Puppet MastersS


Mr. Potato

Nikki Haley's swansong at the UN was an embarrassment

Professor Kamel Hawwash
Middle East Monitor
Mon, 10 Dec 2018 20:45 UTC
Nikki Haley
© Minasse Wondimu Hailu/Anadolu AgencyUS Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley
The 6 December was the first anniversary of US President Donald Trump's announcement that he recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital and that he would move the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city. The announcement was cheered by Israel and its supporters for whom international laws and conventions are at best meaningless and at worst an irritant. Trump suggested that this move would help bring peace to the Holy Land. How wrong he was. Anyone but a diehard Zionist would have told him that he was deluded to think this, but nobody in his administration would have done so, because those tasked with developing a peace deal fall into this category.

One of these cheerleaders for Apartheid Israel is Nimrata Randhawa, better known to the world as Nikki Haley, the US Representative to the United Nations. In the UN Security Council, she can wield the US veto to protect Israel but she is unable to do that in the General Assembly, where no state has a veto. Her swansong in the chamber was an embarrassment for her and her country.

Haley left what was her final General Assembly with her pro-Israel tail firmly between her legs. Her resolution to condemn Hamas was voted down, while a resolution reiterating the call for a comprehensive peace based on the two-state solution, which she opposed, passed overwhelmingly. It is particularly galling that Haley wanted to use the UN to condemn Palestinians while defending Israel and its breaches of hundreds of resolutions passed by the very organisation she wanted to use to sanction the people of Palestine who are in breach of none.
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Bad Guys

Christopher Steele disclosed made up nonsense from his trash dossier to longtime Clinton crony, court documents reveal

Chuck Ross
The Daily Caller
Wed, 12 Dec 2018 20:46 UTC
Christopher Steele
© YouTube screen capture/CBS News'Former' British spy Christopher Steele
Christopher Steele, the author of the infamous anti-Trump dossier, disclosed information from his Trump-Russia investigation to a longtime Clinton crony because of his position on a State Department advisory board, according to court documents filed on Tuesday.

According to the court filing, Steele told a court in the United Kingdom on Aug. 1 that he provided Strobe Talbott, the Clinton insider, with anti-Trump research because of his position on the Foreign Affairs Policy Board, an independent advisory board set up in 2011 by then-Sec. of State Hillary Clinton.

Clinton appointed Talbott chairman of the advisory board, and he served in that role through John Kerry's tenure.
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Snakes in Suits

Flashback Clinton IT aide pleads Fifth, skips hearing

Katie Bo Williams
The Hill
Thu, 15 Sep 2016 20:18 UTC
Hillary Clinton and Bryan Pagliano
Hillary Clinton and Bryan Pagliano
Three IT specialists involved with Hillary Clinton's private email server on Tuesday refused to testify before the House Oversight Committee on deletions of some of Clinton's emails.

One of these three, Bryan Pagliano - the former State Department employee who set up the server - defied a subpoena and failed to appear at the hearing altogether.

The other two, engineers at the outside firm that managed Clinton's server, appeared under subpoena but invoked their Fifth Amendment rights in response to every question.

Outraged Republicans quickly threatened reprisal against Pagliano, who has long been a flashpoint in various investigations into the server.
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No Entry

Ukrainian army mines roads south of Donetsk


Donetsk News Agency
Wed, 12 Dec 2018 20:01 UTC
Ukrainian landmine sign
Ukrainian army has begun to mine roads in Kiev-controlled Donbass on the eve of a massive offensive, said the head of the DPR People's Militia command press service Daniil Bezsonov.

"In light of the offensive on Mariupol direction, Kiev forces have been mining roads in Slavnoye, Berezovoye, Taramchuk (south of Donetsk)."

Bezsonov said the mines will probably hit civilian vehicles first and foremost.

Comment: See also: Ukraine sets up for a possible winter offensive in LDNR

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Handcuffs

Vatican's third in line Cardinal George Pell convicted for sexually abusing choir boys

Lachlan Cartwright
Daily Beast
Wed, 12 Dec 2018 19:39 UTC
Cardinal George Pell
Cardinal George Pell
The highest-ranking Catholic Church official to face such criminal charges.

The Vatican's third most powerful official has been convicted in Australia on all charges he sexually abused two choir boys there in the late '90s, according to two sources with knowledge of the case.

A unanimous jury returned its verdict for Cardinal George Pell on Tuesday (Australian time) after more than three days of deliberations, the sources said, in a trial conducted under a gag order by the judge that prevented any details of the trial being made public.

Pell, the Vatican's finance chief and the highest Vatican official to ever go on trial for sex abuse, left Rome in June 2017 to stand trial in Melbourne.

As that trial was about to get underway in June, a judge placed a suppression order on all press coverage in Australia, according to the order reviewed by The Daily Beast. Prosecutors applied for the order and it was granted to "prevent a real and substantial risk of prejudice to the proper administration of justice." That order remains in place in Australia.

Comment: So Cardinal George Pell who has accusations tracing back to his very first years as a priest, and which appear in most decades following, is clearly a serial offender and there are likely many more victims who have yet to be heard. And so considering the evidence that this priest has been sexually abusing children for at least 50 years, that this monster is still connected by his 'leave of absence' says all you need to know about what forces call the shots at the Vatican.

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Bad Guys

Ukraine sets up for a possible winter offensive in LDNR

GH Eliason
Vineyard of the Saker
Wed, 12 Dec 2018 19:49 UTC
soldados Ucrania, Donetsk
© Desconocido
Everything is pointing to Ukraine starting a winter offensive in Donbass and the possible use of a chemical weapon false flag event to kick it off.

The Ukraine of 2018 is far different than what Europe was expecting. Instead of economic and social reform that was promised at Ukraine's 2014 Euro-maidan coup, the government of Petr Poroshenko is taking a brute force approach to retaining power past the 2019 elections.

European and NGO supporters have been worried that the powers given with Poroshenko's martial law declaration may be too spellbinding for Poroshenko. They are worried Kiev will trample on human and civil rights in Ukraine.
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Stock Down

Among leading global trends: Disparity

Grete Mautner
New Eastern Outlook
Tue, 11 Dec 2018 00:00 UTC
breaking point
© John Berkeley/The Economist
It's hardly a secret that there was an abrupt increase in income disparity pretty much all across the globe in the period from 1980 to 2017, as it has been recently confirmed by a report released by World Inequality Lab (WIL).

Pretty much the same conclusion was voiced by a group of international analysts led by prominent French economist, Thomas Piketty. The report's findings could easily be described as shocking. Upon compiling the World Wealth and Income Database, Thomas Piketty and his colleagues revealed today the global level of income disparity fell to levels seen back in 1913!

In November, the Global Wealth Report of Credit Suisse bank revealed that the level of global welfare increased by 6.4% in the period from mid-2016 to mid-2017, while adding that half this increase would benefit the notorious 1% of the world's inhabitants. Last year alone, the number of millionaires across the globe increased by 2.3 million people.

A recent study by the University of Michigan revealed that in the time since the 2008 crisis, the richest part of American society managed to recover from all of their financial losses suffered during the recent global crisis, unlike the rest of society. Last year, the most financially successful Americans were 24 times richer than the average American family, which constitutes a significant increase over the level of 2007, when the gap didn't exceed 16.5 times.

Among the most important conclusions that most modern economists would make upon analyzing the data available is that we're witnessing the "parasitic" nature of modern capitalism. Over the last four decades that have passed since the ultra-liberal reforms of Thatcher and Reagan, there has been a visible increase in speculative enrichment across the West, where incomes from short-term capital investments would outpace investments in productive labor.

It was precisely speculative profits that were behind the growing inequality of recent decades.

Comment: Those who play the system for self gain eventually slay the system for everyone.

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Dollars

Forget Russia: 'Get-Trump' talk suddenly shifts into campaign finance

Byron York
Washington Examiner
Mon, 10 Dec 2018 03:48 UTC
QmarksTrump
© mediadc.brightspotcdn/Getty ImagesPresident Donald Trump
Prosecutors investigating President Trump made big news Friday, but it wasn't about Russia. Rather, in their sentencing recommendation for fixer Michael Cohen, lawyers with the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York wrote that in the final weeks of the 2016 campaign, candidate Trump directed Cohen to pay off Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, who wanted money to keep quiet about sexual dalliances. While such arrangements are legal, prosecutors argued that since the payoffs occurred during the campaign, they were violations of campaign finance laws.

Cohen, who is cooperating because prosecutors nailed him for tax evasion and bank fraud in his private business, pleaded guilty to two felony campaign finance violations. So no one has to talk about an "alleged" campaign finance scheme; there's already a guilty plea. But what was really significant about the sentencing memo was that prosecutors specifically said Trump told Cohen to do it.

"With respect to both payments, Cohen acted with the intent to influence the 2016 presidential election," prosecutors said. "He acted in coordination with and at the direction of [Trump]."

Those words caused a sudden shift in the debate over investigating the president. What had been a two-year-long conversation about Trump and Russia instantly became a conversation about Trump and campaign finance.

"Prosecutors are now implicating the president in at least two felonies," said CNN.

"Federal prosecutors in New York say that President Trump directed Michael Cohen to commit two felonies," said NBC's Chuck Todd.

"At least two felonies," said Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy.

"Implicated in two felonies," said anti-Trump gadfly George Conway, husband of top Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway.

And so on.

Comment: Never mind the legal system, Trump is being tried daily in 'the court of publicly-swayed opinion': 'Guilty' until inconveniently proven innocent.

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Padlock

Michael Cohen sentenced: 3 years prison for tax evasion, violating campaign finance laws, lying to banks, Congress

Tom Winter, Pete Williams
NBC News
Wed, 12 Dec 2018 03:16 UTC
Michael Cohen/Fam
© Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images copyMichael Cohen arrives at federal court for his sentencing hearing.
An emotional Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's former lawyer and fixer, was sentenced Wednesday to three years in prison after pleading guilty to nine federal charges stemming from his failure to report millions of dollars in income and making secret payments to women who claimed they had affairs with Trump.

One of the charges, lying to Congress about his dealings concerning a proposed Trump Tower in Moscow, stemmed from special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into the Trump campaign's potential collusion with Russia in the 2016 election.

Standing before Judge William Pauley, Cohen, 52, who came to the Manhattan courtroom with his wife and two children, said blind loyalty to Trump led him to "choose darkness over light." He said that he will work to prove history wrong and that he is not the villain in this investigation.

He appeared to tear up as he apologized to his family and to the people of the United States. "I am truly sorry and I promise I will be better," he said.

Pauley sentenced Cohen to 36 months for the eight charges from the Southern District of New York and an additional two months for the Mueller charge, which will run concurrently. The judge added a $50,000 fine and said Cohen must turn himself in on March 6.

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Cell Phone

Lawmakers ream CEO of Google: Tap 'idiot' and get 'Trump', news is crappy and my phone's a spy!


RT
Tue, 11 Dec 2018 21:22 UTC
PIchai
© Reuters/Jim YoungGoogle CEO Sundar Pichai testifies to the House Judiciary Committee
Angry at Google's perceived liberal bias and furious that the search engine would ever link to negative information about them, US Representatives vented to Google CEO Sundar Pichai about their embarrassing tech problems.

Pichai was hauled before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday to answer questions about his company's perceived liberal bias, data collection and privacy policies, and its planned expansion into China. The CEO was all smiles, and opened by promising to "build products worthy of the trust users place in us," before the floor was given to lawmakers' questions.


From the ideological to the absurd, these questions quickly went off the beaten track.

Comment: There were other members of the audience participating in the House hearing.

More from RT: Alex Jones heckles Google CEO on way to the hearing with "Google is evil".
Banned conspiracy theorist and pundit Alex Jones was stalking the corridors of the Capitol again, heckling Google CEO Sundar Pichai ahead of a House hearing focused on the tech giant's data collection and alleged political bias.

As Pichai made his way into the House Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday morning, Jones followed the CEO down the hall, repeatedly chanting "Google is evil!"



Check it out. Alex Jones on attack and on message.


Accompanied by conservative strategist and fellow Infowars personality Roger Stone, Jones ranted at Pichai for Google's alleged censorship of conservative voices, until Pichai's police escort warned the bellicose conspiracy theorist to be quiet or be arrested.

"They're going to talk about me in this committee, I will be talked about - so what am I supposed to do?" Jones asked reporters. "His people come lie to Congress over and over and over again and we don't get to respond to them," he added.

Jones' interest in free speech on the internet is a personal one. Google was one of more than a dozen tech companies that banned Jones from using some of its services this August, for allegedly promoting violence and for hate speech. The move was cheered by social-justice types but was decried by conservatives and free-speech advocates.

While Jones may have favored a more confrontational approach, lawmakers inside the hearing took Pichai to task on a litany of accusations. Democrats slammed Pichai for not cracking down harder on Russians purchasing political ads (a paltry $4,700 worth, according to Pichai himself).

His online presence greatly diminished by the bans, Jones is unlikely to be sated by the results of Tuesday's hearing. In an Infowars stream of proceedings titled 'Live at the Google Treason Hearings', Jones called Google "absolutely the most horrible corporation on earth."
See also:

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