Puppet MastersS


Tornado1

Unraveling of Pelosi, a sad sight

Joseph Curl
The Washington Times
Tue, 30 Jan 2018 00:00 UTC
Pelosi
© iamatexan.comDemocratic Representative Nancy Pelosi
Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the House of Representatives, is, in a word, a mess.

But let's pause for one moment to do something we almost never do: Offer a few words of praise for Mrs. Pelosi, born Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro in 1940. The Italian-American has spent nearly her whole life in politics, first as a 20-year member of the Democratic National Committee from California, then as the state party's chairman.

She first won election to the House in 1987 - when Ronald Reagan was president - and she's been there ever since. In 2002, after working her way to the top, Mrs. Pelosi was elected Speaker of the House, the first woman ever to helm a national party in the august chamber.

It cannot be denied that Mrs. Pelosi has devoted her life to public service, and that (at least) is a noble cause.

Now, the bad news. She's done - she's past done. Her ever-growing list of verbal blunders is far too long to catalog here, and the 77-year-old seems more and more out of touch with regular Americans (dubbing the recent tax cuts by President Trump - which amounts to thousands of dollars for many people - "crumbs" is just the latest example).

Worse, Mrs. Pelosi seems to keep coming up with new ways to embarrass herself.

Comment: Time to retire? Last year.

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Eye 1

Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, Hezbollah leader Nasrallah blacklisted in Mossad's terror list


FARS
Mon, 05 Feb 2018 19:55 UTC
Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad
© FNAIsrael's spy agency Mossad has put the name of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on its blacklist, an Arabic-language newspaper reported
"In fact, the Mossad authorities tried to justify their decision by highlighting the recent threats made by President Assad against Israel's sensitive and vital facilities in the event of a new Israeli attack on his country," the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida wrote on Sunday.

The Kuwaiti newspaper goes on to explain that, in general, the names on the list are those of individuals considered by Tel Aviv to have participated in so-called "terrorist" attacks, or those of leaders of resistance movements, which Israel considers to be terrorist groups. But if you put the name of a head of state on a blacklist, it has no antecedent in the entire common history of humanity.
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Handcuffs

Top officials in Russia's North Caucasus detained on financial fraud charges


RFE/RL
Mon, 05 Feb 2018 18:45 UTC
Prime Minister Abdusamad Gamidov
Acting Daghestani Prime Minister Abdusamad Gamidov is among those who have been detained.
Several senior government officials in Russia's North Caucasus region of Daghestan have been detained on financial fraud charges, the Investigative Committee says.

The committee said that acting Daghestani Prime Minister Abdusamad Gamidov and acting deputy prime ministers Shamil Isayev and Rayudin Yusufov were detained on February 5 on suspicion of misuse of federal funds allocated for social programs.

Former Education Minister Shakhabas Shakhov and several other people were also detained, it said in a statement, adding that the detainees' homes were searched.
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Light Sabers

Trump tweet leads to Twitter battle with Jeremy Corbyn over universal healthcare


RT
Mon, 05 Feb 2018 15:26 UTC
Corbyn
© Peter Nicholls / Reuters
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has hit out at Donald Trump's "wrong" criticism of Britain's National Health Service (NHS) after the president claimed that thousands of people were protesting because "the system is going broke."

Corbyn replied to Trump on Twitter, saying: "People were marching because we love our NHS and hate what the Tories are doing to it. Healthcare is a human right."


Hunt - the Tory health secretary accused of ordering the cuts that have angered protesters - also took issue with Trump's claim. He said on Twitter: "I may disagree with claims made on that march but not ONE of them wants to live in a system where 28m people have no cover.

Comment: There's obvious distortions on both sides of the pond. It wasn't wrong for Trump to say the UK's health care system is going broke, but the situation is also different in the United States where most average Americans didn't like being fined for healthcare they couldn't afford.

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Cross

Pope's claim of ignorance on sexual abuse by priest doesn't hold up to scrutiny

Nicole Winfield & Eva Vergara
Yahoo News
Mon, 05 Feb 2018 00:00 UTC
Pope Francis
Pope Francis received a victim's letter in 2015 that graphically detailed how a priest sexually abused him and how other Chilean clergy ignored it, contradicting the pope's recent insistence that no victims had come forward to denounce the cover-up, the letter's author and members of Francis' own sex- abuse commission have told The Associated Press.

The fact that Francis received the eight-page letter, obtained by the AP, challenges his insistence that he has "zero tolerance" for sex abuse and cover-ups. It also calls into question his stated empathy with abuse survivors, compounding the most serious crisis of his five-year papacy.

The scandal exploded last month when Francis' trip to South America was marred by protests over his vigorous defense of Bishop Juan Barros, who is accused by victims of witnessing and ignoring the abuse by the Rev. Fernando Karadima. During the trip, Francis callously dismissed accusations against Barros as "slander," seemingly unaware that victims had placed him at the scene of Karadima's crimes.

Comment: You'd think by now that Pope Francis would be far more sensitized to such information given the immense record of abuse the Church has been ignoring, enabling and facilitating internationally for so many decades...

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Clipboard

Steele wrote an additional memo based on information fed through Clinton campaign — released documents


RT
Mon, 05 Feb 2018 17:43 UTC
Steele wrote memo
© Screenshot from judiciary.senate.gov
People close to Hillary Clinton were feeding information to Christopher Steele who compiled the Trump dossier on Trump's alleged connections with Russia, according to a criminal referral filed by Republican senators.

A newly-released document from the Senate Judiciary Committee says Steele wrote an additional memo, besides the controversial dossier, using information that came from the Clinton campaign.

The newly-released memorandum is an unclassified and heavily-redacted version of the criminal referral targeting Steele, filed on January 4 by Republican Senators Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham. It is addressed to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Director of the FBI Christopher Wray.

The report reveals coordination between the extended Clinton circle and the Obama administration in an attempt to source damaging information about then-candidate Trump.

Comment: See also: The Memo: An in-depth analysis of rampant abuse and possible contempt of Court

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Briefcase

The Memo: An in-depth analysis of rampant abuse and possible contempt of Court

Alexander Mercouris
The Duran
Mon, 05 Feb 2018 16:48 UTC
GOP nunes FISA memo
GOP memorandum exposes extraordinary catalogue of due process violations in application for surveillance warrant against Carter Page

When I read the GOP memorandum late yesterday a few hours after it was published it became immediately obvious to me why the Democrats, the Justice Department and the FBI had so strenuously resisted publishing it.

Briefly, the GOP memorandum sets out an astonishing and deeply disturbing story of selective information being provided to the FISA court in order to obtain a surveillance warrant against the Trump aide Carter Page notwithstanding that no evidence existed of any wrongdoing on his part other than - apparently - the Trump Dossier, whose compiler Christopher Steele was known by the FBI in October 2016 to have lied to them.

GOP Memorandum is a legal analysis and is the work of Gowdy not Nunes

In order to understand its importance an essential point about the GOP memorandum must be made.

Contrary to what some are saying, the GOP memorandum most definitely is a legal analysis or document and it is one which is written by a lawyer. That means that it must be read as a legal analysis or document, and it is to misunderstand it if it is read in any other way.
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Nuke

As the likelihood of nuclear war increases, we should all get our priorities straight

Caitlin Johnstone
Medium
Sat, 03 Feb 2018 11:01 UTC
nuclear explosion
A Russian pilot has been killed by US-armed terrorists in Syria. The Ron Paul Institute's Daniel McAdams writes the following about this new development:
"The scenario where a US-backed, US-supplied jihadist group in Syria uses US weapons to shoot down a Russian plane and then murders the pilot on the ground should be seen as a near-nightmare escalation, drawing the US and Russia terrifyingly closer to direct conflict."
McAdams is not fearmongering; he is stating a plainly obvious fact. The Trump administration has just announced that it is restructuring its nuclear weapons policy to take a more aggressive stance toward Russia than that which was held by the previous administration. This is coming after this administration's decision to arm Ukraine against Russia, a move Obama refused to take for fear of escalating tensions with Moscow, as well as its decision to continue to occupy Syria in order to effect regime change, along with numerous other escalations. The Council on Foreign Relations, which is without exaggeration as close to the voice of the US establishment as you can possibly get, is now openly admitting that the "United States is currently in a second Cold War with Russia."

In a recent interview with The Real News, leading US-Russian relations expert Stephen Cohen repeated his ongoing warning that "this new Cold War is much more dangerous, much more likely to end in Hot War, than was the 40-year of Cold War, which we barely survived." In a previous interview with the same outlet, Cohen elaborated more extensively:
"We are in new cold war that is much more dangerous than the last cold war for various reasons. One is that the new cold war today, as we talk, includes three fronts. U.S.-Russian fronts, they're fought with hot war. That's Syria. That's the reckless NATO military build-up on Russia's western boarders, which has resulted in a situation today that ordinarily artillery, not missiles, ordinary artillery, can hit Russia's second city of Saint Petersburg. Just think about that and the instability. And the third front is Ukraine."

Comment: It's a nice thought, but one can't assume they will not necessarily obey. When the guys with their fingers on the button are essentially psychopaths, there is no rhyme or reason to their actions. Thinking that they will simply 'obey' is a bit naive. What's needed is a widespread understanding of ponerology, and then perhaps we might have a chance. Or we keep playing with lady luck until it runs out.

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Gear

Dutch government formally withdraws ambassador to Turkey after Turkey bans ambassador


RT
Mon, 05 Feb 2018 15:28 UTC
Dutch Anti-riot police
© Adem Altan / AFPAnti-riot police vehicles form a blockade in a sealed off area surrounding the Dutch embassy on March 12, 2017 in Ankara.
The Dutch Foreign Ministry has formally withdrawn its ambassador to Turkey after the diplomat was barred from the country following a dispute that began in March 2017.

"The Dutch government has decided to officially withdraw the Netherlands' ambassador in Ankara, who has not had access to Turkey since March 2017," the ministry wrote in a statement.

It also said that the ministry would not accept the appointment of a new Turkish ambassador. "As long as the Netherlands has no ambassador to Turkey, the Netherlands will also not issue permission for a new Turkish ambassador to take up duties in the Netherlands."

Comment: Seems Turkey is making clear to their associates in the EU where their interests lie.

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War Whore

2018 National Defense Strategy: The Pentagon's plan for never-ending war

Robert L. Borosage
The Nation
Thu, 25 Jan 2018 12:53 UTC
jet aircraft carrier
© Reuters / Fabrizio BenschA nuclear-powered United States aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean Sea, 2010.
Did the Pentagon just officially declare a new Cold War with both China and Russia while also committing to wage endless wars around the globe? Apparently, yes - that was the central message of the Trump administration's newly released National Defense Strategy, which, as Andrew Bacevich noted, offers no strategy and isn't about defense. More than anything else, the document is another salvo in the push for a massive and costly military buildup.

"We are facing," the NDS declared, "increased global disorder...creating a security environment more complex and volatile than any we have experienced in recent memory." That may read as correct to you, but the Pentagon isn't talking about catastrophic climate change, debilitating inequality, or the destabilizing flows and misery of millions of displaced refugees.

No, the NDS focus is the threat of Cold War adversaries. As Defense Secretary Jim Mattis put it in presenting the document, "[W]e will continue to prosecute the campaign against terrorists that we are engaged in today, but Great Power competition, not terrorism, is now the primary focus of U.S. national security."

China and Russia are described as "revisionist powers" posing a genuine threat to the world: "[They] want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model-gaining veto authority over other nations' economic, diplomatic, and security decisions," the NDS said.

Comment: In other words - more of the same. While the US is in the midst of a breakdown, the war mongering psychos in the military are keen on dragging everyone down with them.

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