Canadian citizens who were detained this week after authorities in Canada arrested a senior Chinese technology executive on a U.S. extradition warrant.

Pompeo's comments were the first by a senior U.S. official on the arrests, which Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said could escalate a growing trade conflict between China and the United States.

"The unlawful detention of two Canadian citizens is unacceptable," Pompeo told reporters after talks in Washington with Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland. "They ought to be returned ... We ask all nations of the world to treat other citizens properly."

Canadian officials were granted consular access on Friday to one of the two detainees in China and were still trying to contact the second, the Foreign Ministry said.

China detained the two - businessman Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, a former diplomat and an adviser with the International Crisis Group (ICG) - after Canadian police arrested Huawei Technologies Co Ltd's chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, on Dec 1.

Comment: See also:

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Propaganda

WaPo claims an American was 'tortured then executed' in Syria, admits absence of evidence

Tony Cartalucci
Land Destroyer Report
Sat, 15 Dec 2018 00:00 UTC
Layla Shweikani
© TwitterSyrian American Layla Shweikani
A particularly scurrilous op-ed appeared in the pages of the Washington Post accusing the Syrian government of detaining, torturing, then executing an American citizen, Layla Shweikani.

Considering US attempts to establish various pretexts to justify its ongoing military occupation of Syria and its attacks on Syrian forces - such an accusation could dangerously escalate the conflict if not checked and exposed.

The Accusation

The op-ed titled, "Assad's regime killed an American - and no one seems to care," written by Jason Rezaian - arrested, tried, and convicted of espionage in Iran - begins by claiming:
Last month the U.S. government confirmed that an American citizen had died in Syrian captivity. Sources concluded that Layla Shweikani, a U.S. citizen with Syrian roots, had been tortured and then executed.
The article claims that the Syrian government's civil registry recorded her death in late 2016. Claims that she died in Syrian government custody come from James Jeffery, the US special envoy for Syria Engagement, but the factual basis of this claim was not provided in the article, nor during recent testimony (video) provided by Jeffery to the US House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Comment: There is no excuse for irresponsible reporting and accusations not based in facts or verifications. The public has become complacent in its acceptance of sub-standard and opinion-swaying media at the dictates of manipulators in order to shape and color an outcome. Without facts, proof and truth in reporting, there is no way to know the fate of Layla Shweikani.

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Star of David

Israelis, Palestinians upset by Aussi recognition of only W. Jerusalem: 'We expected more'


RT
Sat, 15 Dec 2018 23:06 UTC
Scott Morrison
Australian PM Scott Morrison
Palestinian and Israeli officials were oddly united in expressing bitter disappointment in Australia's 'half-way' decision to recognize West Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state, and the move also faced criticism at home.

Canberra is to open a defense and trade office in Jerusalem after it formally recognized West Jerusalem as Israel's capital, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced on Saturday. Relocating the country's embassy, however, will only take place after a two-state solution is reached. Until then, Australia will hold off on its decision to recognize East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine.

The Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister immediately rejected and condemned the decision, accusing Morrison of a "total bias" towards Israel and seeking to "appease the Zionist lobby" in Australia. "The recognition of West Jerusalem as Israel's capital must be accompanied by recognition of East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine," Riad al-Maliki said. The same sentiment was shared by PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi who accused the Australian leadership of "using Palestinian rights to bribe the Zionist lobby to gain its support in the election."


Comment: For Israel it is all. Never half. Never nothing. For Palestine it is almost nothing. Never half. Never all.
See also: Australia has recognized West Jerusalem as the Israeli capital

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Radar

US spy plane flight detected above waters closed for Russian drills


Sputnik
Sat, 15 Dec 2018 20:37 UTC
Boeing P-8A Poseidon
© CC BY-SA 2.0 / aceebeeBoeing P-8A Poseidon
American spy planes often circulate along Syria's borders, especially close to Russia's Hmeymim air base and naval base in Tartus, which houses the Russian Navy and serves as a logistics centre.

A US P-8A Poseidon plane, developed to detect enemy ships and submarines, has been detected flying along the Syrian coast above waters that were closed for drills by the Russian Navy, according to an aviation enthusiast's data from radars.

The plane was circulating for about an hour 30 kilometres away from the Syrian coast, where Russia's Hmeymim airbase and naval base in Tartus are located.

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Bad Guys

17 civilians killed, mostly women and children, by another US-led coalition strike on Syrian village near Hajin


RT
Sun, 16 Dec 2018 16:56 UTC
US airstrike syria
© AP Photo / Vadim Ghirda
Syria's daily al-Watan newspaper reported that women and children account for the majority of the casualties.

A US-led coalition airstrike near the Syrian city of Hajin has killed at least 17 civilians, the Syrian broadcaster Ikhbariya reported on Sunday.

According to media reports, the airstrike targeted a Syrian village, Albu Khater, located to the south-east of the city of Hajin. In addition to the aforementioned death toll, two more civilians sustained injuries as a result of the strike.

Meanwhile, Syria's al-Watan newspaper reported that women and children account for the majority of the casualties.

Comment: Below is a list of just some of the recent US airstrikes on Syria, the majority which killed civilians, of which many were women and children:

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Light Saber

Will the Flynn guilty plea be thrown out? It should be

Thomas Lifson
American Thinker
Sat, 15 Dec 2018 18:05 UTC
Michael Flynn
Michael Flynn
It is always a bad idea to defy an order from a federal judge - especially when the judge whose order has been blown off has a history of vigilance against law enforcement and prosecutorial abuse and has thrown out convictions that resulted from abuse. Yet the nation's premier, most powerful law enforcement agency has just done so.

The Mueller Special Counsel Office's case against General Michael Flynn took a bizarre turn Friday when the FBI failed to provide Judge Emmet G. Sullivan with the original form 302 account of its interview with Flynn in the early days of the Trump administration. General Flynn's guilty plea was based on yielding to the FBI's contention that he lied to them about his (perfectly legal) conversation with Russia's Ambassador Kislyak, concealing their discussion of sanctions. At the point of his guilty plea, General Flynn had been bankrupted by legal fees, and his son was threatened with criminal prosecution.

Comment: The Flynn "investigation" stinks to high heaven. He was the first casualty in the Deep State's war on Trump.

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Attention

Mueller completely scrubbed all the data from Strzok's iPhone; OIG recovers 19,000 new "FBI Lovebird" texts

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Sat, 15 Dec 2018 17:45 UTC
mueller srzok
Robert Mueller and Peter Strzok
The Justice Department's internal watchdog revealed on Thursday that special counsel Robert Mueller's office scrubbed all of the data from FBI agent Peter Strzok's iPhone, while his FBI mistress Lisa Page's phone had been scrubbed by a different department, according to a comprehensive report by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released on Thursday.

After Strzok was kicked off the special counsel investigation following the discovery of anti-Trump text messages between he and Page, his Mueller's Records Officer scrubbed Strzok's iPhone after determining "it contained no substantive text messages," reports the Conservative Review's Jordan Schachtel.

Comment: The Duran's Alex Christoforou made a prescient comment almost a year ago while discussing Mueller's firing Strzok:
There are numerous reasons why the Mueller investigation is a farce. There are even more reasons why the FBI and DOJ are corrupt. Mueller will not recuse himself from the Trump investigation. The entire investigation is based on US law and the not even Mueller team continues to break the law by leaking information to the press related to this fake investigation. It's even plausible that the entire investigation is in place to allow Mueller and his team the ability to destroy information related to their past criminal actions.


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Star of David

Israeli army says fourth Hezbollah 'attack' tunnel found crossing border from Lebanon

Yaniv Kubovich
Haaretz
Sun, 16 Dec 2018 17:28 UTC
IDF israel soldiers
© Associated Press/Ariel Schalit
The Israeli army said on Sunday that over the weekend it found a Hezbollah attack tunnel crossing from Lebanon into Israel, the fourth discovered in recent weeks.

Israeli army spokesman added that though the tunnel no longer constitutes a threat, it has been rigged with explosives.

He warned that whoever enters it from the Lebanese side is risking their life, and accused Lebanon of violating UN Security Council resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 Second Lebanon War, and the sovereignty of Israel.

The discovery of a third tunnel crossing into Israeli territory was announced on Tuesday by the Israeli army, a week after Israel launched Operation Northern Shield, aimed at destroying cross-border tunnels constructed by Hezbollah.

Comment: More from Sputnik:
The spokesperson also accused Lebanon of violating Israel's sovereignty and UN Security Council resolution 1701, which ended the Second Lebanon War in 2006.

On December 4, the IDF announced the launch of Operation Northern Shield to destroy Hezbollah's network of cross-border tunnels, which it reportedly planned to use to secretly transfer its militants to Israel in any potential future conflict.

The Lebanese Army, in turn, issued a statement calling Israel's accusations "mere allegations", according to the country's state-run National News Agency (NNA).

Former Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon, for his part, admitted that the country's officials had been hiding knowledge of the existence of Hezbollah's underground tunnels for years before the IDF announced the launch of its ongoing operation.

Yaalon was echoed by a number of former Israeli military officials and opposition politicians who criticised the way in which Operation Northern Shield was revealed to the public.


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