Puppet MastersS


Evil Rays

SOTT Focus: Trump Anxiety Disorder and the Washington Establishment's Agenda

Joe Quinn
Sott.net
Sat, 13 Oct 2018 19:00 UTC
Trump anxiety disorder
As examples of egregious abuse of power and general immoral behavior in high places, how does Donald Trump's common or garden variety sexism (there's no evidence he's a racist - calling someone 'dumb' doesn't count) compare to the CIA funding, training arming and generally facilitating the existence of al-Qaeda and ISIS terrorists? It's an important question that everyone should consider as a means to getting their priorities straight. It's also important to consider to achieve a more objective understanding of what has been happening since Trump was elected, and why he was elected.

Trump campaigned on an isolationist platform and he explicitly rejected globalism. That appealed to a majority of American people because it promised to 'put America first', but it sounded alarm bells in the all-powerful Washington political establishment that has long before embraced an expansionist ideology to ensure American global hegemony and 'exceptionalism'. These are the people that gave us the catastrophic wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Patriot Act, mass surveillance, officially sanctioned torture, and plots to destroy and subvert numerous other countries.

Whether anti-Trumpers like it or not, the fact is that their antipathy towards the current POTUS is not only irrational, it is not even really theirs. It is instead largely the result of manipulative tactics by members of the Washington establishment and the mainstream media who have very different (and inherently selfish) reasons to want to hamstring the Trump presidency.
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Arrow Up

Oil could spike to $100 per barrel as Iranian exports shrink & Venezuelan economy collapses, analysts tell RT


RT
Sat, 13 Oct 2018 12:06 UTC
Oil rigs
© Reuters/Alkis Konstantinidis
The crude rally is likely to continue this year as OPEC countries are losing their exports, analysts told RT. The key reason is US sanctions against major producers Iran and Venezuela.

"The reduction of oil exports by Iran amid the expected increase in demand for crude brings in bullish mood to the market,"says financial institute FinIst analyst Denis Lisitsyn.

"There is another important fact that makes oil prices grow. The economic collapse in Venezuela has resulted in 1.3 million bpd drop in production, which continues to shrink. It can cause a shortage of heavy oil in the US, supplied from Venezuela, which will need to be replenished somewhere," the analyst added.

These factors could result in a surge in oil prices to $100 per barrel by year-end. The spike in prices comes to the chagrin of the White House, which has triggered the price spike, Lisitsyn says.
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Light Sabers

Italy declares economic war on EU's austerity regime

Tom Luongo
Strategic Culture Foundation
Fri, 12 Oct 2018 13:30 UTC
Matteo Salvini and Junkerr
© @NewsBreakouts
If there were ever any doubts that the leaders of the Euroskeptic coalition that now runs Italy has a plan to defy the European Union, its proposed budget should quell them. Both Deputy Prime Ministers, Luigi Di Maio of Five Star Movement and Matteo Salvini of The League, were adamant about locking horns with European Union leadership over all issues of sovereignty between now and May's European Parliamentary elections.

Their budget proposal, which included both tax cuts and universal income, blew past the EU budget limit of 2.0% of GDP, coming in at 2.4%. It has put their Finance Minister, Giovanni Tria, in a difficult position because Tria doesn't want to negotiate this budget with Brussels, preferring a less confrontational - read: more pro-EU - approach.

Salvini and Di Maio, however, have other plans. And since I began covering this story last year on my blog, I've said that it was imperative that Salvini force the issue of the Troika's demands - the EU, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund - back down their throats on debt restructuring/forgiveness.
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Wall Street

Fed inspector turned whistleblower reveals financial system rigged for Goldman Sachs

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Fri, 12 Oct 2018 13:17 UTC
Carmen Segarra
Carmen Segarra
Five years after we first reported on the "Goldman whistleblower" at the NY Fed, Carmen Segarra, the former bank examiner is out with a new book based on more than 46 hours of secret recordings.

Noncompliant: A Lone Whistleblower Exposes the Giants of Wall Street is a 340-page exposé which vastly expands on the breadcrumbs Segarra has been dropping since word of her recordings first came to light, according to the New York Post.
Segarra was a former bank examiner who looked into Goldman Sachs for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and claims she got fired in 2012 after making too much noise about Goldman's alleged conflicts.

The New York Fed has often been blasted for its lackadaisical approach to overseeing banks leading up to the 2008 financial crisis. Its last president, William Dudley, was named in 2009 after spending 21 years at Goldman. But Segarra's book claims that the problem persisted for years after the crisis, with regulators happy to act on the banks' behalf.

"We want [Goldman] to feel pain, but not too much," her boss - who goes by the pseudonym Connor O'Sullivan in the book - told her, Segarra claims. -NY Post
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Attention

Report claims 'strong evidence' the Saudi-led coalition aims to destroy food production in Houthi-controlled Yemen


RT
Sat, 13 Oct 2018 12:45 UTC
Saudi F-15 fighter
© AFP PHOTO / Fayez Nureldine
As the war in Yemen rages on, a new report says there is "strong evidence" that the Saudi-led coalition has aimed to destroy food production and distribution in areas of the country controlled by Houthi rebels.

The report, titled 'Strategies of the Coalition in the Yemen War: Aerial Bombardment and Food War', is a compilation of data from various sources on the impact of the coalition's bombing campaign on the production and distribution of food in rural Yemen, and on fishing along the Red Sea coast.

"If one places the damage to the resources of food producers (farmers, herders, and fishers) alongside the targeting of food processing, storage and transport in urban areas and the wider economic war, there is strong evidence that Coalition strategy has aimed to destroy food production and distribution in the areas under the control of Sanaa," the report, published earlier this week by the World Peace Foundation, says.
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Dollars

Warning shot? China sells $3 billion US Treasury bonds amid trade war


RT
Sat, 13 Oct 2018 12:40 UTC
Chinese and US money
© Reuters/Thomas White
China has sold $3 billion of sovereign dollar bonds. This is only the third such move by Beijing in the last 14 years, and the first involving bonds with a 30-year maturity.

China sold $1.5 billion of five-year bonds at 3.25 percent, $1 billion of 10-year bonds at 3.5 percent, and $500 million of 30-year bonds at four percent, the Finance Ministry said on Friday, as quoted by Reuters.

Beijing is the largest holder of US debt. As of July, China had $1.17 trillion invested in debt minted by the US Treasury.
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No Entry

Australia considers banning new migrants from big cities


The Week
Sat, 13 Oct 2018 12:05 UTC
Sydney Opera House
© Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images
Australia is considering banning new migrants from living in its largest cities, under new plans to reduce congestion in urban areas.

Government data reveals that nearly 70% of the 186,000 migrants who moved to Australia last year arrived on skilled migrant visas and nearly all of them settled in Sydney or Melbourne.

Currently, about two-fifths of Australia's 25 million people live in those two cities. "The growth has been driven largely by migration," says the BBC, and has contributed to infrastructure and congestion problems, with Melbourne and Sydney each expected to exceed eight million residents by 2030.
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Eye 1

Saudi delegation arrives in Turkey to join probe into missing journalist


Sputnik
Sat, 13 Oct 2018 12:01 UTC
Mohammed bin Salman
© Hamad I Mohammed/ReutersSaudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman denies that Saudi Arabia abducted Jamal Khashoggi
Saudi Arabia has recently faced a host of accusations from Turkey, blaming Riyadh for the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The Kingdom has called these claims "baseless," offering their assistance in the probe and pledging to find the footage of the alleged moment of disappearance.

The Saudi delegation has arrived in the Turkish capital to participate in the investigation into the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist, who allegedly went missing after visiting Riyadh's Istanbul consulate, Anadolu reported.

The delegation is expected to meet with the Turkish law enforcement services participating in the probe.

Comment: Also see: Does murder of journalist Khashoggi spell the end for Mohammad bin Salman?

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Eye 1

Does murder of journalist Khashoggi spell the end for Mohammad bin Salman?

Federico Pieraccini
Strategic Culture
Sat, 13 Oct 2018 11:26 UTC
Jamal Khashoggi
On October 2nd, 2018, Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was allegedly killed inside Saudi Arabia's embassy in Turkey. The sequence of events seems to show that the murder was premeditated. Two days before his death, Khashoggi went to the Saudi embassy in Istanbul to obtain documents pertaining to his divorce in preparation to remarry in the United States.

The Saudi embassy instructed him to return on October 2nd to collect the documents, which he duly did. He entered the embassy around 1pm on October 2nd but never exited. Khashoggi's fiancée, after waiting several hours, raised the alarm as Khashoggi had instructed her to do should he not reemerge after two hours.

It is from here that we should start to reconstruct this story that resembles a science-fiction novel even by Saudi standards, a country that does not hesitate to kidnap heads of state, as was the case with the Lebanese prime minister, Saad Hariri, about a year ago.
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Light Sabers

SOTT Focus: Is US-China war inevitable?

Finian Cunningham
Sputnik
Sat, 13 Oct 2018 08:34 UTC
united states china
© AFP 2018 / STR
When a US warship narrowly avoided slamming into a Chinese naval vessel earlier this month in the disputed South China Sea, the incident could serve as a metaphor. The two economic giants seem to be on a collision course for war.

That collision course was ramped up last week when US Vice President Mike Pence delivered a barnstorming speech declaring China as global enemy number one. Speaking at the rightwing Hudson Institute in DC, Pence castigated China for "increased economic and military aggression", and warned: "We will not back down."

Pence did at one point say the US hopes to have a cooperative relationship with China, but the overall thrust of his remarks was stridently belligerent.

The New York Times headlined: "Pence's China Speech Seen as Portent of New Cold War."

There were even comparisons from some commentators to the infamous speech made by British leader Winston Churchill in 1946 when he declared an "Iron Curtain" with the Soviet Union, a speech which is seen as instigating the old Cold War between the West and Moscow that lasted for nearly five decades.

Comment: When has conduct by the US not been condemnable? See also:

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